Bright & Dark

~ by Roshi Susan Murphy and Sensei Kynan Sutherland

Here are some guidelines to help deepen our practice as part of the Sand Talk Study Group.

• This Sand Talk Study Group is a place for yarning. Yarning is the natural-feeling way to discover and affirm the intimacy of “us-two”. By speaking openly, honestly and from the heart, we reveal each other and ourselves to each other and open the Way. There is no “me” without “you” in any good yarn, just the life of “us-two”. This flowing conversation, intrinsic to Zen and Sand Talk alike, restores the seamless web of connection to country. This is true not simply for people, but for “the bushes and grasses and the many beings of the world.”

• It’s important not to hold back in yarning. As Tyson Yunkaporta says, “Egos always get in the way of a good yarn.” So without holding back or pushing yourself forward, listen and respond energetically to what is most alive in you, in full confidence that what you share will be heard and considered with respect and gratitude.

• A good yarn is good fun. As Tyson Yunkaporta says, “If people are laughing, they are learning.” Laughter cuts right through the isolated self to discover “us-two”. So while (and because) this is a serious exploration, let’s not forget to play and be creative. This is very much the spirit of Zen, which along with Tyson affirms that, “True learning is a joy because it is an act of creation.’  And we’ll need a sense of humour if we’re to sustain and inspire meaningful change over the long term

• Cheeky stories, jokes and Zen koans have an upside-down wisdom that releases the energy of activism and transformation. We’re not here to “understand” Tyson Yunkaporta’s book, but to feel the living sparks that sting us back into life. Be alert to these sparks, no matter how small – they are far more powerful and necessary than any linear consumption of the book, and can ignite great personal and social change.

• No one is “boss” of a yarn. Everyone contributes just as they are, with all that they are. Questions of privilege, ignorance, short-sightedness etc will naturally arise in the context of a book that asks us to decolonise our minds, and can be examined, not in a spirit of competition, but in an environment of trust and growth. After all, we’re here to discover the roominess of how much we don’t know, beyond the constraints of how much we think we  know – and to know each other. By sharing our joys, difficulties and revelations we form subtle and lasting bonds. Everybody’s unique contribution both directly and indirectly grows the ecosystem we call “sangha relations.”

• To deepen the yarning, we consciously move into smaller groups. These ‘break-out rooms’ are small campfires along a riverbank, where we gather to speak openly and intimately in the context of our Zen practice to discover how it meets and lights up and deepens with indigenous wisdom, and how indigenous wisdom opens the way of ‘When you know the place where you are, practice begins’. We not only share our thoughts around these campfires but our lives. The groupings will be different each time, so that our conversation is more and more thoroughly interwoven over time. Knowledge is then a shared, distributed and interconnected matter held by the sangha without any sense of “possession”.

• When we come back to the main group at the end of our session (last 10 minutes), feel for any sparking prompts to our ongoing conversation – a question or image or learning that feels so alive and pressing that it must  be shared with the group. These will be rich and fertile areas for us to explore down the track. They may be urgent, troubling, provocative, or strangely quiet, almost silent intimations of something important. Bring them up – they are the seeds of great intellectual and societal change. 

• To walk this way demands that we all take seriously the “custodial mind” of “care for country”. Custodial mind is the responsibility we feel to turn creatively with our circumstances instead of fighting against them. As Tyson Yunkaporta says, “Creation is in a constant state of motion, and we must move with it as the custodial species or we will damage the system and doom ourselves.” By attending to our shared place of practice (which includes the online space as much as the particular country in which we are learning how to belong), and offering ourselves completely, we begin to walk the “songline of the Way.”