Mountains Walk, Mountains Think: Reading Leopold Through Han's Dōgen
Presentation (Faculty180)Overview
cited authors
- Pryor, Ashley E
description
- <p>This paper explores the parallel between Dōgen's "walking mountains" and Leopold's "thinking like a mountain" to argue for the recovery of what Byung-Chul Han calls "direct environmental experience" beyond Western subject-object dualism. Drawing on Han's reading of Dōgen's <em>Mountains and Waters Sutra</em>, this paper demonstrates how both the 13th-century Zen master and the 20th-century ecologist articulate modes of being-with-the-world that transcend Western substance thinking.</p> <p>Critics who dismiss Leopold's "Thinking Like a Mountain" as anthropomorphic remain trapped within interpretive frameworks that cannot accommodate non-dualistic experience. When Dōgen writes of mountains that literally walk and Leopold of mountains that think, both are attempting what Han describes as "friendly seeing"—"a seeing that takes place prior to separation of 'subject' and 'object.'" This is not metaphorical language but recovery of direct experience within Han's "field of emptiness."</p> <p>Through analysis of Dōgen's <em>Mountains and Waters Discourse</em> and Leopold's "Thinking Like a Mountain," this paper reveals how both thinkers challenge Western substance thinking through temporal wisdom, practical engagement, and recognition of perspectival multiplicity. Both walking mountains and thinking mountains operate through deep-time awareness and ecological intelligence emerging from sustained contemplative engagement rather than anthropomorphic projection.</p> <p>The convergence reveals shared concern with overcoming alienation produced by Western metaphysical dualism. Both walking mountains and thinking mountains point toward transformed environmental perception that philosophy urgently needs to address ecological crisis rooted in treating landscapes as resource repositories rather than interdependent communities.</p>
authors
publication date
- 2025