ID Music: Mountains and Waters Digest
ID Music: Mountains and Waters Digest
Looking at and listening to Zen Master Dōgen's bucolic sutra
This five episode series of Inter-Dimensional Music from June, July, and August 2021 is based on selections from Zen Master Dōgen's “Mountains and Waters Sutra”. It's another experiment in developing the "void contemplation tactics" part of the show, hopefully without distracting from the heavy mellow and kosmische slop.
“The Mountains and Waters Sutra” is a popular section of Shōbōgenzō, a massive collection of teachings by 13-century monk Eihi Dōgen. Shōbōgenzō, aka Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, is one of the foundational texts of Zen Buddhism. Like a lot of Zen teaching, it's confusing and beautiful in equal measure. “The Mountains and Waters Sutra” holds many helpful ideas, but I also think it's also popular because the pastoral imagery is so vivid and strange. If you’re interested in reading more Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō is widely available for free online. Brad Warner’s Don’t Be a Jerk is another easygoing introduction.
After a conversation with fellow practitioner and friend-of-the-show Revolt of the Apes, I dug in a little deeper with Shohaku Okumura's book of commentary on the sutra. You can find three translations of the original text here, and Okumura's book is available in all the usual formats from all the usual sources, perhaps also from a library near you.
The music in each episode is about mountains and/or waters.
These programs share some common ground with ID Music series from Spring 2021 where we juxtaposed writing from anthropologist and anarchist activist David Graeber with Affirming Faith in Mind, a 7th-century poem by Seng Ts'an, the Third Zen Patriarch.
"If mind does not discriminate," writes Seng Ts'an, "all things are as they are, as One." Graeber concurs, asking us to consider the damage done when we take our propensity for commercial calculation as the foundation of our humanity.
That five-part Graeber/Seng Ts’an series starts with episode 20210312, which you can stream here.
Commentary and setlists for each Mountains and Waters episode are included on the individual show pages. They're all streaming in the Mixcloud archive, and available to download for a limited time as 320kbps MP3s in the ID Music VIP Library.
Inter-Dimensional Music 20210625
North America's Gnarliest mix for studying the moment when water sees water
Inter-Dimensional Music 20210716
North America's Gnarliest mix of wondrous blossoms, hungry ghosts, and water as water
Inter-Dimensional Music 20210723
North America's Gnarliest mix for investigating the East Mountain moving over the water
Inter-Dimensional Music 20210730
North America's Gnarliest mix for understanding that the mountains are not within the limits of the human realm
Inter-Dimensional Music 20210806
North America's Gnarliest mix for recognizing that water is the virtue of water
You can also hear fresh episodes of Inter-Dimensional Music every week on the actual airwaves of Marfa Public Radio, LOOKOUT FM Los Angeles, and WQRT Indianapolis. I’m grateful to all three stations for continuing to broadcast this strange signal over these mountains, waters, high desert grasslands, and low-rolling plains that are so beloved to me.
And also thanks to you for reading and listening. Share with your friends, respond directly, comment publicly, unsubscribe regretfully, or just keep on doing what works for you.
Bowing deeply across the wi-fires,
DC