PZI Teacher Archives

Sickness & Medicine – Deep Listening

Description

It’s all medicine, really. Everything has Buddha nature, beauty and value. Healing is the big point of view. So the point is not to panic when the big moments come. If you can move out of your own point of view it becomes clearer. Complete Sunday Zen session from March 5, 2023.

Summary

Yunmen said to the assembly, “Sickness and medicine correspond with each other.
The whole earth is medicine. What am I?”

—Blue Cliff Record Case 87


It’s all medicine, really. Everything has Buddha nature, beauty and value. Healing is the big point of view.

So the point is not to panic when the big moments come. If you can move out of your own point of view it becomes clearer. Planning and scheming for healing, or anything, isn’t it.

Illnesses of the soul can require a longer recovery, but throughout it you’ll notice you feel held by the Dao. Life is interested in us! The cosmos is intertwined by default. When we are genuinely practicing, we make an honorable offering to life in that we turn towards it, choose it.

Instead of reaching for something, we can allow the universe to enter the situation and change it through “according.”

The whole path of Buddhism is healing. Sometimes suffering or sadness is helpful and healing—if we dive into it, the next step is interesting. Our relationship to the Dao is healed when we die.


Complete Sunday Zen session with John Tarrant & Friends, recorded March 5, 2023.

Includes comments from Tess Beasley, Jesse Cardin, Allison Atwill, Jon Joseph, Michelle Riddle, and Angela Rockell, and music from Michael Wilding.

 

 

 

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