Grass Hut - 22 - "Light on the Mountain"

[Risho]

I find that getting outside of my comfort zone is the best place to go.

Nature is nice. Trees are great. Wildlife is wonderful. I just planted my feet on a farm in North Eastern Pennsylvania. It's remote. its scenic and beautiful. The ground is being fracked for natural gas. I live there now.

Gassho

Sat Today

Don't worry about it man, that land is there for the taking; what could be the worst that could happen? Once we get Trump into office, he'll spearhead an Earth-initiative basically by threatening the Earth, calling it weak and telling it to cool off. lol

Of course I'm being sarcastic

There is something special about being out in "nature". When we visit New Mexico it's just gorgeous. There's plenty to see here in FL as well; I'm just thinking of the desert mountains. Very majestic. The vista is surreal. It's like looking at a large aircraft, a large building, the night sky undistorted by lights -- it's awe-inducing.

Gassho,

Risho
-sattoday

[GregJanL]

'being in nature' implies you can be outside of it. the internet and a skyscraper is as 'natural' as a mountain. I don't get the whole thing about 'natural' food even, there is healthier and less healthier food but just because something is manmade, it isn't less natural, might be more or less caustic to the individual or interbeing, but 'nonmanmade natural' doesn't make something more special and 'good, spiritual, natural'. people are part of nature and as is their output, if their output, products, actions come only from a view of isolated selfness, never seeing how caustic actions, 'making a war' (which is natural too), or dumping toxic waste into the stream will effect them negatively immediately or downstream, then that's where the 'problem' starts..it's when you want to get into a forest or climb up a mountain..you're aware there are less hyper caustic problems there just because there are less people, less blind causes of mutual gross suffering.

I think it's important to be accepting of the harm so we are not overwhelmed by it and willing to change it..It's already there, the doomsday clock is inching closer to midnight again, we're having a hard time as a society making certain resources free not seeing that automation is actually a good thing that we should be happy happened, accept that there will be less human work from now and into the future and as many or more humans doing jobs for a diminishing return since rate of return is so low that many things should be reassigned as a free public service, as granted as air.

Going into a forest or such is a good time to regroup, sit perhaps, and be at ease since there are far fewer distractions but staying there isn't a good idea either, it's good to accept the world as it is, accept that enviormental and militaristic self destruction is there and may or may not be stoppable but it's also important to try to slow it down somehow, we're still here after all, and the reality that we can make the world a more tender ways in big or small ways is here to accept and try because it just is possible to still do.

If we don't, 'nature' in the woods and up the mountain will be seamlessly affected in increasingly detrimental by the nature in the cities we are trying to 'go away' from.

That said, I really enjoy my time camping and hiking.

SatToday

Metta,
Greg

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[AlanLa]

In my younger days I used to go camping in the Cascade mountains. I would find the most remote place I could access, miles from anyone or anywhere, and it was wonderful. I no longer live there and no longer have access to that type of wilderness and no longer have the physical ability to do that kind of camping even if I did have a place to do it. This was all before I was a practicing Buddhist, but I still very much experienced what Connelly talks about in this chapter.

These days I live pretty much building to building, air conditioning to air conditioning in the summer, heat to heat in the winter, with nature only in the brief interlude. This chapter makes me want to get out more. But more importantly, it makes me want to bring the great outdoors to my practice.

[Roland]

Grass Hut - 22 - "Light on the Mountain"

I live in cities and I totally enjoy living in these old European places. I also live in this strange cyberspace which seems to transcend distance and even time. I feel less at ease in really wild outdoor places as I lack the skills to survive there on my own - but as long as one has an internet connection, Google can teach a lot. This being said, I feel one can experience living in a grass hut in the midst of a city.

Gassho
#SatToday
Roland

[GregJanL]

Hello all,

This topic definitely raises my curiosity about what certain buddhist masters decided they needed to go on long personal retreats. What drove Bodhidharma to spend all those years meditating in a cave? Why did Tsongkhapa of the vajrayana lineages decide he must go into a cave and chant for all those years? Is there a quality to this kind of personal retreat that isn't captured well in media or elsewhere?

Before I really got into Buddhism fully, I was in the camp that thought zen teachers, buddhist teachers in general would be speaking in weird riddles and other baffling 'profound' discourse that was impossible to ever understand because it was just too profound. In retrospect it is profound but properly presentable, does reveal itself, slowly, but it's clearly not a impossible arcane philosophy.

I wonder what kind of ignorance I hold to the function of these seeming escapes. You have plenty of hermits in the woods but their reasons are diverse for being there, why did the historical masters do it? What did they see in their practice that necessitated such a activity?

Metta,
Greg

SatToday

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[Rich]

One story is that after being refused entry to the shaolin monastery he sat in a nearby cave for nine years. Maybe this is part of a legend created to motivate people to sit more instead of just reading and studying sutras.

SAT today

[michaeljc]

How important is it for you to get out into nature from time to time

It is my Mother, my Father, my Soul. It is right outside my door. I sit with it each day on my deck. Only a wet, driving northerly can drive me inside. When I first sit I know that I have drifted away. It comes back, simply through listening. There are 25 species of local birds here and another 10 seasonal migrants. Right now the Shining Cuckoo is arriving after their annual 3000 km flight from the Solomon Islands. Welcome, friends.

Then there is the sound of wind, of rain. They all play their own beautiful music

m

Sat 2-day

[Byokan]

Hi All,

Being with trees, water, sky, clouds, is very important to me. When I enter a natural environment, I always feel an inner releasing, a deep spiritual exhale. I feel a strong sense of kinship with rocks, growing things, animals, earth. I feel that I belong here, that this is home, and I’ve returned. I spent a lot of time in the woods, growing up in Alaska. So it’s kind of my default setting. I also learned to fear and respect nature; it’s not all beautiful sunsets and rainbows. Nature actually does not care about me at all, and will be perfectly happy to let me die a slow death in a snowy ravine with a broken leg, or be chewed-on by a bear for a couple days while he decides whether to eat me or not. Still, I don’t take this personally, and feel most easily at home in natural places.

But when I lived in the city, I loved that too. The Man-made places have a beauty of their own, an awesomeness, a majesty. I felt a kinship there as well, a connection with all the faces and food smells and round-the-clock noise, the sounds of different languages, the creativity and innovation and industry and culture. I learned to fear and respect the city too; it’s not all bright lights and the symphony. The city didn’t care about me, and I could have ended up drug-addicted and living in an alley, or murdered for the money in my pocket, if life’s circumstances had led me that way.

I’m no Zen scholar, but I’m guessing maybe the reason so much of the Buddhist literature references the natural world is because that was the world they lived in at the time. There was nothing exotic or zenny back then about a mountain or a river, it was what you saw when you looked up from your work. The point maybe was to find the dharma in the normal, common, daily surroundings. I could be wrong about that. But I think the dharma can be expressed just as well in modern metaphors and koans about skyscrapers, or slums, or suburbia, or prisons, or the internet... and it will be, in times to come.

I think we can find our home wherever we are, find a sense of connection, and a sense of our place in the larger landscape. Yes to Jundo’s question: I do think it’s important to do so. Ben writes about being in nature:

“We touch something vast and real, we see how small we are, our senses carefully attune to conditions.”

It seems to me that we can do this anywhere we are, if we slow down, take a careful moment, and look deeply. Put aside our preferences and preconceived notions and allow ourselves to be at home, in our true nature, however that nature manifests.

Gassho
Lisa
sat today