Reflections on the search for inner peace.
Zen Mountain Journal
Reflections on the search for inner peace.
Our life and work in the world are manifestations of our inner work, our inner world.
Zen Mountain Journal explores perspectives on the search for inner peace. While Zen and Taoist thought, in particularly the poetry of the ancient mountain hermits, is a primary area of interest of this work, we cast a wide net from Thoreau and Emerson to Calvin Rutstrum’s wilderness cabin to Thich Nhat Hanh to Louise Dickenson Rich.
Artist and creator of Zen Mountain Journal Roderick MacIver is a fellow traveler, a searcher and seeker on the trail rather than someone ready to proclaim that he’s found inner peace. In fact, he says, sometimes he’s experience deep peace and then somehow inadvertently wanders off the trail. He’s easily distracted by shiny objects.
Zen Mountain Journal is his journal — a chronicle of what he’s reading and experiencing in his efforts to stay on the path. Journaling can help us understand the hidden currents that underly our lives, and the repeating patterns that shape our lives for better or worse. Journaling can help us discover and nurture the tiny seed within ourselves that wants to manifest itself as our unique contribution to the lives of others. And it is about the role of rest and downtime in that process — in Taoist terms wu wei.
. . .
Life is a desperate struggle to be in fact that which we are in design.
- Ortega Y. Gassett
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing oneself is wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering oneself is true power.
- Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 33
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Yielding is the way of the Tao.
The softest thing in the universe
Overcomes the hardest.
- Chapter 40, The Tao Te Ching
In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added.
In the pursuit of the Way, every day something is let go.
- Chapter 48
. . .
Lao Tzu (~4th century BCE):
Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river. . .
The anxious person is always looking for a foundation outside themselves. But the sage rests in the foundation that is inside.
. . .
According to the Taoist way, you need to nourish your vital spirit. To do so, you need to be silent...Conserving one’s inner energy is the essence of Taoism.
- From an interview of a hermit nun in the Zhongnan mountains of China by Bill Porter.
Zen Mountain Journal is shaped by time alone in wilderness, and by a creative life lived on the fringes of our culture.
Meditation in combination with journaling can help us understand the hidden but profound patterns that shape our lives, often without us knowing it.
Emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness,
Silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth.
From the sage’s emptiness, stillness arises;
From stillness, action.
- Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi), 4th century BCE
I never get lost because I don't know where I'm going.
- Zen master Ikkyū, 15th century Buddhist monk
A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler is one who does not know where he came from.
- Lin Yu-t’ang
The Tao Te Ching Journal: A Path To Inner Quiet
Our life and work in the world are reflections of our inner life. The Tao Te Ching Journal is a companion for that inner life — a quiet friendship with yourself.
There is more information on the Tao Te Ching Journal here.
You can order the Journal here.