2017 January Sesshin

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.

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’.

Recorded Friday evening at PZI’s Winter Sesshin January 2017 on  the eve of the inauguration. John Tarrant talks about waking up in a difficult time – when the ship is blown off course into demon country!

Amaryllis plays Bach on violin during January Sesshin. 2017.