Summary: Episode Description: Kaz Sensei marvels how every instant of life is a compound of both failure (defeat, sadness ... the great "Zen failure") and miracle: a single breath relies on millions of well-oiled parts. We can't miss or ignore either aspect. He discusses the nonduality in his favorite poem, Dogen's "Snow," which so arrested him as a young man. He treats us to several more selections that epitomize Dogen's light-footed nonduality, including his startling evocations of the nonduality of impermanence and permanence: although flowers fall, "things abide in their conditions and there is the aspect of the world as permanent." Kaz comments that the deepest part of everyone's consciousness is all common, and there's no change. There is eternal life ... eternal death; "the myriad years of this moment." Roshi Joan turns over myriad facets of the state of being "destitute" (as in case 10 from the Mumonkan) -- on one hand, as the mind of poverty and complaint; and on the other hand as the bareness of being, naked awakeness; the quality of mind that is who we most fundamentally are underneath the attractors and busyness. In sesshin we can move through one destitution to the other. We must "look for the wine of deep fulfillment in the cellar -- don't go to the top floor." Bodhidharma's nine years of wall-gazing embody faith in this second kind of destitution; our screen-gazing often expresses (and even restructures our brains in the shape of) the first kind. Roshi also offers a lovely, deliberately embarrassing, homage to her buddy Kaz. For Teacher BIOs, please visit Part 1. To access the entire series, please click on the link below: Rohatsu Sesshin Series: All 6 Parts
