Talk #1 from Term 1 of our Online Zen Group for 2020.
Teacher: Roshi Susan Murphy
Click on the recording below to listen to this talk now. We will upload a transcription when it becomes available. ()
Category: Eco-Dharma
If you have a Zen practice you’ll already have a pretty strong sense of the value and productivity of difficulty. And especially of sticking with what is difficult. Of not turning away, not denying but actively including even the most messy and difficult matters, feelings, circumstances that arise in awareness.
I want to take up this aspect of things today, following on from where we were last time, talking about deep fears and the forms they can take, including the strong escape attempts that a lot of feelings can inspire. Such feeling can be as simple and obvious as fear, but fear can also be compounded by shame, anxiety, even envy. Envy in the sense of ‘Why does this have to be happening to me (not that other luckier person)!” And deeper in from that, possibly the fear that wonders, “And why should it not?”
Let’s look into this matter through a case from the Record of Dongshan, the 8th century figure from whose name and whose practice the Soto School of Zen derives…