Description
In meditation things come and go, as in life. In Zen the experience of loss contains a treasure. There is gold inside the loss whether of a person, a country, or a beloved house. Grief dissolves everything. The valleys of life are important for developing empathy. Mazu gives us the path to walk through the demons: Help others cross. Make yourself a raft. An Indigenous saying: Inside the last tear, happiness is hiding.
Summary
In meditation things come and go, as in life. In Zen the experience of loss contains a treasure. There is gold inside the loss whether of a person, a country, or a beloved house. Grief dissolves everything. The valleys of life are important for developing empathy.
Buddha’s loss, his leaving, was extreme. Mazu gives us the path to walk through the demons:
Help others cross. Make yourself a raft.
An Indigenous saying: Inside the last tear, happiness is hiding.
Lost and Found: Yunmen’s Coin
Someone asked Yunmen,
“What does ‘sitting correctly and contemplating true reality’ mean?”
The Master said, “A coin lost in the river is found in the river.”
Losing can be freeing.
When I was far away and found out that my house was believed lost, the first thing I felt was freedom. Mainly what we want to lose is our idea of how things have to be, our idea of the next move and what is needed. This is why losing is so interesting. It is full of space.
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking. (Robert Hass)
When I was about three or four, a little boy across the road said that robbers had come into his house in the night and stolen his toys. I said, “I’ll give you some of mine,” and actually I gave him most of them. My parents who had no money wondered where my toys were and went across the road and got them back. That was good, but not having toys was very interesting; the gold coin was also there.
—John Tarrant
Sunday Zen with John Tarrant & Friends recorded November 12, 2023.
Read More▼