Eido Mary Frances Carney

The Geography of Freedom:
Ryokan at Gogoan, Thoreau at Walden Pond
The mountain possesses complete virtue with nothing lacking;therefore it is always safely rooted, yet constantly moving.
Eihei Dogen Zenji
Shobogenzo “Sansuikyo”

Freedom is an outcome, an ultimate realm for the explorer of true self. Nothing elsematters. The endurance of hardships, the sacrifice of one’s life, the tenacity to persis t are
natural qualities found in such a seeker. Such an explorer will gravitate to a geography thatwill srve as a route to freedom. For Ryokan (1758 – 1831) it was Gogoan; for Thoreau(1817-1862) it was Walden Pond.
Why equate these two poets and these two settings? Both poets represent men
striving to live the highest ideal of the individual. Each was deeply respectful of and inspiredby nature such that the memory of them today is a reminder in our societies of what wemust preserve and hold sacred. Both Gogoan and Walden Pond act as sybols of the purity
and fragility of nature and remind modern man of virtues lost in the fury of technologicalprogress. Each poet achieved an uncommon state of freedom wrought by the geography ofthe hut and by the landscape of his mind.
While the word “geography” calls up a physical imagine of the world, geography
described the nature features of any region seen or unseen—the region of the body, theregion of the mind, of spirit, or the region of the poem. For Ryokan and Thoreau there is nodifference between physical and spiritual worlds. Whatever map we might construct of themleads always to transcendence—the perfect marriage of body and mind. But, how did
Gogoan serve Ryokan, and how did Walden Pond serve Thoreau?
After leaving Entsuji, Ryokan’s training temple, in Tamashima in 1791, Ryokan
wandered for many years in territory that we are not quite sure of. Some say it was the areaaround Shikoku, the island in the Inland Sea just south of Tamashima. Others postulate that
he may have illegally journeyed to China, following in the footsteps of Dogen Zenji. He also
showed up in the Kyoto area to attend his father’s memorial service before deciding to makehis way back to his birthplace in Niigata Prefecture. For five or six years thereafter, he wasagain unsettled in the area around his hometown of Izumozaki. He wrote:
Though travels
take me toa different stopping place each nightthe dream I dream is always
that same one of home. i
He had no location that established him in a particular place. Yet, he had physicalneeds that could not be met in constant wandering, not to mention the tension of neverknowing where to sleep for the night—the plight of the homeless. When Gogoan wasoffered to him permanently at the goodwill of the temple priest of Kokujoji in 1804, Ryokan

Eido Mary Frances Carney

was overjoyed. The little hut called Gogoan served Ryokan as a center from which he could
meet the world on a daily basis, and it meant a home to which he could return each night.
Gogoan was a one room, one hundred year old hut on Mt. Kugami with difficult accessfrom the village at the base of the mountain.
Still, the matter of living at Gogoan was not by Ryokan’s human planning. He
already lived as a recluse, living apart from the village people in abandoned shacks or
camping beside the river, so it was natural to accept life I a remote setting. But, unlike
Thoreau, Ryokan did not seek a particular place. We don’t find in Ryokan the sense ofdetermined direction in geography that we find in Thoreau. Ryokan did not seek to live at
Gogoan I order to teach or because he was displeased with society or the encroachment oftechnolody poisoning the forest with its noise and smoke. His very nature drew him toward
a set of circumstances. “Our course,” he tells us, “has been determined by Karma, a chain of
causes.”Few of us, though, are wise enough to take it into account. After years ofaimless wandering. I have at last come home. Though I still live in themountains under drifting clouds. I seek shelter in a cottage, covered with aroof of pampas. Standing apart halfway up on a shadowy slope of Mt.
Kugami. How appallingly transitory are the three divisions of time! How
strangely undefinable are the six steps of our journey! ii
Ryokan, in questioning why he is in a particular place, does not give a concreteanswer. He would not place himself so fixedly in one location. While the forest seems
natural to him, he does not require that others live in the same way. In a dream poem, hespeaks about meeting a wise old man on the road who asks why he lives so far away on themountain, so high up near the clouds? Then, the voice of the poet ask the old man indeed,
why he has spent his life in the middle of the teeming city? Ryokan ends the poems bysaying, “Both tried to answer, and searched in vain for apt words . . .” iii
The winters in Niigata were harsh with deep snow covering the mountain for many
moths each year. Ryokan had determined that as a monk he would live in strict poverty, that
he would beg for food, and he would offer drawings or peoms in return for goods that hereceived. Thus, the hut served his spiritual life of poverty. He wrote:
Having at last come home, in the shade of a cragged hill,
At a weedy cottage I found the restful life of a recluse.
I have since lived alone, turning to songbirds for music.
And for my friends I have white clouds rising in the sky.
Beneath a massive rock, a spring swells in a fair stream,
Whose clear water washes the dust from my black garments.
Near the ridges, tall pines and oaks rise towards heaven;
Their branches and leaves give me warmth in cold weather.
With nothing to worry me, not a care to disturb my peace,
I live from day to day till the day dawns no more for me. iv

Eido Mary Frances Carney

Ryokan, in spite of any discomfort caused by the geography, has all that he needs:
plants, rocks, water, his robe, pines, warmth, peace. In his “Statement on Begging for Food,”
he wrote:
In general, to remove oneself from the doting involved with kin and family,
to sit upright in a grass hut, to circle about beneath the trees, to be a friend tothe voice of the brook and the hue of the hills—these are the practices
adopted by the ancient sages and the model for ages to come. v
Both at Gogoan and at Walden Pond, there is freedom in the landscape and freedom
from economic demands. In a kanshi, a Chinese style poem by Ryokan, we feel the deep
luxury of freedom that allows the artist full sway. The bounty of nature surrounds him andhe drinks in the riches that the solitude of Gogoan offers:
Where else can I lay aside my cane and stand at full ease?
In the ancient pond swarm fishes big enough to be dragons.
Quiet holds the enclosing woods, and the day moves slowly.
Within the house itself, not a hoard of worldly treasures,
But a jumbe of books in verse and prose spread on a desk.
Flushed with inspiration, I loosen myself and my garments.
Gleaning some words from old masters, I make my own poems.
When the twilight comes, I stroll out to the east veranda.
A spring bird, an earlier visitor, greets me on its wings. vi
By the time Ryokan came to Gogoan, he had already undergone over a decade of
demanding Zen training to Entsuji. He had in his belonging, an inka, a legitimate seal from
Kokusen Roshi, his Zen master, that he was now capable of heading up his own temple.
This implied that an Awakening had been demonstrated, and attested to his Transmission asa Zen master in his own right. Thus, we must realize that the poetry that follows is thepoetry of a mind Awakened. The humble and self-effacing Ryokan is very subtle in his useof imagery. Nothing in him was showy. He would never display enlightenment. So, we must
look closely and quietly to discern the depth of his meaning. Of course, Ryokan is talking
about the physical geography here but he is really using the geography to discuss the Self, theAwakened nature. His road is solitary and difficult, and he realizes the mysteries that are yet
to be penetrated in the cloud and mist.
A solitary trail stretches away through a million trees.
A thousand pinnacles above me are hid in cloud and mist.
Hardly a rainy day, but all the rocks are dark and grim.
Who can indeed content himself with this manner of life,
Unless he has seen himself altogether lost in the world? vii
He knows, too, that the enlightened mind exists with the mind of delusion. Life is difficult,and yet there is contentment. Perhaps nly those who have already realized Emptiness, canpossibly be content in a life of solitary practice where there is little but the seasons forchange.

Eido Mary Frances Carney

At this point, the geography of Gogoan becomes the geography of Self, inseparable
and undivided. They begin to merge. Here, in a powm about his garden, Ryokan shows themastery of one merged in the landscape. He is one with all that encircles:
Within my garden
I grew autumn bushpclovers,
Along with pampas,
Pansies, golden dandelions
A tiny silk-tree,
A plantain, morning glories,
Hemp agrimonies
An aster, moist dayflowers,
And forget-me-nots.
And early and late each day,Never neglecting
I fed them with clear water,
Defending them from the sun
Doing what I could for them.
My good plants were exalted
Above the others,
And I believed so too myself,
Yet destiny desired
That one evening in mid-May,
Or more precisely
At dusk on the twenty-fifth,
Came a huge tempest,
Assaulting my garden plants
With mighty anger,
Pulling them down with fury;
And without pity
Poured upon them heavy rain,
And all my flowers
Were ruined, torn to pieces.
For days thereafter
My heart sank in depression,
Yet no help I found,
For it was useless to blame
The wind above our reproach
My garden flowers
I planted and nursed myself
With genuine love,
I must learn to resign themTo the pleasure of the wind. viii
Ryokan’s practice is one of non-attachment and so he proceeds knowing that in thislife of Self, which is Selfless, he can only continue. The question is not whether one falters,
experiences pain, cries, or does something foolish. The question is that one persists, accepts,
lives fully, that one realizes the geography of the ountain and the geography of the Self areEido Mary Frances Carneylimitless, unfixed, moving manifestations of Emptiness. He is safely rooted in Emptiness yet
he is ever impermanent manifesting true freedom.
As John Stevens points out in his Introduction to One Robe, One Bowl—The Zen Poetry
of Ryokan, the elements of mushin and mujo appear throughout Ryokan’s poetry. ixMushin is anatural state of detachment, a state of complete freedom from dualistic thinking. Mujo is anawareness of the impermanence of all things. Stevens writes: “Ryokan’s life at Gogoan
represents the highest stage of Zen spirituality. . . He was detached from his detachment,
free from any sort of physical or spiritual materialism, in love with nature, he was sensitive toall the myriad forms of human feeling.” Stevens demonstrates this with Ryokan’s famousmushin poem:
With no-mind, blossoms invite the butterfly:
With no-mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.
When the flower blooms, the butterfly comes.
When the butterfly comes, the flower blooms.
I do not “know” others,
Others do not “know” me.
Not-knowing each other we naturally follow the Way. x
Thus, Gogoan served the highest and deepest elements of Zen practice for Ryokan,
for life at Gogoan brought a culmination of bliss, an abandonment of self-consciousness inan abandoned hut. Lacking nothing, Ryokan found, for himself, the way of no-Self.
Now, consider Henry David Thoreau’s life at Walden Pond. How did Walden Pond
serve Thoreau? He had studied at Harvard, mainly literature, but could not settle into a
career, and tried his hand at teaching and pencil-making. Later he declared himself a poet,the occupation of his highest ideal. He had thought for many years of moving to thecountryside and of purchasing a farm. After realizing that such responsibility would only
encumber him he accepted the use of land a mile and a half from Concord on the shore of
Walden Pond which was owned by his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. There he built asturdy, one room cabin and moved his few belongings on July 4 1845. He wrote:
It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did,considering, for instance what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret,
have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure
until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. xi
This statement in the opening chapter tells us how the seen world, the constructed world,reflects Thoreau’s inner world. What we build must reflect the spirit, for matters of spiritualnature are of greater importance.
Further along in the essay, “Economy,” he shows that there is no need fordecoration in the cabin and that there is no outside or inside to cause separation. The
structure at Walden Pond is not a deterrent to unity, it allows for the light to shine in andout.

Eido Mary Frances Carney

I would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for I haveno gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that theyshould look in. xii
Thoreau writes in the chapter “Sounds” about his freedom to be at one with nature,something he would be denied were he to follow the typical daily employment of thevillager:
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better
than this. There were times when I culd not afford to sacrifice the bloom of
the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a
broad margin to my life. Sometimes in a summer morning, having taken myaccustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in arevery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumacs, in undisturbed solitude
and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through thehouse, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of sometravelers’ wagon on the distant highway. I was reminded of the lapse of time.
xiii

Walden Pond serves as the location, the place, the center, from which thepoet/priest/philosopher may abide in order to give birth to inspiration—to discovery, to theunfolding Self, in nature and in poetry.
About Thoreau, Professor Shoei Ando says in his book, Zen and American
Transcendentalism: “He desired to realize his Self, directing his eye right inward, and to find a
thousand regions in his mind yet undiscovered. In short, he was eager to exhaust himself
until he came down to the root of life called reality. It was just for the achievement of thispurpose that he practiced a life of simplicity, solitude, and self-introspection I a hut near
Walden Pond.” xiv Thoreau explains his reasons and describes the internal map that will lead
him to the answers:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, andnot, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live
what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation,
unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all themarrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was
not life to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, andreduce it to its lowerst terms and if it proved to be mean, why then to get thewhole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; orif it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true
account of it in my next excursion. xv
Thoreau is quite clear in his direction. He has, indeed, begun his life at Walden Pondin order to purify himself, to find true freedom, to lift himself out of a life without vision.
He says in “Sounds:”

Eido Mary Frances Carney

What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how wellselected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, comparedwith the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be areader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you,and walk on into futurity. xvi
Seeing into one’s original Self, the invisible nature, if you will, is a great freedom, but
Thoreau challenges us to find in ourselves the element for the search, to leave behind thebrute nature within ourselves and to live in the higher truths of Nature.
Life at Walden Pond gave Thoreau a structure that became the very fabric of hisbook, Walden. The passage of season, as with Ryokan, is food for the poety, but in Walden,
the seasons are transcendent symbols through which the writer will “brag lustily . . . if only
to wake up the neighbors.” Aspects of nature are metaphors for teaching, for revealing the
Self. The cycle of the year is felt as a lifetime condensed into a year.
The early chapters of Walden deal with Thoreau and society, an explanation of why
he did what he did, his dissatisfaction with life in the city and what he hoped to achieve. As
his experiences evolve, he delves more deeply into his spiritual nature and culminates in thecycle of seasons. Here, the pond undergoes a transition to winter and the poet seeks the truebottom of the pond. Of course, the pond is but a metaphor for the Self, but at last, the poetis able to see that. “The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.”
xvii
There is no separation of the Self from nature and in the mingling waters we all are one.
Winter give way to spring and he concludes by saying, “The seasons went rolling on into
summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.” xviii
While Thoreau explains why he must eventually return to civilization, Walden Pond
has served to teach him rich life lessons. He tells us in the Conclusion of Walden, “I learned
this, at least, by my experiment; that is one advances confidently in the direction of his
dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success
unexpected in common hours.”
While Ryokan and Thoreau may diverge in many ways, today, Gogoan and Walden
Pond serve similar functions in our societies. To see the geography of Gogoan or thegeography of the cabin at Walden Pond, we are immediately reminded of the care of nature,of the love for fellow humans, of the spirituality of poverty, of the way of joyfulness, of thesearch for Self, consciousness of the environment, the strength of the individual, of thepioneer spirit, of solitude, sacrifice, enlightenment. By following a path of freedom, thesemasters explored a new geography. Thoreau said, “If a man does not keep pace with hiscompanions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music
which he hears, however measured or far away.” xixi

Daigu Ryokan. Ryokan Zen Monk-Poet of Japan. Trans. Burton Watson. (New York: Columbia
Univ. Press, 1977. 17. (84).

Eido Mary Frances Carney(The number in parenthesis refers to the Chinese style poems in the text of Togo Toyoharu,
Ryokan Shishu. Osaka: Sogensha, 1962, and Ryokan Kashu. Osaka: Sogensha, 1963, to theJapanese poems which Watson has used as the texts for his translations.
ii
Ibid., 85.
iii
Ibid., 64.
iv
Daigu Ryokan. The Zen Poems of Ryokan. Trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Univ. Press, 1981. 60.
v
Ryokan Zen Monk-Poet, Watson. 120.
vi
Zen Poems. Yuasa, 58.
vii
Ibid., 51.
viii
Ibid., 164-165.
ix
Ryokan. One Robe, One Bowl. Trans. John Stevens. New York: Weatherhill, 1977. 16.
x
Ibid.,16.
xi
Thoreau, Henry David. The Portable Thoreau. Carl Bode, Ed. New York: Viking Penguin,
1947. 300.
xii
Ibid., 321.
xiii
Ibid. 363.
xiv
Ando, Shoei. Zen and American Transcendentalism: An Investigation of One’s Self. Tokyo: The
Hokuseido Press, 1970. 146.
xv
Thoreau. Portable. 343-344.
xvi
Ibid., 363.
xvii
Ibid., 539.
xviii
Ibid., 558.
xix
Ibid., 564-565.
This paper was originally published in Studies in Foreign Languages and Literature. Vol. 18, No.
1. Notre Dame Seishin University, 1994. Portions of the paper were delivered at the
Chugoku Regional Meeting of the Japan English Literature Society at Shimane University in
Matsue, October 23, 1993.