Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘I first circumambulated Mt. Tamalpais in 1998 as a graduate student at UC Davis studying poetry with Gary Snyder. Another of my professors, David Robertson, periodically led students up Mt. Tam in the spirit of Snyder, Ginsberg, and Whalen’s 1965 “opening” of the mountain with Buddhist and Hindu chants, sutras, and vows.

One chilly March day, I joined David for the circuitous 14-mile route up and back down the mountain, stopping to chant at the ten pilgrims’ stations the trio of Buddhist-poets had consecrated 33 years prior.

As I trekked among groves of coastal live oak, Douglas fir, and Sequoia sempervirens, across grassy hillsides, and through California bay laurel-scented fog, I was thrilled to peek into history, retracing steps and voicing words of the original circumambulators.

Still, I wondered: as a non-Buddhist, how did these incantations apply to me? Was it appropriative to invoke them? Or was it enough that I wanted to learn about them and honor their traditions by performing them? When I asked David, also a non-Buddhist, he explained that circumambulating Mt. Tam was a way to create meaning for himself in relation to the natural world. That sounded pretty good to me. And Gary himself had once said that the purpose of circumambulating Mt. Tam was not just “…to pay your regards” but also “…to play, to engage, to stop and pay attention.”’ (from Terrain.org)

I had a look in my archive for solstice-related posts; apart from my personal musings over the years, a lot of which were from visits to Wilbur, where connection to the elements comes to the fore, as it used to at Tassajara, this was the one that stood out – these circumambulations being quarterly on the equinox and the solstice. Interestingly, when I searched through my digital versions of the Shobogenzo and the Extensive Record, it seemed that Dogen spoke without fail on the winter solstice, but there is no reference to the summer one – perhaps one of you will know why.