Description
When we meet, as in sesshin, we create and participate in a field of knowledge. There is a necessity of being lost on the path. Yunmen wants your descent—the better to allow the whole of life in. He asks, What is your light? He trusts the field to help people find their own way. Complete talk from Winter Sesshin 2023.
Summary
Zen “sells water by the river”—we already have what we need. Being faithful to what is true is Zen.
When we meet, as in sesshin, we create and participate in a field of knowledge. There is a necessity of being lost on the path. Yunmen wants your descent—the better to allow the whole of life in.
Yunmen asks, What is your light?
He trusts the field to help people find their own way. (Hakuin said that Yunmen’s followers were disturbing.)
Yunmen’s conversations with his attendant of twenty years became the basis of his teachings. This attendant secretly wore a paper robe on which he recorded Yunmen’s responses.
The dark is where your light lives—you try to see it, you can’t: it’s dark, dark. If you avoid darkness or discomfort, your life is “like eating a painting of cake.”
You must let things come to you without the aggression of effort. When you are really in your life, there is no need to go anywhere to find it. The heart opens, along with awakening.
Dharma talk given in Winter Sesshin on February 4, 2023.
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