Talks from our 4th fullmoon gathering of the Dawn Dojo. Click here for other talks in this series.
Teachers: Roshi Susan Murphy (Part 1) & Kynan Sutherland (Part 2)
6am | 4th August 2020
In this talk our teachers both mention Hakuin’s ‘Song of Zazen’. You can read the full text of the Song of Zazen here.
Click on the recordings below to listen to the talks from this gathering. We will upload a transcription when it becomes available. ()
Talks from our 3rd fullmoon gathering of the Dawn Dojo.
Teachers: Roshi Susan Murphy (Part 1 & 2) & Kynan Sutherland (Part 2)
6am | 5th July 2020
Click here for other talks in this series.
In this talk our teachers take up Dogen’s text: The Genjokoan. You can download a copy of the full text here to read.
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.
Dogen Zenji – Genjokoan
Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky.
The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.
Click on the recordings below to listen to the talks from this gathering. We will upload a transcription when it becomes available. ()
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’.