2016 Summer Retreat

In practice you are traveling, you are on a path. It is different from a plan because you are on uncertain turf. Practice also has more love in it because you are moving in the dark in a positive way. The koan is like the dog that follows you around with a bowl – it foils your serious plans.

The experience of being blocked, a major or minor imprisonment, and of help arriving from unexpected sources.

A discovery that all the Linji koans we are working with during the retreat are variants on Linji’s “There’s nothing I dislike.” They all appear from this core. The solitary brightness with no fixed shape or form is yours. If you “only don’t object” or exclude reality, the brightness is there. As recorded in Summer Sesshin 2016.

The construction of a “me: and the positive experience of losing it. The strategies of “me” allow the universe to come in and establish our true place in it. There is nothing to dislike. When the world comes to meet us we realize there is only this.

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

“We’d give anything for the life we have,” says poet Tony Hoagland. Take the role of host wherever you are; no special undertakings are necessary. From Summer Sesshin. As recorded June 13 2016.