Talk #5 from Term 1 of our Online Zen Group for 2020. Click here for other talks in this series.
Teacher: Roshi Susan Murphy
Click on the recording below to listen to this talk now.
Tag: Taking part in the gathering (Sandokai)
Talk #1 from Spring Sesshin 2018. You can listen to other talks from this sesshin here.
Speaker: Roshi Susan Murphy
Click here to download a printable transcript of this talk [PDF]
Roshi Susan:
“As everybody knows who has attended sesshin before, this is the night of not knowing – of not knowing as our most intimate practice-realization.
‘Intimate’ is a way of saying: awake, complete, present, not even a speck of difference, as intimate and close in to unabridged reality as that. And I love the fact that the word intimate also offers the tenderness of being, because that is what awake-ness is.
I was tempted to call this talk, “Awake in the dark”, since it is the dark of not knowing in which we awaken and of course at this moment it’s night as well. But I actually think I’ll call it, “Yes, we have no bananas”. I always loved the fact that there’s such a triumphant “Yes!” before the completely sanguine, “We have no bananas”. The idea that no bananas is so joyously proclaimed, recognized, as a welcome matter in some way.
What would a no-banana taste like?
‘Mu’ is of course this one syllable short of complete silence with which we practice letting go of the mind-road. The mind-road is not the kind of open, empty road we can easily love, accompanying you with no-birds, no-trees, no-insects, and best of all, no-you. The mind-road is more like the pressured highway, whizzing with traffic, burdened with noise, shouting at you with signs, and always making the false promise of ‘somewhere to go’.