# Like a Mountain

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/earth-dreams-zen-buddhism-and-the-soul-of-the-world-6415534/like-a-mountain
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/earth-dreams-zen-buddhism-and-the-soul-of-the-world-6415534/like-a-mountain.md
Podcast: [Earth Dreams: Zen Buddhism and the Soul of the World](https://stenobird.com/podcast/earth-dreams-zen-buddhism-and-the-soul-of-the-world-6415534)
Published: 2025-08-23T10:22:00+00:00
Episode link: https://amykisei.substack.com/p/like-a-mountain
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/171494441/8e8e5e00252c755674565e3036155fda.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/earth-dreams-zen-buddhism-and-the-soul-of-the-world-6415534/episodes/like-a-mountain
Duration seconds: 519

## Resource

Greetings Friends, I am returning from 10 days of monastic practice at my former home, Great Vow Zen Monastery. While I was there I had the opportunity to celebrate my teacher Chozen Bays Roshi’s 80th birthday, to practice and lead the annual outdoor sesshin that we call Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin and to facilitate a precepts ceremony. I love monastic practice. I love merging with the great activity of awakening. I love the depth of practice that opens up when we sustain the gaze on our true nature and allow the bodhisattva vow to flow through us. I love being in this process of liberation and love with others. Many of us are asking: * How to live in a world on fire? * What is an appropriate response? * What should I do with my life? The heart of practice awakening seems to turn these questions on their head, and ask instead what do you call the world? And, who are you? And what is your life? Many great thinkers have posited that we can’t solve problems with the same mind that created them. What happens when we dare to step out of the problem-solving mind all together? What happens when we look directly into the assumptions we make about ourselves and the world? What happens when we gaze into the nature of life/death? When we are willing to even begin to entertain these questions, and know ourselves beyond thought and label—another world opens up. Someone said recently “it’s like I’m inhabiting a different body.” The body of this world, is our body. The body of mountain, space, silence is also our body. The Zen Buddhist tradition is alive with teachings from practitioners, contemplatives, and mystics who were engaged in this kind of inquiry. Who sustained the gaze on the great matter, and invited us to realize this great body of awakening. During sesshi…

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