John Muir Newsletter, Spring 1995

John Muir Newsletter spring 1995 university of the pacific volume 5, number 2 JOHN MUIR AND ZEN BUDDHISM by Michelle L. Dwyer (Editor\u27s note: Michelle Dwyer is an English and Philosophy double major at the University of the Pacific. This paper was prepared in the fall of 1994 for an undergraduate course, John Muir and the American Environment. ) Many question whether John Muir followed traditional Christianity, mystic pantheism, ora combination of the two. After reading many of Muir\u27s writings, it seems to me that he follows the religious beliefs of Zen Buddhism closely enough to say that Muir understood Zen without knowing much about eastern philosophy. Those familiar with Zen will not find this surprising; paradoxically, to know what Zen is, is to know nothing about it. The more one understands Zen, the more one understands this notion. Roshi Kapleau, an American Zen Master, said If I speak of Zen, it won\u27t be Zen I\u27m speaking of 1 If you insist on words, he went on, Zen is an elephant copulating with a flea. 2 Thus words are useless to convey the essense of Zen. John Muir was also aware of the limitations of words to convey a sense of the mystical power and majesty of Nature. Most of the words of the English language are made of mud, for muddy purposes, he exclaimed, while those invented to contain spiritual matter are doubtful and unfixed in capacity and form, as wind-ridden mist-rags. 3 Muir understood that one had to feel the power of Yosemite and not just read about it. To him, It is easier to feel than to realize, or in anyway explain, Yosemite grandeur. 4 Acknowledging the ineffectiveness of words led both Muir and Zen followers to emphasize experience as a path to truth. In Zen, one learns by finding one\u27s True- Nature through years of discipline, primarily by studying Zazen, which teaches that one cannot really come to discover True-Nature unless one concentrates through sitting. Zazen can transform all aspects of one\u27s life, but usually only after many years of understanding and enlightenment. Muir probably knew nothing of Zazen, but he knew much about the value of experience. He went to the moun tains to learn all he could from nature, not as an idle watcher, but as an active participant. His exploration of the Sierra became his Zazen, his concentrated effort to discern True- Nature. In exploring the physical nature surrounding him, in effect he was engaged in a Zen-like exploration of himself. By discovering Nature, he was discovering himself, and by discovering himself, he was discovering the universe. This is the meaning of his famous conundrum, I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. 5 As Muir biographer Michael Cohen observed, Muir was appealing to a higher power than self, and attempting to accommodate himself to a still unknown world-view which was deeper, larger, and more powerful than one based on self- interest.. . .He was beginning to think of human life, his own included, from an eternal perspective. 6 Thus, by going out into Nature, Muir went into himself, and eventually came back out again with greater awareness. This is the way of Zen. Zen underscores the importance of first reaching the True-Nature of the essential Self, which is described as the Unborn Mind, the immortal, original Self 7 The essential Self is reached through the conscious Self, but only when the mind is pure, serene, and calm. Although Muir\u27s frenetic treks through the wilderness were far from serene, he was similarly engaged in self-discovery, pursuing (continued on page 4) JOHN MUIR AND THE DESERT CONNECTION by Peter Wild, University of Arizona A bitter wind was blowing over the Mojave, says Linnie Marsh Wolfe, when an aging John Muir arrived at a desert ranch late in the winter of 1914.\u27 Most people know that John Muir\u27s last illness began near an obscure desert town called Daggett. However, beyond that, little is known about his relationship to Daggett, to the Mojave Desert, and to the friends he made there during the last seven years of his life. Yet the period is rich with Muir\u27s personal involvement with, and influence on, other desert dwellers, and it is a period awaiting further exploration by students of Muir. A mountain and ice man, Muir didn\u27t go willingly to the California desert. Rather, it was the health of daughter Helen that forced him there in his final years. He had spent much of 1905-1906 worrying over Helen\u27s condition and trying to find a healing climate for her respiratory problems, first in the mountains of eastern Arizona, later at the Petrified Forest in the northern part of the state.2 The cure seemed to work. Then, back in Martinez, in 1907 Helen suddenly took a turn for the worse, and Muir rushed her south to the Van Dyke Ranch, a mile east of Daggett. The details of why Muir chose this ranch are not entirely clear. In fact, Daggett had a particularly evil reputation. On Saturday nights the boom town could wax riotous with miners pouring down from the rich silver claims in the nearby mountains-not at all the place either for gentle-mannered Muir or his young daughter. However, as it happened, the ranch was owned by Theodore Strong Van Dyke, a well-known outdoor writer of the day who shared Muir\u27s sympathy for nature. Furthermore, Theodore had not only solved his own health problems by moving to the desert ranch some six years before, he often celebrated the healthful climate of the region in books and articles. Given the small community of California\u27s writers at the time, it is likely that Muir knew of Van Dyke and perhaps had met him priorto 1907. In addition, since Theodore was Daggett\u27s no-nonsense justice of the peace, a powerful position in a desert where the law was stretched thin, Helen likely would suffer no rowdyism from the locals.3 In any case, Muir got Helen settled at the ranch and returned to Martinez. Word came from Helen that she enjoyed the outdoor life and the company of Theodore and his son, Dix, so much so that Muir sent her both Stickeen, the family pet, and her horse, Sniffpony. Helen was in Daggett to stay. In a few years she married Buel Funk, the son of a nearby rancher. Thus Muir, alone and aging, had every reason to be a frequent visitor in Daggett. In one of those fortuitous events that can put flesh on the bare bones of history, Dix Van Dyke wrote a substantial memoir about life at the VanDyke Ranch. He records not only some of Muir\u27s visits but follows Buel\u27s sparking of Helen and their subsequent marriage.4 According to Dix, Theodore and Muir, two authors of about the same age, found each other congenial souls, and both looked forward to times spent together at the ranch.5 At this point, however, the story becomes at once more complex and intriguing. Theodore, though a graduate of Princeton, an attorney, and a student of Greek and Latin of some accomplishment, had gone native, shedding the pretenses of urban civilization. A mountain rover and naturalist of precise observation, he had earned the right, as had Muir, to speak with authority about California\u27s vast and varied natural heritage. Not so Theodore\u27s younger brother John C. Van Dyke. And here the ironies begin to turn on themselves. In 1901, John published a landmark book, The Desert, the first volume to counter the common wisdom of the day condemning deserts as ugly wastelands.6 Instead, with a poetry and power seldom surpassed, The Desert praised the arid lands for their beauty, for their lava peaks that glow like hot iron after sunsets, and for their storms that whirl up as showers of gold. The hitch is that John was no outdoorsman but a refined professor of art history at Rutgers University, a familiar of the east coast\u27s toniest salons. Because of his own health problems he started visiting Theodore in Southern California sometime in the late 1890\u27s, and the likelihood is very strong that the adventures in his brother\u27s famous book, still in print, were more the stuff of his fantasy than experience. Whether or not John knew Muir through Theodore at the time John wrote The Desert is not known. In any case, some of the passages in the most famous book ever written about the southwest not only echo Muir\u27s writing, at times John uses Muir\u27s very (continued on page 6) JOHN MUIR NEWSLETTER. VOL. V, NUMBER 2 SPRING 1995 Published quarterly by the John Muir Center for Regional Studies, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA 95211 Editor Center Director Staff © Sally M.Miller R.H. Limbaugh This Newsletter is printed on recycled paper. THE MUIR FAMILY IN ARIZONA (Editor\u27s note: in conjunction with Peter Wild\u27s article in this issue, we reprint below an excerpt from the New York Times, July 22, 1906, by Lilian Whiting, a Times correspondent. AtAdamana she found John Muir and his two daughters, Wanda and Helen. They had arrived the year before, hoping the high desert air would clear up Helen\u27s respiratory problems. Helen lived there more than a year before returning to California, but recurring bouts of pneumonia brought her back to the desert late in 1907, this time at Daggett. Although the following excerpt only incidentally mentions John and Wanda, and says nothing about Helen, it provides a glimpse of the desert life and the scenery that so attracted Muir and his daughters. From a clipping in the John Muir Family Papers, Holt-Atherton Library.) ADAMANA, Arizona, July 18 Arizona is the land of enchantment. A spell is laid on sod and stone Night and day are tampered with It is the region in which the gods have held high carnival. Every journey one may take, every trail one follows, leads into strange and fascinating locality; and Adamana, the gateway to the petrified forest, has its own spellbinding power for the tourist. Adamana consists of a pump, the station, and two bungalows in one of which very comfortable entertainment is offered and in the other of which dwells a character whom all travelers meet, Adam Hanna, a distant relative of the late Mark Hanna, the original settler of this region. For a long time the place was known as Adam Hanna\u27s and when, with advancing civilization, this designation became too colloquial for an up-to-date twentieth century world, the elision of two or three letters gave the present attractive name-Adamana. It was the witching hour of 5 a.m. when I left the comfortable ease of a Pullman sleeper to stop over at Adamana and visit the petrified forest. Left to myself I should have emulated the example of the man who journeyed to the north pole to see a sunrise that occurred only three days in the year. On the first two mornings he refused to rise on the plea of the further extension of his opportunities; on the third, when his servant reminded him that it was the last call , he turned over and philosophically remarked that he would come again next year. But the dusky porter allowed me no such margin for reflection, and I was standing in some wonderful place east of the sun and west of the moon and the long train was vanishing in the distance almost before I knew whether I had exchanged the land of dreams for the land of day and daylight realities-- this weird and mystic panorama of the infinite desert of the bluest of turquoise skies already lighted by the blazing splendor of the June sunrise and the grotesque uncanny buttes scattered at intervals all over that vast plain. The intense silence was unbroken save by the voice and footstep of the man representing the little bungalow termed the Forest Hotel. Contrary to one\u27s preconceived ideas of an Arizona desert, the morning was cold and the blazing fire and hot coffee were most grateful. But where was the Petrified Forest ? one marveled. Away on the horizon gleamed an evanescent palpitating region of shimmering color. Yet this was not the quarry of jewels, but the Bad Lands which have at least one redeeming virtue, whatever their vices—that of producing the most aerial and fairylike color effects imaginable. John Muir, the well know California naturalist with his two daughters has been passing the Winter at Adamana living in a tiny green adobe house of two rooms and a tent adjoining by the side of the bungalow that does duty as a hotel. All Winter Mr. Muir has been exploring the entire region and he has discovered another petrified forest twelve miles from the one heretofore known, one whose prevailing tone of color has led him to name it the Blue Forest . This one is on the border of the Bad Lands, six miles south of the station while the other is six miles to the north. It was Miss Wanda Muir~her quaint name coming from her mother, the daughter of a Polish nobleman-who drove me out to this marvelous forest of stone. A graduate of Berkeley College, and a constant companion of her father in his wanderings, Miss Muir was indeed an ideal guide, and under her hand, the two horses sped along over the rough stony ground at a pace to set every fibre tingling. One of the features of the Arizona desert is the arroyo, a dry stream, a ready made river, so to speak, minus the water. Some of these even have a stream of flowing water, only it is under the bed of the river rather than on top of it, for Arizona is the land of magic and wonder and of a general reversal of accepted conditions. Sometimes in driving out here said Miss Muir, a cloudburst comes up and returning the horses have to swim this dry stream. Once the water was so high it came into the wagon. Not infrequently when we go out to the forest some one comes dashing after us on horseback to warn us to get back as quickly as possible or the torrents of water from a sudden cloudburst will cut us off altogether, perhaps for a day and night . The pleasing uncertainty of life in Arizona may be realized from this danger of being suddenly drowned in the arid sands of a desert, and being confronted with a sudden Lodore that descends from the heavens on a midsummer noon. Arizona is the land of surprises. No known laws of meteorology or of any form of science hold good here. The mountain peak transforms itself into the bottom of a sea and the sea suddenly upheaves itself in air and figures as a mountain. Arizona is nature\u27s kaleidoscope. It is the land of transformation. There are three petrified forests, each separated by a mile or two, the first reached by a drive of some six miles, while the (continued on page 6) (continued from page 1) his essential Self by observing the whole universe. As Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki remarked, Doing something is expressing our own True-Nature. We do not exist for the sake of something else; we exist for the sake of ourselves. 8 Living in union with one\u27s True-Nature also brings about harmony in life. In a letter to his brother, Muir wrote about this realization: I have no fixed practical aim, but I am living in constant communion with Nature and follow my instincts and am most intensely happy. 9 By seeking harmony and True-Nature, Muir developed a philosophy remarkably close to the teachings of Zen. Discovery and understanding of True-Nature leads Zen practitioners to a perception of oneness between nature and humanity. Even though man and nature are two entities, there is only one essense. Our existences are both plural and singular, dependent and independent, living and dying. Everything in the universe is part of the essential self and is a part of one\u27s life. Life, the universe, and the self are not divisible, but are one; the many are one and the one is many. As Suzuki expressed it: When you become one with Buddha, one with everything that exists, you find the true meaning of being. When you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher, and everything can be the object of worship.10 What comes out of this realization is a release of the conscious self, or ego. By rejecting egocentric thinking, Zen followers believe the individual loses individual fears and self-interest and becomes one with all creation. By connecting with all that exists, we do not just act for ourselves, but for everyone and everything. This is true Enlightenment. Muir understood what it meant to lose himself and his ego in the oneness of nature: No pain here, no dull empty hours, no fear of the past, no fear of the future. These blessed mountains are so compactly filled with God\u27s beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be. \u27\u27 He could not have understood Zen more completely when he wrote to Mrs. Carr, My own special self is nothing. 12 From the understanding of everything being one, all dualities are abolished, life and death become the same thing, everything changes constantly, and all is eternal. Zen teaches that oneness is obtained through practice and not thought, for thought leads to thinking in dualistic terms. When we understand the essential self we see that it is immortal and eternal, containing the past, the present, and the future with itself, and at the same time, from the viewpoint of space, it is infinite, including all the universe and reflecting everything like a mirror. 13 Change is also essential in Zen. In Suzuki\u27s words: That everything changes is the basic truth... because each existence is in constant change, there is no abiding self..the self- nature of each existence is nothing but change itself, the self nature of all existence. There is no special, separate self-nature for each existence.u Muir understood Zen notions of timelessness, non- dualities, creation and change, and the eternal interaction between life and death. In My First Summer in the Sierra he expressed Zen thinking in these words: From form to form, beauty to beauty, ever changing, never resting, all are speeding on with love\u27s enthusiasm, singing with the stars the eternal song of creation. 15 Elsewhere he wrote: We read our Bibles and remain fearful and uncomfortable amid Nature\u27s loving destructions, her beautiful deaths. Talk of immortality! After a whole day in the woods, we are already immortal. When is the end of such a day? 16 Whether or not Muir can be said to be a Zen Buddhist is really to question whether or not he reached Enlightenment, the ultimate goal of Zen. Although one may still be a Zen Buddhist and not reach Enlightenment, is it possible that Muir reached Enlightenment without Zen? Michael Cohen, at least, seems to think so. He describes Muir\u27s experience on top of Mount Ritter as Satori, which is the Zen understanding of Enlightenment, when the self is absolutely identical with the universe itself and there is complete liberty of the mind.17 To understand Muir\u27s r experience in light of Zen thinking requires an examination of Muir\u27s writings-keeping in mind that both Muir and Zen agree that experiences like Satori can never truly be understood in words. Muir was climbing Mount Ritter but soon worked himself into a position from which he was unable to move. My doom appeared fixed, he wrote. I must fall. 18 He seemed to panic for a moment and then: Life blazed forth again with preternatural clearness. 1 seemed suddenly to become possessed of a new sense. The other self, bygone experiences, instinct, or Guardian Angel—call it what you will—came forward and assumed control. Then my trembling muscles became firm again, every rift and flaw in the rock was seen as though a microscope, and my limbs moved with a positiveness and precision with which I seemed to have nothing at all to do. Had I been borne aloft upon wings, my deliverance could not have been more complete. How should we understand this event? First there is obvious loss of self, then something higher and more powerful took charge. Ultimately he experienced a feeling of clarity and vision, suggesting Satori. Shoei Ando\u27 s explanation of Satori is similar to what Muir experienced: Man is forced to stand on the verge of death several times during his life. If he takes good advantage of such chances, he may attain spiritual enlightenment. 20 Philip Kapleau also claims that some people, although very few, can obtain enlightenment without study or Zazen. The problem, he says, is that enlightenment usually does not last without proper discipline, and becomes only a memory. This may have been what happened with Muir, since he never had any formal training in Zen. Kapleau agrees that there are holy mountains which are centers of cosmic energies, forces with the power to evoke awe and reverence...these mountains turned one inward and activates the subtlest vibrations within oneself. 21 If one comes to such a place pure and open-minded, then a profound experience is possible. Mount Ritter was a holy mountain to Muir, and what he experienced on its summit was indeed profound. Perhaps it was Satori. Although Muir may not be classified as a Zen Buddhist, it is difficult to deny the many similarities. I found the more I read of both Muir and Zen, the more it becomes evident how the two are philosophically intertwined. Muir never had any systematic knowledge of Zen, but somehow he experienced the truths of the religion. The argument may still go on about the nature of Muir\u27s religious beliefs, but what cannot be denied is that Muir discovered the essence of Zen, and this we now know can never be expressed in words alone. NOTES 1 Philip Kapleau, Zen: Dawn in the West (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doudleday, 1979), 8. 2 Kapleau, 9. 3 William Frederic Bade, The Life and The Letters of John Muir, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924), 7. 4 John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (New York: PenquinBooks, 1987), 132. 5 Muir, 73. 6 Michael P Cohen, The Pathless Way: John Muir and American Wilderness (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 19. 7