{"id":2417,"date":"2025-06-10T09:23:52","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T14:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rosewhitemusic.com\/piano\/?p=2417"},"modified":"2025-06-10T09:23:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T14:23:53","slug":"john-cages-zen-men-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosewhitemusic.com\/piano\/2025\/06\/10\/john-cages-zen-men-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cage\u2019s Zen: men & mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Before studying Zen, men are men and mountains are mountains. While studying Zen, things become confused. After studying Zen, men are men and mountains are mountains. After telling this, Dr. Suzuki was asked, \u201cWhat is the difference between before and after?\u201d He said, \u201cNo difference, only the feet are a little bit off the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This story is from Cage\u2019s famed lecture \u201cIndeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music\u201d (1958). It has an interesting history that reveals much about Cage\u2019s relationship to Zen Buddhism. What he presented as a classic Zen saying was actually his own unique variant, one that took it away from its Zen roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story has earlier appearances in Cage\u2019s writings. He told it in \u201cLecture on Something\u201d (1951); this was in fact the first mention of Zen in any of his writings. Here, however, the part about Dr. Suzuki and the feet being off the ground did not appear. Cage added this when he told the story the following year at the very opening of his \u201cJuilliard Lecture\u201d (1952).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I researched the origin of this saying, I couldn\u2019t find any other sources\u2014at least not in the form that Cage told it. The only citations of the \u201cmen and mountains\u201d saying other than Cage\u2019s are by people who got it from Cage. What I did find were multiple references to the same three-part statement (before, during, and after studying Zen), but applied to \u201cmountains and waters\u201d (occasionally translated as \u201cmountains and rivers\u201d). Suzuki himself told it this way in the introduction to his first set of Essays on Zen Buddhism<\/em> (1927):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Before a man studies Zen, to him mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after he gets an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, mountains to him are not mountains and waters are not waters; but after this when he really attains to the abode of rest, mountains are once more mountains and waters are waters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Suzuki attributed this saying to the Chinese master Qingyuan Weixin (Japanese: Seigen Ishin). Alan Watts told the same story in his The Way of Zen<\/em> (1951), this time telling it from the master\u2019s point of view:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Other authors reference this story, almost always couching it in the same way that Watts does: Qingyuan Weixin explaining his own personal experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cmountains and waters\u201d saying of Qingyuan Weixin is surely the ultimate source of Cage\u2019s \u201cmen and mountains\u201d story. But why did Cage tell the story in the garbled form of \u201cmen are men and mountains are mountains?\u201d The answer has to do with the actual meaning of the saying and Cage\u2019s garbled version of that meaning. Cage understood this story to be about something quite different from what Qingyuan Weixin, Suzuki, and Watts meant, and the \u201cmen and mountains\u201d formulation highlights Cage\u2019s own distinctive take on the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Mountains and waters” and Zen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the context of Zen Buddhism, the \u201cmountains and waters\u201d saying is about the change in perspective during a lifetime of practice: the three phases of before, during, and after studying Zen. In the introduction to his translation of the The Zen teaching of Huang Po on the transmission of Universal Mind<\/em> (1958), John Blofeld explains these stages using the moon and trees instead of mountains and waters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

To the great majority of people, the moon is the moon and the trees are trees. The next stage (not really higher than the first) is to perceive that the moon and trees are not at all what they seem to be, since \u201call is the One Mind.\u201d When this stage is achieved, we have the concept of a vast uniformity in which all distinctions are void; and, to some adepts, this concept may come as an actual perception, as \u201creal\u201d to them as were the moon and the trees before. It is said that, when Enlightenment really comes, the moon is again very much the moon and the trees exactly trees; but with a difference, for the Enlightened man is capable of perceiving both unity and multiplicity without the least contradiction between them!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The three phases thus represent the ordinary understanding of things before investigating further; the initial understanding arising from Zen study; and then the ultimate, deepest understanding that arises after a lifetime of practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Men and mountains” to “Men and sounds”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cage, however, read the story quite differently. When he told it in his \u201cJuilliard Lecture\u201d he followed it with a restatement in terms of his own view of music and sound:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Now, before studying music, men are men and sounds are sounds. While studying music things aren\u2019t clear. After studying music men are men and sounds are sounds.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In Cage\u2019s view, the study of music makes sounds part of \u201can abstract process … called composition.\u201d The linchpin of this whole fabrication is the composer\u2019s ego. Sounds are made subservient to the ideas or feelings they supposedly express, and the ideas or feelings serve \u201cto show how intelligent [or emotional] the composer was who had [them].\u201d For this abstract projection of ego to work, one must \u201cimagine that sounds are not sounds at all but are Beethoven and that men are not men but are sounds.\u201d Cage\u2019s answer to this delusion is to just stop studying music, \u201cto stop all the thinking that separates music from living.\u201d Then, once again, \u201csounds are sounds and men are men, but now our feet are a little off the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Cage presented in 1952 as a parallel to Qingyuan Weixin\u2019s Zen saying was a continuation of the underlying theme of his musical thinking of the late 1940s and early 1950s. For Cage the problem of musical composition was to disengage it from the strivings of ego that were encouraged by modern Western musical practice. Sounds are expressive in themselves, and the composer should remain silent\u2014say nothing\u2014so that this natural expressivity can emerge.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shift from \u201cmountains and waters\u201d to \u201cmen and mountains\u201d thus made Qingyuan Weixin\u2019s saying align with Cage\u2019s own concerns about music with regard to the opposition of ego (\u201cmen\u201d) and nature (\u201cmountains\u201d). Telling the story of the effect of studying Zen using \u201cmen and mountains\u201d allowed this connection to \u201cmen and sounds\u201d and ultimately to Cage\u2019s central point that \u201csounds are not Beethoven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the change wasn\u2019t just a change in imagery; it was a change in the fundamental point of the saying. In the Zen saying, the distinction between mountains and waters is blurred while studying Zen because they both are encompassed by \u201cthe One Mind\u201d (as Blofeld put it). In Cage’s version, he wanted to make it clear that men and sounds\/mountains are completely different things. With the opposition inherent in this view, Cage\u2019s presentation of this saying strayed far from its Zen origins. He inverted a story about the cultivation of a nondual view of the universe into a story about the opposition of men and sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Cage\u2019s musical version of the saying (\u201cmen and sounds\u201d), the middle state of confusion is not associated with a partially-understood truth reached through disciplined practice and inquiry (as it is in the original Zen saying). Instead, the confusion of men and sounds is a state of delusion about reality that is reinforced through the pursuit of a false path: studying music. In Cage\u2019s view, there are only sounds, and the ideas of music are defilements that obscure our clear comprehension of sounds, unadorned and expressive in themselves. In Cage\u2019s retelling, then, Qingyuan Weixin\u2019s \u201cmountains and waters\u201d becomes a story about the recovery of a lost innocence. Rather than describing the progressive stages of practice, it tells the story of seeing life clearly again by erasing the conceptual overlay of false views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, this story line of innocence lost and regained is latent in the Zen saying; Suzuki himself suggested it. In the paragraph before he cited Qinyuan Weixin, he wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Zen maintains . . . that all the fetters and manacles we seem to be carrying about ourselves are put on later through ignorance of the true condition of existence. All the treatments, sometimes literary and sometimes physical, which are most liberally and kindheartedly given by the masters to inquiring souls, are intended to get them back to the original state of freedom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But Cage\u2019s vision of this process elides the extended hard work\u2014the \u201ctreatments given by the masters\u201d\u2014that is essential to Zen. For Cage, the ultimate enlightened state of simply hearing the nature of sounds came from just stopping musical thinking. Unlike Qinyuan Weixin\u2019s Zen, Cage did not present this state as being the most refined state of a lifelong practice. Cage gave no sense of a path that leads one to \u201cstop all the thinking that separates music from living.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, when we investigate this particular example of Cage citing a Zen story to explain his own musical work, we find very little Zen in it. Cage misstated the actual saying of Qinyuan Weixin, and then he presented a personal interpretation of its meaning that had little to do with its Zen origins. Indeed, it could be seen as antithetical to Zen in some regards. Carolyn Brown\u2019s description of Cage\u2019s use (and misuse) of others\u2019 ideas applies here: \u201cin his own unique and perhaps intellectually outrageous fashion, he made their ideas his own, now blunderingly, now brilliantly synthesizing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bothersome question is: what did it mean for Cage to attribute this saying to Zen, to Suzuki? In both \u201cLecture on Something\u201d and \u201cIndeterminacy\u201d he presented the saying (in his altered version) with no further explanation at all. This followed the example of Suzuki himself; he was fond of letting cryptic Zen sayings stand on their own. When he encountered the \u201cmountains are mountains and waters are waters\u201d saying, I\u2019m sure Cage heard the resonance with his own dictum of \u201csounds are just sounds.\u201d By presenting this story in a way that suggested a distinction between men and sounds, Cage harnessed the spiritual authority of Zen and Suzuki to his musical work of letting sounds be themselves. The \u201cintellectually outrageous\u201d aspect of this was that his presentation had so very little to do with letting Zen be itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources & asides<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Here are the sources of Cage\u2019s telling of the \u201cmen and mountains\u201d story: \u201cIndeterminacy\u201d, Silence<\/em> (1961), p. 88; \u201cLecture on Something\u201d, Silence<\/em>, p. 143; \u201cJuilliard Lecture\u201d, A year from Monday<\/em> (1967), pp. 95\u201396. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suzuki tells the \u201cmountains and waters\u201d story in his Essays on Zen Buddhism, first series<\/em> (1927), p. 12. Alan Watts tells it in The way of Zen<\/em> (1951), p. 126. The explanation of the saying (using the moon and trees) by John Blofeld appears in his \u201cTranslator\u2019s Introduction\u201d to The Zen teaching of Huang Po on the transmission of Universal Mind<\/em> (1958), pp. 20\u201321. All of these are books that Cage would have been familiar with in the 1950s.  A handy compilation of references to Qingyuan Weixin\u2019s saying appears online<\/a> at the ZENline by Terebress<\/em> site<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cage\u2019s interpretation of the \u201cmen and mountains\u201d story appears in \u201cJuilliard Lecture,\u201d A year from Monday<\/em>, pp. 96\u201398. The statement from Suzuki about returning to the original state of freedom appears on p. 11 of his Essays on Zen Buddhism, first series<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carolyn Brown\u2019s description of Cage\u2019s intellectual borrowings is from her memoir Chance and circumstance<\/em> (2007), p. 38.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chronology of this story and what it says about Cage\u2019s attendance at Suzuki\u2019s classes is a bit of a puzzle. When Cage first told it in early 1951 in \u201cLecture on Something,\u201d he didn’t mention Suzuki at all. In the \u201cJuilliard Lecture\u201d of 1952, he identified the saying as being told by Suzuki \u201cin the course of a lecture last winter on Zen Buddhism.\u201d This could mean the winter of 1950\u201351 or 1951\u201352, depending on the exact date of the \u201cJuilliard Lecture.\u201d As I\u2019ve pointed out above, there are sources for the saying that Cage would have had access to prior to his 1951 \u201cLecture on Something.\u201d If he didn\u2019t hear it from Suzuki until the winter of 1951\u201352, he could have read it in Suzuki\u2019s Essays<\/em> or heard it from Watts directly before telling his variant version in \u201cLecture on Something,\u201d thus explaining why this version doesn\u2019t mention Suzuki\u2019s lecture as a source. Alternatively (or maybe in addition), he heard this in a lecture by Suzuki that winter of 1950\u201351 and just failed to mention this in \u201cLecture on Something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “men and mountains” story has an interesting history that reveals much about John Cage\u2019s relationship to Zen Buddhism. 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