Zen Mountain Journal:
Reflections on the Search for Inner Peace
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Zen Mountain Journal explores different perspectives on the search for inner peace. I also offer my own reflections on that search and the thoughts of others through essays, artwork, and contemplative journaling. A major source of inspiration for this work is the ancient Taoist and Zen mountain poets. In addition, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people who built their lives around what they love — painters, writers, wilderness travelers, craftspeople, monks, scientists. I asked them, in one form or another, the same questions: What is a life well lived? Where does your peace come from? What did it cost you? Their answers feed this journal, alongside a couple quotes thousand I’ve collected from books I've read. Thomas Merton in his hermitage. Helen Keller. Soetsu Yanagi on the quiet beauty of the Zen craftsman of old. Calvin Rutstrum and Louise Dickinson Rich on lives lived close to the wild. Different centuries, different continents, the same search.
Together we navigate a chaotic world. Despite the darkness, we are still surrounded by an incredible beauty.
The Search, as the Mountain Hermits Lived It
Beginning centuries before Christ, Chinese Taoist mountain hermits, and later Zen monks, gave up comfort and financial security to search for inner harmony in solitude, nature, and meditation. Out of their search emerged beautiful and mysterious poems — spare, ambiguous, luminous. The best known is the Tao Te Ching, but there are thousands of others, many equally beautiful and mysterious.
I resonate with those poems from my own time in wilderness, including long solo canoe trips. The peace I have found in wild nature is the same peace they wrote about. In my work I sit with an ancient poem, meditate on it, go down deep, and offer what emerges in art and words.
Li Po: Peace That Can't Be Explained
You ask
why I perch
on a jade green mountain
I laugh
but say nothing
my heart
free
like a peach blossom
in the flowing stream
going by
in the depths
in another world
not among men.
— Li Po (Kenneth Rexroth translation, One Hundred Poems From The Chinese)
My interpretation:
I roam these mountains
Alive, alone, in love with life.
Strange to some, yes
I don't try to explain
I can't explain
The feelings I have here
In this land of no men
Of mountain ranges and rivers.
My mind empty, my heart free.
— Li Po, Zen Mountain Journal translation.
Ikkyū: Peace Comes When Striving Stops
Studying Zen, focused
sitting meditation, reaching
for enlightenment
clouds the clear mind.
Meanwhile a lone fisherman
hums a simple song to a darkening river.
Rain softens the dusk,
moonlight slips through clouds
—nothing to explain,
the river sings itself into night.
— Ikkyū (Japanese Zen monk, 1394–1481), Zen Mountain Journal interpretation.
The fisherman, singing to the dusk and rain, represents the purity of mind that comes when one stops striving — including striving for enlightenment. The best way to know peace is simply to be, living in a way that your life sings itself. Ikkyū was a rebellious monk, disdainful of the rituals and hierarchy of Buddhist temples, though he was an abbot himself, with a proclivity for wine, women and song.
Ikkyū provided the quote I've taken on as the mantra for my work, both art and writing:
I never get lost because I don't know where I'm going.
Contemplative Journaling
Out of this same well a journaling practice has risen — sitting quietly with an ancient poem, inspirational interview or book excerpt and letting it open into reflection that bubbles up from down deep. Inner peace isn't something you read your way into. Quiet reflection is the work. Exploring sometimes difficult questions is the work.
Though there is no obligation to contribute to the creation of this work, donations are gratefully accepted. You can become a supporting Member here. Supporting Members receive a number of benefits (free shipping, 25% off original paintings, free access to PDFs of books produced by Zen Mountain Press and Heron Dance Press).
