Zen Mountain Journal:
A Simple Way of Life
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For thirty years, Heron Dance has been a fringe endeavor. It has existed, sometimes thrived, sometimes struggled, on the edges of different realities, between realities. Wild nature and modern culture to name two. It has existed, deliberately, outside the traditional sources of support for artistic and literary efforts – academia, book publishers, art dealers and institutions of all types. I’ve offered a perspective on our culture, on the assumptions on which we base our lives, without the compromises and politics that institutional financial support might require.

As Buddhism spread from India, it encountered, and was transformed into Zen, by the Taoist hermit monks of southern China. They revered poetry, and wrote about suffering and its relationship to desire, and about acceptance. Their work was shaped by silence, solitude and living close to the beauty and mystery of nature. They tried to put into words that which can’t be put into words. They wrote about “soundless music.”

Within the tradition of ancient Chinese hermit poetry there exists a genre of “harmony poems,” or poems inspired by the work of earlier poets. My poems and art are offered as a continuation of that tradition. My poems loosely adhere to the structural format and meter of the original, admired poems, but emphasize what means most to me as shaped by my own spiritual quest. I’ve noticed that other “translators” before me have interpreted the same work in dramatically different ways, including meter and format. I approach this as creative work, more like jazz than classical music.

In addition to the ancient poetry of the monks of China and Japan, my work draws inspiration from the role of water in Taoism as a guide on the spiritual path. I’ve spent long periods of my life paddling remote rivers and lakes in the Canadian north. Water, especially wild flowing water, has had a mysterious and profound spiritual role in my life.

The Heron Dance journey meanders along the edges where time touches beyond time, where words touch beyond words.

I never get lost because I don't know where I'm going.
- Zen master Ikkya, 15th century Buddhist monk