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Show 153. or oriental thought which would later allow someone like Gary Snyder to reinvest the mountains with consciousness. Jack Kerouac documented the Snyder perspective in Dharma Bums: "... to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin there being perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin." Snyder has stated that he was influenced by the "Mountains and Rivers Sutra" by Dogen, wherein the mountains and rivers of the present are the actualization of the word of the ancient Buddhas. In 1240 A.D., Dogen stated simply, "When we thoroughly study the mountains, this is the mountain training. Such mountains and rivers themselves spontaneously become wise men and sages." And this seems to have been Muir's personal view. If Dogen said "The blue mountains are constantly walking," Muir might have dissented only by correcting his English. "Sauntering," he might have said; he guessed they were thoughtful and on the move. Yet such views are likely to bring laughter in the West, where we have developed a so-called modern scientific objectivity, We do not understand Dogen when he says, "To be 'in the mountains' is a flower opening 'within the world.' Those outside the mountains do not sense this do not know it. Those without eyes to see the mountains do not sense, do not know, do not hear this truth." The germ of this vision is buried in the Studies, although |