Human spiritualism and the enduring physical presence of mountains have been conjoined since the first Homo sapiens first asked “Who am I?” and made the first move towards an answer. That connection is acknowledged in the surviving literature and tradition of all major spiritual paths, including but by no means limited to Christianity, Hinduism, Bon, Native American, Jain, Buddhism, Transcendentalism and Lemurianism. As a long-time climber and practitioner of Soto Zen Buddhism the relationship between the two has been part of my experience of each. Eihei Dogen Zengi (1200-1253), founder of the Soto school of Zen, wrote: “Because mountains are high and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached in the mountains; the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains.”
Petrarch, Italian Poet, on the summit of Mt. Ventoux in 1335, said “I looked back at the summit of the mountain, which seemed but a cubit high in comparison with the height of human contemplation, were it not too often merged in the corruptions of the earth.”
American literature is filled with depictions of the spiritual dimensions of mountains by Emerson, Muir, Snyder, Whalen and others, including this by Thoreau, “You are not in the mountains, the mountains are in you.” For many years before I began climbing or practicing Zen I was an avid student of that literature, and as a life-long skier mountains were integral to my life. I was an adult before acquiring the awareness and skills to articulate that mountains were also Cathedral of a growing spiritualism. My college advisor as an English major taught a course titled “The Bible as Literature” which I passed over, despite my high regard for the advisor as teacher, scholar and person, because of my cynical (immature?) prejudices of the time against any church or ‘organized’ religion. I had been raised with no religious training except for six weeks when I was sent to a Christian Brothers boarding school in a strange city 100 miles from home in the mountains at the age of 12. My parents were not concerned with spirituality but, rather, determined I needed more social discipline which a Catholic friend assured them the Brothers would provide. Fortunately, my young spirit asked, “Who am I?” and I ran away from the Christian Brothers, creating a family crisis when I refused to return, a move I consider the first step towards the answer to my question and one of the best I ever made. Father was an atheist, Mother, perhaps, an agnostic, though a friend sold her a spiritual insurance policy by convincing her to be baptized a Catholic on her death bed. I definitely was not a Christian Brother. Still, one cannot read fine literature without encountering religion, church, spirituality and the question “Who am I”, and I embarked on a personal study of the matter while attending college by buying Huston Smith’s “The World’s Religions,” the first book I knew of that covered them all.
Studying all the major religions as literature was intellectually and spiritually nutritious, and the one that most resonated with me was Buddhism. A few years earlier, a high school student in Reno, Nevada, I was drinking beer with a couple of friends in nearby Virginia City. While strolling along the main street of that historic mining center turned tourist town, a foot high ceramic head of Buddha caught my eye from one of the second-hand store windows. On a teen-age inebriated impulse I bought the Buddha head, spray painted it gold (no idea why) and set it on my bedroom dresser where it remained as long as I lived in that house.
More than 30 years later, much of them spent climbing up and skiing down the mountains of the world with a gold painted head of Buddha lodged in my memory and subconscious, in 1990 I began the practice of Soto Zen Buddhism at Sonoma Mountain Zen Center with Jakusho Kwong Roshi. During the eight years I was associated with Sonoma Mountain I participated in many sesshins and five 30 day ango retreats (not the more traditional 90 day ango) and received the precepts and lay ordination through Jukai. I was shuso at the last ango in 1998 and am grateful to Kwong Roshi and the Sonoma Mountain Sangha for the fine foundation of a life practice they gave me, including my first true lesson in climbing dharma from Dave Haselwood, one of my favorite people there. Dave, who first practiced Zen with Suzuki Roshi in San Francisco in 1963, had been a leading publisher of Beat generation poets, including Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, William Burroughs, Lew Welsh and Diane DiPrima. He left Sonoma Mountain in 2000, a couple of years after I did and became a revered teacher at Stone Creek Zen Center and leader of the Empty Bowl Sangha before his death in 2014. During my first ango I was dealing with a recent personal and professional betrayal by an old friend, and I was having a difficult time letting go of my anger, sadness, confusion and disappointment. I sat on my zafu in a half lotus with a straight back, relaxed posture, hands in Dhyana mudra, following my breath as well as possible, but inside I was far from peaceful, unattached or forgiving. I was pissed and it must have showed.
During one of the breaks Dave, who was shuso, came over to me and said with a smile, “It looks like you’re climbing some really hard mountains in the zendo.”
A moment of insight (enlightenment?) lit up my mind, the first awareness of climbing dharma, eloquently expressed by Sir Edmund Hillary: “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” Yes, on the mountain and the zafu and with each breath of daily life, and you can’t take another breath until you exhale the last one, nor make another move until the last one is completed. Thanks, Dave.
That awareness of climbing dharma served me well since then as I continued practice on my own, with a couple of different sitting groups, a few sesshins at different Zen Centers and some retreats with different schools of Buddhism. For the past several years I have practiced with the Bozemen Zen Group, taught by Karen DeCotis at the Bozeman (Montana) Dharma Center. Another member of the Bozeman Sangha, Michelle Palmer, is a climber, and a couple of years ago she came up with the idea and proposed that she and I give a talk to the Sangha on “The dharma of climbing.” We did and it was well received and led to a subsequent talk open to the entire Dharma Center and the general public.
Climbing dharma continues. Insight (enlightenment?) grows. Last year after the first dharma talk I wrote an article published in Climbing Magazine (check here: https://www.climbing.com/people/the-last-lead-aging-out-of-climbing/) about the process of reaching the decision (at the age of almost 78) to retire from leading as a climber. It was not written with dharma or Buddhism in mind, though it clearly reflects the spirit of this from Gary Snyder:
WE SHALL SEE
WHO KNOWS
HOW TO BE
It was written for climbers, each of whom will confront the inevitable decline of physical skills that accompany the aging process. Nelson Foster, teacher at Ring of Bone Zendo on San Juan Ridge in California and Dharma heir of Robert Aitken Roshi, read “The Last Lead”, and wrote me that he had “….passed it along to a group considering, in the context of precept study, the issues that arise out of old age, sickness, and death – which echoes the legend of Gautama’s turn to the Way, of course. You address in a beautifully direct and thoughtful way one of the problems of aging that has impressed itself on me in recent years: knowing when it’s time to give up activities we’ve engaged in for many years. We don’t want to give up prematurely, but even worse is to give up too late. So, we included issues that arise out of old age, sickness and death in the next talk on Climbing Dharma. We discussed some ways in which the body, the mind and the emotions in climbing are practicing the dharma, which means “protection.” In climbing, as in sitting, as in daily life, the manner in which the body is positioned affects what in Zen is referred to as “the right state of mind,” staying focused on the present moment and not letting the mind wander. The necessity of a climber being focused in the present moment is obvious to even non-climbers. Simplistically, climbers use feet more than hands, as a human can walk all day but the strongest cannot do pull-ups all day. The climbing mind that wanders is heading for a fall, as the sitting mind that wanders is climbing some really hard mountains. The every-day mind that wanders is prone to delusion. And in climbing as in all aspects of daily life fear must be addressed. I like how Thich Nhat Hahn describes it: “The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.” In climbing, on the zafu, in the home and on the street it is crucial to be aware of fear of sickness, old age and death and look at them clearly and deeply. During the 2nd talk a middle-aged woman in the audience (who told me later she was a mother of three who had recently completed a 600 mile solo hike in mostly desert country) asked the appropriate question: “Are we able to practice the dharma in other aspects of life in the same way as climbing dharma…..parenting, business, teaching school, fighting fires?” “Yes, of course,” I replied. “It is the same dharma, and compared to parenting climbing is a piece of cake.” That quip inspired a good laugh and an engaged discussion among the group concerning how body, mind and emotions are practicing the dharma (or not) in every moment of every endeavor in life. The evening expanded my personal appreciation of the dharma at work that began all those years ago when Dave Haselwood noted that I seemed to be climbing some really hard mountains in the zendo.