Who Am I?

Audio PZI Zen Online: Whatever mind you have right now in the middle of covid and civil unrest is it! Is Buddha. A great gift. We soak into koan practice and thoughts are part of the mix. They come and go and small mind perceives the vast mind. Who are we and what is this? As recorded July 13 2020.

Audio: John shares his interest in investigating reality through inquiry koans, koan types, the Watou of zen stories, and more. As recorded at Winter Sesshin January 14 2020.

John inquires – Who are we anyway? Linji’s words about how the perspective of not knowing eliminates dislike. John asks – When did you become a you? How did you know?

The question Who Am I?, opens my ability to enter the space that is always there. Getting to base as the ‘lead-off batter’ in koan practice.

Inquiring into being a Me, a Who, a Somebody, into What am I?, I lose ‘myself’ and then ‘Everything is true’! Why doesn’t that awareness stay? More interesting to have fun than to be ‘somebody’, but we cling to that. Asking ‘Who am I?’ has a subversive quality: it undoes the world you’re in, your identity. Then the radiance of the universe comes towards you, you’re drenched with the universe, because you’re not in the way.

The dark things shine as brightly as the bright light – and we don’t need health to shine.

Steven talks about who we are together in response to the koan: Who Am I? Inquiry and discernment. Awareness as meditation.

Monday evening at Sesshin 2017 January – John talks about this basic question: Who Am I? How this inquiry sides with the dao and a sense of wonder. It opens and aligns with our natural doubt about all of our assumptions.

The question Who am I! is at the heart of Chan’s origin and our practice. Allison talks about the two states of mind this question evokes: the openness of being vs the making of the ‘me’.