Investigating And Being Leveled By Water (and Mountains … And Cities)

We’re on the “fly-way” here (also the “fly-over” from the West to the East Coasts but that’s another story), near enough to the Mississippi that we get a lot of migratory bird traffic. It started about a couple weeks ago.

This morning I spotted (click the photo in order to see ’em) a couple Tundra Swans with a very cool honk and shot the above from the hip. Years ago in the middle of a tough sesshin, I went outside with a cup of coffee after breakfast and was startled by a huge flock of these flying low overhead, honking, and landing in Lake Calhoun. They flipped me out of my self-centered swirl (for the moment) and since I’ve had a deep feeling for them, spotting them only every few years as they pass by.

Anyway, Bodhi and I were on our way to investigate open water on Otter Lake that we’d spotted from a distance.

Above is Dog-en investigating water. And below is Do-gen encouraging just such a thing (with some Dainin/Dosho commentary following):

…You should investigate (water and) mountains. If you investigate (water and) mountains, that is meditation in the (water and) mountains. Such mountains and waters of themselves make sages and saints. (Cleary translation, Shobogenzo Sansuikyo, Mountains and Waters Sutra)

Katagiri Roshi (and me because this is heavily edited): You should investigate mountains means to investigate how mountains exist. The translator uses meditation in If you investigate mountains, that is meditation in the mountains.

In Japanese, this word meditation is kufu. Ku is a carpenter’s tool, a level. Fu is person. So literally Dogen says, If you investigate mountains, that person is leveled in the mountains.

Mountains themselves are completely leveled as they are. This is the consummation of the mountain’s life.

When you zazen, exactly, when you use effort in the pure sense with full concentration, effort is momentum, energy that levels your life. Level is not with our effort, with our head, with our usual sense of effort. That is not perfectly level. If in order to keep level we deal with something as an object, thinking ‘I should take care of this one with effort,’ already there is separation, subject and object, and we aren’t leveled with what we are doing.

To level doesn’t mean that we obliterate subject and object, zazen and I. Or psychologically, it doesn’t mean to obliterate delusion and buddhas. When you see zazen, exactly you have to take best care of zazen with wholeheartedness. At that time you are concealed in zazen. At that time your life becomes level.

Investigating and Being Leveled by Water (and Mountains … and Cities)