Practice of the Wild QUOTES

2 " In this huge old occidental culture our teaching elders are books. Books are our grandparents! "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

4 " C'è un punto oltre il quale l'addestramento e la pratica non possono portare. Zeami, lo straordinario
drammaturgo e regista di teatro Noh del quattordicesimo secolo, che era anche sacerdote zen, ha parlato
di questo momento come di una “sorpresa”. È la sorpresa di scoprire di non aver più bisogno di un sé, la
sorpresa di ritrovarsi una cosa sola col proprio lavoro in un movimento pieno di fluida disciplina e grazia.
Allora si capisce che cosa vuol dire essere una palla d'argilla che gira sul tornio, un trucciolo bianco
sollevato dalla punta dello scalpello o una delle molte mani di Kannon, Bodhisattva della Compassione. A
questo punto è possibile essere liberi, nel lavoro e dal lavoro. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

6 " With no surroundings there can be no path, and with no path one cannot become free. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

8 " The blue mountains are constantly walking." Dōgen is quoting the Chan master Furong. -- "If you doubt mountains walking you do not know your own walking."

-- Dōgen is not concerned with "sacred mountains" - or pilgrimages, or spirit allies, or wilderness as some special quality. His mountains and streams are the processes of this earth, all of existence, process, essence, action, absence; they roll being and non-being together. They are what we are, we are what they are. For those who would see directly into essential nature, the idea of the sacred is a delusion and an obstruction: it diverts us from seeing what is before our eyes: plain thusness. Roots, stems, and branches are all equally scratchy. No hierarchy, no equality. No occult and exoteric, no gifted kids and slow achievers. No wild and tame, no bound or free, no natural and artificial. Each totally its own frail self. Even though connected all which ways; even because connected all which ways. This, thusness, is the nature of the nature of nature. The wild in wild.

So the blue mountains walk to the kitchen and back to the shop, to the desk, to the stove. We sit on the park bench and let the wind and rain drench us. The blue mountains walk out to put another coin in the parking meter, and go down to the 7-Eleven. The blue mountains march out of the sea, shoulder the sky for a while, and slip back to into the waters. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

10 " And our conservationist-environmentalist-moral outrage is often (in its frustration) aimed at the logger or the rancher, when the real power is in the hands of people who make unimaginably larger sums of money, people impeccably groomed, excellently educated at the best universities - male and female alike - eating fine foods and reading classy literature, while orchestrating the investment and legislation that ruin the world. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

12 " Deer love mushrooms. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

14 " Like imagination and the body, language rises unbidden. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

16 " Some friends and I once walked the ancient pilgrimage route of the Ōmine Yamabushi (mountain ascetics) in Nara prefecture from Yoshino to Kumano. In doing so we crossed the traditional center of the “Diamond-Realm Mandala” at the summit of Mt. Ōmine (close to six thousand feet) and four hiking days later descended to the center of the “Womb-Realm Mandala” at the Kumano (“Bear Field”) Shrine, deep in a valley. It was the late-June rainy season, flowery and misty. There were little stone shrines the whole distance — miles of ridges — to which we sincerely bowed each time we came on them. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

18 " In the Western Hemisphere we have only the tiniest number of buildings that can be called temples or shrines. The temples of our hemisphere will be some of the planet's remaining wilderness areas. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild

20 " I commons sono stati definiti "la terra indivisa appartenente ai membri di una comunità locale come
insieme". I commons sono il contratto che un popolo fa con il proprio sistema naturale locale. La parola
ha una storia interessante: è formata da ko, insieme, e dal greco moin, tenuto in comune. Ma la radice
indoeuropea mei significa comunemente spostarsi, andare, cambiare. Questo aveva un significato arcaico
particolare di scambio di beni e servizi in una società ordinata da regole e leggi. Penso che potrebbe
richiamare i principi su cui si basavano le economie del dono, "il dono deve sempre spostarsi". In latino la
radice munus significa servizio offerto alla comunità, da cui municipio. "

― Gary Snyder , Practice of the Wild