Who Am I?

Part 1 of the January Silence series. What falls away at year’s end? Beginnings and endings are linked to uncertainty. If we can allow it, we learn to rest in that and find beauty in that mystery. In this season there is often a deep internal retreat, followed by the stirring of the new. What is it that is unfolding? Who am I? Can I hold the paradox of emptiness and form as I experience what is unfolding in my life? Where am I in my life? The not-knowing is always available. Dreams, poems and comments. Jordan McConnell plays music for meditation. January 8 2023.

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.

John Tarrant shares his interest in investigating reality through inquiry koans, koan types, the huatou of koans, stories, and more. As recorded in Winter Sesshin, January 14, 2020.

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?

PZI Sesshin closing Sutra ceremony: Purification, Refuge, Kanzeon, Joy in the Roads reading & the Four Boundless Vows. Amaryllis Fletcher, PZI Cantor, plays violin for closing meditation. Sammy Shin, on guitar, Jan Black on Drum.

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—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’.