Wirth - Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth Reading Gary Snyder and Dogen in an Age of Ecological Crisis

SUNY series in Environmental Philosophy and Ethics

J. Baird Callicott and John van Buren, editors

Reading Gary Snyder and Dgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis

Jason M. Wirth

Cover image courtesy of Nathan Wirth.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2017 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wirth, Jason M., 1963 author.

Title: Mountains, rivers, and the great earth : reading Gary Snyder and Dgen in an age of ecological crisis / by Jason M. Wirth.

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2017. | Series: SUNY series in environmental philosophy and ethics | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016031502 (print) | LCCN 2016050289 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438465432 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438465449 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Snyder, Gary, 1930Criticism and interpretation. | Dgen, 12001253Criticism and interpretation. | Ecocriticism.

Classification: LCC PS3569.N88 Z965 2017 (print) | LCC PS3569.N88 (ebook) | DDC 811/.54dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031502

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[ senga daichi mountains, rivers, great earth]

Here, everywhere, right now is mountains, river, and earth.

Dgen, Baika [Plum Blossoms] (S, 585)

The mountains, rivers, and the great earth are all the ocean of buddha nature.

Dgen, Bussh [Buddha Nature] (S, 238)

Clear and bright are mountains, rivers, and earthan eyeball.

Dgen, Ganzei [Eyeball] (S, 616)

Ancient masters [Yangshan and Guishan] said to each other, What is the wondrous clear mind? I say it is mountains, rivers, and the earth; it is the sun, the moon, and stars.

Dgen, Sokushin Zebutsu [The Mind Itself is Buddha] (S, 46)

When you move mountains, rivers, and earth, as well as the sun, the moon, and stars to practice, they in turn move you to practice. This is not the open eye of just one time, but the vital eye of all times.

Dgen, Shoaku Makusa [Refrain from Unwholesome Action] (S, 97)

Saying that the self returns to the self is not contradicted by saying that the self is mountains, rivers, and the great earth.

Dgen, Keisei Sanshoku [Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors] (S, 89)

Avalokitevaras all work together with buddhas, mountains, rivers, and earth.

Dgen, Avalokitevara (S, 403)

Walking on walking,

under foot earth turns.

Streams and mountains never stay the same.

Gary Snyder (MR, 9, 145146, 154)

great

earth

sagha

Gary Snyder (O Waters, TI, 73)

For Elizabeth Myen Sikes,
embodiment of the emptiness of the three wheels:
giver, receiver, and gift

Contents

Acknowledgments

I would like first of all to thank Gary Snyder who, despite the countless demands upon his schedule, made the time to read this manuscript and to offer generous words of encouragement and support. I would also like to extend my whole-hearted gratitude to my brother Nathan Wirth, whose photography is a great inspiration and teacher; to my Dharma brother Carl Kakuzen Mountain who early on read the manuscript and shared his wisdom with me; to my St Zen teacher Ksh Itagaki, abbot of the Eishoji Zen training and practice facility in South Seattle; to my beloved Dharma sisters and brothers of CoZen, especially Brian Shd Schroeder, Bret Kanp Davis, and Erin Jien McCarthy; to my companions at PACT (The Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition), especially Gerard Kuperus, Marjolein Oele, Tim Freeman, Chris Lauer, and Brian Treanor, all of whom have offered much support and guidance on this project; to my companions at CCPC (The Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle), especially David Jones, Michael Schwartz, and Andrew Whitehead, all of whom teach me both with their wisdom and their friendship; to my friend Josh Hayes, whose own work on Gary Snyder has been instructive; to the poet Samuel Green, who teaches me with both word and deed from his home on Waldron Island; to the incomparable Bill Porter (Red Pine); to the many members of the Seattle University EcoSangha; to my friends Don Castro and Mark Unno, who manifest the Pure Land in deed and word; to Andrew Kenyon, my thoughtful and gracious acquisitions editor; and to my former students and current friends Jennifer Luo, Caity Orellana, Maura McCreight, Sonya Ekstrom, Emily Ingram, Brigid Scannell, Lia Perroud, and Dominique Walmsley. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Elizabeth Myen Sikes, the great alchemist who turns each day of our life together into gold.

Some parts of the first chapter appeared in a much different and shorter form as Painting Mountains and Rivers: Gary Snyder, Dgen, and the Elemental Sutra of the Wild, Research in Phenomenology , vol. 44 (2014), 240261. Some parts of the second chapter appeared in a much different form in Never Paint What Cannot Be Painted: Master Dgen and the Zen of the Brush, Diaphany: A Journal & Nocturne , volume 1, ed. Aaron Cheak, Sabrina dalla Valle, and Jennifer Zahrt (Auckland and Seattle: Rubedo Press, 2015), 3865.

Hard to stack wood & live

in the moment. The body knows

the picking & spacing & wedging

to make the stack right. The mind is in

December by a good fire, soup

simmering on the back of the stove, coffee dark

as winter nights, & the sound

of a six-day rain on tarps

over the woodpile.

Samuel Green, one of a series of Small Noticings, All That Might Be Done (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon Press, 2014), 52.

(Used with the authors permission)

Abbreviations

AH Axe Handles. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983.

BF Back on the Fire: Essays . Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007.

DP Danger on Peaks: Poems . Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004.

EHH Earth House Hold: Technical Notes and Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries . New York: New Directions, 1969.

GC The Great Clod: Notes and Memoirs on Nature and History in East Asia . Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2016.

GSR The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry and Translations, 19521998. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1999.

HWH He Who Hunted Birds in His Fathers Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth (1951). Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007.

LR Left Out in the Rain: New Poems 19471985. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1986.

MHM Mountains Hidden in Mountains: Dgen-zenji and the Mind of Ecology. In: Dgen Zen and Its Relevance for Our Time . Edited by Shhaku OKUMURA. San Francisco: St Zen Buddhism International Center, 2003.

MR Mountains and Rivers without End . Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1996.

NH (in conversation with Julia Martin). Nobody Home: Writing, Buddhism, and Living in Places . San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 2014.