drafty mountain hut

No Nature. Human societies each have their own nutty fads, mass delusions, and enabling mythologies. Daily life still gets done. Wild nature is probably equally goofy, with its stunning variety of creatures somehow getting by in all these landscapes. Nature also means the physical universe, including the urban, industrial and toxic.  But we do not easily know nature, or even know ourselves. Whatever it actually is, it will not fulfill our conceptions or assumptions. It will dodge our expectations and theoretical models. There is no single or set “nature” either as “the natural world” or “the nature of things.” The greatest respect we can pay to nature is not to trap it, but to acknowledge that it eludes us and that our own nature is also fluid, open, and conditional.” – Gary Snyder, No Nature.

It is easy for us to get past ourselves when we are outside.  Lost in the continuous sound of the surf, gazing raptly at distant mountain peaks, self forgotten among the tangled complexity and glory of the forest. But there is no nature, no nature that is separate from us. It is not a thing that we abscond to, escape to. It is us.  Humans are after all a part of nature and our constructs are merely complicated termite mounds, stone bird nests,  massive cave systems.

In the talk below, I examine taking advantage of this natural receding of the self when outside, to use this as a practice, the practice of being in nature.

The reading is from the Recorded Sayings of Ch’an Master Huangbo. This is part of our continuing  study of classical Ch’an currently focusing on the Hongzhou school.

A Bird in Flight Leaves No Trace: The Zen Teaching of Huangbo with a Modern Commentary
Commentary by Seon Master Subul,
Translated by Robert Buswell jr. and Seong-uk Kim
Wisdom Publications (April 30, 2019)
ISBN-10: 1614295301