I went to some temple deep in the mountains, and in a monk’s room there hung a landscape painting done by a famous artist. It was an exceptional work. However, because it did not properly mesh with the owner and the wall, the painting could not radiate any luster.
Since this was in the deep mountains, with the peaks and rivers of nature itself, this painting imitating the landscape felt constrained, unable to fulfill its potential.
That landscape painting was only suitable for the city, so estranged as it is from nature. It is only in such a place where the radiance of this picture can issue forth.
Every single thing lives and breathes only when it resides in its place of being.
~Shiva Ryu, ed., Matty Wegehaupt, trans. May All Beings Be Happy: The Selected Dharma Sayings of Beop Jeong. Seoul: The Good Life, 2006. Pg. 147
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Thanks for this great quotation Seido! I very much resonate with this idea. At the same time though I can’t help thinking of how similar notions have often been misused to ‘put people’ in place. As with so many teachings it only seems to work properly from a subjective and introspective direction.
Glad you liked the quote. I know you mean about the ‘double-edged’ aspect of the quotation above. A friend of mine is a novice monk at Songgwangsa in Korea. A few years back, he told me about the late Beop Jeong, a Jogye order monk who lived mostly in a mountain hermitage for something like 30 years. I became a little fascinated by him. The range of ‘voices’ that appear in his written reflections in May All Beings Be Happy make him sound like a stern old Seon master at times, a Confucian gentleman at others, a Daoist sage at times, and there are passages about listening and gratitude that even make him sound kind of Shin. Thanks for pointing out that there can also be something very limiting and even authoritarian about ‘each thing residing in its place of being’. Beop Jeong wrote this during a period when he was living as a hermit, but before he lived that way he trained novice monks. So, there’s probably a little of both constriction and freedom contained in his statement here. This passage really struck me last night. Lately, I’ve been hiking a lot on the weekends and sitting in the woods from time to time. A few weeks ago. I brought a small image of Amida with me and began to recite the nembutsu. At some point, the experience of being in the forest with leaves falling around me completely overwhelmed the usually beautiful image of Amida. I had to put the image back in my bag and stop reciting and simply feel gratitude toward the woods and sky as Amida.It’s not quite the same experience that Beop Jeong is describing, but, when I read it yesterday, it reminded me of how much more powerful images or concepts are in one place versus another.
Thanks for the reading recommendation Seidō. Beop Jeong sounds like an interesting person. I gather from the web that he only died last year?
“This passage really struck me last night. Lately, I’ve been hiking a lot on the weekends and sitting in the woods from time to time. A few weeks ago. I brought a small image of Amida with me and began to recite the nembutsu. At some point, the experience of being in the forest with leaves falling around me completely overwhelmed the usually beautiful image of Amida. I had to put the image back in my bag and stop reciting and simply feel gratitude toward the woods and sky as Amida.It’s not quite the same experience that Beop Jeong is describing, but, when I read it yesterday, it reminded me of how much more powerful images or concepts are in one place versus another.”
Thank you also for sharing this a beautiful reflection which highlights the complexity of spiritual experience. For me the nembutsu at least partly exists as a kind of channel through which to celebrate and let go of overwhelmings (‘opening the hand of thought’). On the other hand though, sometimes I become so lost in thoughts and dreams that the wonder of the natural world is occluded and it is through such overtly ‘religious’ acts as preparing a shrine that I find the simplicity and focus to re-awaken to what is there. I think that, for me at least, there is some kind of essential reciprocal relationship or balance between the spirituality of nature and of the shrine / dharma hall / enclosure / church …
Right. Beop Jeong passed away in the spring of 2010. My Jogye order monk-in-training friend told me about him while he (Beop Jeong) was still alive. Sorry my sentence was a little awkward up there in the earlier comment. He wasn’t the ‘late’ Beop Jeong when I first heard of him. Even though he was kind of famous in Korea, his works are hard to find in English. I don’t know Korean, but I sometimes wonder if Wegehaupt’s translation is very accurate. It appears he did it while he was a grad. student at University of Michigan. At any rate, the type-os and rough English in places make it even more endearing to me. I’m grateful to Wegehaupt and Ryu for making an English edition of May All Beings Be Happy available.
That’s a really nice way to put it: “essential reciprocal relationship or balance between the spirituality of nature and of the shrine.” I find a lot of value in both dimensions. What resonated with me when I read Beop Jeong’s reflection above is that there’s a kind of process (maybe it’s not a process that we have any control over, but a gift from the universe) of learning how to let certain types of experience ‘live and breathe’; how to let them find their own ‘place of being’; the development or unfolding of a kind of ‘listening.’ I have had numerous experiences in my life (besides the one I related above), where I have tried to superimpose the ‘spirituality of the shrine’ on nature or vice versa. Going a little farther with this, I think it relates, in a way, to some comments you and I made when we were discussing ‘being at home‘ a few posts back. You mentioned how you have this sense of the color of Shin temple life fading when you visit your parents’ place in the English countryside. Then, I mentioned the feeling of disconnect I had when I began reciting a Tibetan mantra under my breath during my Agnostic Anglo-Lebanese-American grandmother’s funeral. There are often times, even in simple conversations or interactions, when I fail to ‘put the shrine away’ rather than letting the moment or connection between people or nature just find its genuine place of being. But, like you say, other times the image, shrine, ritual or recitation is the very thing that actually allows as-it-is-ness to unfold.
I have had numerous experiences in my life (besides the one I related above), where I have tried to superimpose the ‘spirituality of the shrine’ on nature or vice versa.
It’s complex isn’t it! Is imposing the spirituality of the shrine on nature inherently wrong or is it just a question of how you do it? A few of the Shinto shrines I have visited seem to achieve something close to a balance.
Another thing is simply the struggle of finding any form at all. I recall in my second year practicing the nembutsu path I wanted to remember my late grandfather at Obon but was a long way from the place we scattered his ashes or from the temple. I decided to walk to this beautiful cemetery on a hill near my home but when I got there I was so overwhelmed by all the signs of over peoples’ loss I couldn’t perform any kind of ritual or even mental act of remembrance. On the way back I walked along the big river that runs by the town and found myself lighting some incense on the riverbank and expressing my remembrance there with the water flowing steadily past. The latter was a positive experience but looking back I wonder if I would have been better to let go of my focus on what I wanted to do and to achieve and might then have found the time at the cemetery more illuminating. There at least I was listening rather than focusing on what I wanted to do or say.
Thanks. One of the things that is so appealing to me about the writing of Dogen and Japanese religiosity, in general, is its element of intertwining the shrine/temple dimension with the natural one. I do think it is about how it’s done and not that it shouldn’t be done. Yeah. That idea of letting go of what I ‘want to achieve’ in particular situations has been on my mind a lot lately, as I have been wondering how I should ‘be’ with someone who is dealing with a difficult illness.
I have been wondering how I should ‘be’ with someone who is dealing with a difficult illness.
This isn’t an answer (all of your great reflections above point toward finding the answer in the situation itself) but I’m in a similar situation at the moment and jotted this the other day:
You’ve taught me to love the silence
that sometimes pools thickly around people
as conversation slows and soft words
ripple a circle without circumference.
Thanks, Kyoshin. As always, I truly appreciate your thoughtful responses to my posts and comments. A beautiful poem.
Our conversation made me think of this from Martin Buber’s ‘I and Thou’:
“The spheres in which the world of relation is built are three.
First, our life with nature, in which relation clings to the threshold of speech.
Second, our life with men, in which the relation takes on the form of speech.
Third, our life with spiritual beings, where the relation, being without speech, yet begets it.”
Thanks for the kind words about the translation. As for its accuracy, all I can say is that Ryu and Beopjeong Seunim themselves signed off on it, at least. Interesting that Kyōshin Samuels mentions Buber – Beopjeong was a big fan.
Hi, Dr. Wegehaupt. Great to hear from you. I’m a big fan of your translation of Beop Jeong’s work. I’ve bought several copies of ‘May All Beings Be Happy’ for friends (both religious and areligious) and they’ve all been touched by it. A number of them have bought gift copies for their friends, too:)