Date: 11/15/2025 11/16/2025
Location: Star Lake Meditation Center
Teacher: Shilin Long
Sitting Meditation
Seeing Mountains as Mountains, Not Mountains, and Mountains Again
“Seeing mountains as mountains, not mountains, and mountains again” is one of the most iconic Zen metaphors. It describes the transformation of perception as one progresses from ordinary understanding, through conceptual breakdown, to awakened clarity. This teaching is not about mountains—it is about the evolution of the mind.
1. Stage One: Mountains Are Mountains — The Ordinary View
1. Taking appearances as reality
Seeing only the surface of things.
2. Understanding the world through logic and concepts
Belief in fixed, independent entities.
3. Relying on conceptual knowledge
Mountains are mountains; the self is the self.
2. Stage Two: Mountains Are Not Mountains — Concepts Collapse
1. Insight into impermanence through meditation
Everything is changing; nothing is fixed.
2. The concept of “mountain” dissolves
Words no longer define reality.
3. A transitional stage of doubt and instability
Old views fall apart; new insights have not yet matured.
3. Stage Three: Mountains Are Mountains Again — Reality Revisited
1. Seeing phenomena clearly without clinging
Appearance is appearance, but not mistaken for essence.
2. Accepting form and emptiness as one
The mountain is empty of self-nature yet still appears.
3. Returning to natural, effortless presence
A mind free of grasping and rejection.
4. The Three Stages Represent Inner Maturity, Not Knowledge
1. First stage: conceptual reality
Unexamined assumptions.
2. Second stage: insight into emptiness
Seeing that concepts cannot represent truth.
3. Third stage: clarity and ease
Appearing and emptying are one process.
5. Why These Stages Are Inevitable in Zen Practice
1. Breaking illusion
Seeing that what we took as real was constructed.
2. Realizing emptiness
Understanding that all phenomena lack fixed identity.
3. Seeing true nature
Recognizing awareness that holds all changes.
6. Transitioning From “Not Mountains” to “Mountains Again”
1. Do not cling to emptiness
Emptiness is liberation, not denial.
2. Do not reject appearances
Form expresses the Way.
3. Let awareness stabilize
With clarity, reality becomes simple and direct.
7. Meaning in Zen Teaching
1. Not escaping the world but seeing it rightly
Reality remains; suffering drops away.
2. Truth is experiential, not conceptual
Words cannot describe awakening.
3. Enlightenment returns to everyday life
Ordinary acts become expressions of clarity.
Conclusion
The teaching “mountains are mountains, not mountains, and mountains again” describes the journey from illusion to awakening.First is naive perception, second is conceptual deconstruction, and third is clarity without attachment.When the mind sees without grasping or rejecting, everything appears as it truly is—the mountain remains a mountain, yet the mind is utterly transformed.
