Simplicity is one of the characteristic features of the Zen aesthetic, exemplified in the various arts to which its philosophy is applied. The painting style is minimal, the gardens are minimalist, and archery is substantially a process of ‘letting go’ rather than summoning up an effort: although this is an adoption of a greater responsibility rather than its abdication, in which a new kind of effort is required that has to be discovered and learnt. The best account of this appears in the first major book documenting the Zen aesthetic discipline Zen And The Art Of Archery by German academic Eugen Herrigel, which lies as the philosophical heart and literary precursor of subsequent volumes. Zen has unfortunately been adopted by a trendy, Western sensibility most evident in the 1960s and leading to a so-called New Age movement characterised by superficial misappropriation. Zen is actually a fine but challenging philosophy, suggesting the need for disciplined practice rather than offering convenient intellectual comforts. Predicated as it is on meditation and a direct confrontation with phenomenological subject-object realities, you don’t ‘know Zen’ after reading a couple of books or attending a middle class weekend workshop.
One of the practices of Zen is ‘just sitting’, the purpose of which is to reveal the continual flux and flow of the mind and the extent to which we identify with it. The question is, is it possible to ‘just sit’? Another practice with a similar methodology is gazing at a blank wall: nothing happens, nothing moves, changes or occurs, and yet the mind races associatively over the cares, plans, concerns and preoccupations of the day, of the past, and of the future.
Zen is rather austere and ascetic, and we might equally be concerned for the mental health of its most devoted practitioners. I have, indeed, heard of anecdotal cases of Zen monks requiring psychiatric treatment. It’s an interesting subject for consideration, based on its component characteristics. First, a Zen monastery is an isolated environment free from the buzz and distractions of the normal world. Second, a monk’s day is a rigid routine of meditation punctuated with domestic activity and social activity. And third, the monastery is hierarchically structured with senior and less senior monks.
Much of this does not apply to mountain walking, but some of it does and proves illuminating. Mountain walking is a concerted retreat, into a simpler environment devoid of the associative bases for normal concerns. There are no clocks, no work schedules, cars, or newspapers. The pleasures of a mountain partly derive from what is not there, in addition to the pleasures of its aesthetic delights. There is nothing to anchor you in the environment, for example, towards concerns about money. The routine is simple, but constantly changing and refreshing: uphill to a new viewpoint, across a ridge to a lake, over first rock and then grass, enjoying an unfolding variety of natural aesthetic compositions. I’m not suggesting everyone does or should enjoy it which is obviously untrue, but for those of us that do, and for the sake of explaining it to others, its possible to clarify what it consists of. Mountain walking is not meditation, and its methods and benefits are different, but there is a meditative quality to it explicable in terms of Zen. It’s a process of ‘letting go’ which can partly be construed in Romantic terms as explored and expressed by people like Wordsworth and Coleridge, and partly in phenomenological terms in the sense that psychological characteristics and sensory responses are characteristically identifiable and collectively shared. For example, we all experience and understand being soothed and made peaceful when we snooze on the beach, lie in the bath, or listen to pleasant harmonious music. This is a phenomenology that lies at the heart of the mountain experience, with further dimensions and philosophical repercussions. I suggest the tremendous pace and busyness of modern living is conducive to a fragmentation and corruption of a more serene and balanced living, that’s pleasurably recovered in the mountains. Wilderness is the raw material from which humanity has hammered the artefact we call civilization, and we can be grateful for the fact that wild places still exist where we can breathe more freely and expansively