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Original Love Course: In the Midst of all Things

A Four Week Course – June 18, 25, July 2 & 9

Sundays, 10am – 12pm MT
Led by Henry Shukman

Course is Online Only. All sessions are recorded if you’re not able to attend live.

There’s a well known story of a Zen nun, Teijitsu, who was the abbess of a monastery in 18th century Japan. She is said to have had a sore hip much of her life, and used to walk around the temple using a cane.

One day she experienced a deep, clear awakening. The record says:

She clearly saw that all phenomena arose, abided, and fell away. She saw that even the knowing of this arose, abided, and fell away.

Then she knew there was nothing more than this, no ground, nothing to lean on, stronger than the cane she held.  Nothing to lean upon at all, and no one leaning.

And she opened the clenched fist in her mind and let go, and fell into the midst of everything.

Zen teaches us to open to the world, to find that we are not separate from the world. It’s of course a Buddhist tradition, it’s about training the mind, and discovering the nature of mind. But where it differs from most other Buddhist schools is in having a stronger emphasis on our lives in the world, as part of the world. It emphatically loves the world. It believes in the end that the world is our great teacher. That’s why so many koans are about the things of the world: mountains, rivers, trees, brooms, cats, dogs, wild ducks, autumn leaves and a human hand.

Yes, Zen does help us make discoveries through introspective meditation – about self, about awareness, about the nature of conscious experience. But they are really in service of the discovery that we are inseparable from the world we find ourselves in. We are part of this world. In the end, we are this world, and this world is us.

How do we get closer to our true intimacy with all manifest things?

By becoming mindful of the full range of sense-experience going on in any moment, we start to rest into a sense of being held by all experience, then into becoming absorbed in it, and finally dissolving into a selfless space in which all things are present.

In this course, we learn to:

  • get grounded in outward sense experience
  • become absorbed in the soundscape, in seeing, and in body sensation
  • rest in the awareness that recognizes all outward sense experience
  • diminish, dissolve and release the sense of a self in the middle of sense experience

As we become more intimately mindful of the full range of outward sense-experience, we sink more deeply into a whole experience of Now. At the same time, we start to discover the restfulness that comes with being held by all experience. This can morph into becoming absorbed by the whole field of awareness and experience, and even into dissolving into selfless space in which all things are present.

In this course we will let practice lead us into greater intimacy with the world, and will explore some Zen koans to help in this process.

Questions? Contact jeremy@originallove.org

REGISTER HERE

|Recurring Event (See all)

An event every week that begins at [first_occurrence_start_time] on Sunday, starting [first_occurrence_date] and repeating until July 9, 2023

Date
June 25, 2023
Time
10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Event Categories
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