Virtue of Mountain and River

Summary

The talk presents a Zen Buddhist teaching on practice, drawing heavily on Dogen’s writings, especially Genjokoan and the broader Shobogenzo tradition. The speaker uses the famous image of mountain and river to challenge ordinary assumptions about permanence, movement, and reality. In conventional thinking, a mountain seems fixed while a river flows, but the lecture argues that this is a limited, one-sided view created by the thinking mind. In Zen, the mountain and river are not merely objects in the world; they also express the dynamic nature of practice, perception, and enlightenment itself. A central theme is that true practice cannot be reduced to a rigid method or a conceptual explanation. The speaker repeatedly contrasts ordinary intellectual understanding with direct practice. Zen is described as something that is often said to be “beyond words,” but the lecture insists that it is still possible to point toward its actual meaning through lived experience. The speaker emphasizes that practice is not something separate from enlightenment; rather, practice already includes enlightenment, and enlightenment already permeates practice. This is presented as a difficult but essential insight from Dogen. The lecture also explores the meaning of darkness, emptiness, and non-attachment. The speaker uses the image of a dark room to explain how one may be present, seeing and hearing, without grasping at objects or making distinctions. In this state, reality is not absent, but it is not yet divided by the usual habits of the mind. The speaker links this to the Buddhist understanding of emptiness: things are not fixed, self-existing entities, but neither are they simply nothing. Instead, reality is described as a field in which form and emptiness interpenetrate. The talk repeatedly returns to the idea that existence and nonexistence are both inadequate if taken as final answers. Another major point is that practice should extend into everyday life. Zazen is not presented as a separate, isolated activity that stands apart from ordinary conduct. Instead, the speaker argues that everyday activity itself should become zazen, and zazen should mature into a composure that is visible in all aspects of life. This composure cannot be produced by intoxicants, pleasure-seeking, or one-sided spiritual ambition. The goal is not to escape the world, but to live in it with balance, clarity, and freedom from rigid self-centeredness. The speaker warns against using zazen as an excuse to avoid responsibility or to separate oneself from the difficulties of others. The talk also addresses the problem of one-sided understanding. Many difficulties in life arise, according to the speaker, because people cling to only one side of a situation—practice without everyday life, enlightenment without discipline, or theory without experience. True Buddhist practice must include both sides. It must be realistic, compassionate, and grounded in actual experience. The speaker insists that practice is not merely a principle or philosophy; it is something that must be embodied and lived. The lecture ends by stressing that right understanding is necessary, otherwise the teaching will be lost. Overall, the talk offers an extended meditation on Zen practice as a lived, nondual reality. Through images of mountain and river, darkness and sky, breathing and composure, the speaker explains that practice is not about acquiring something external, but about realizing what is already present in direct experience. Dogen, Genjokoan, emptiness, zazen, bodhichitta, and everyday activity are all woven together into a single argument: genuine Buddhist practice is inclusive, experiential, and inseparable from ordinary life.