“… The work of concentration, deepening and clarifying makes us more available to the moment …“
Description: This teisho is the second talk from the Fall 2017 sesshin. Henry continues to outline an overall map of what Zen offers as a means of extinguishing the three fires—desire, aversion and delusion. This unfolds into further discussion of the jhana states, followed by the Four Noble Truths, the three marks and the five skandhas. The work of concentration, deepening and clarifying, makes us more available to the moment when we can discover that everything we think we are has been an illusion and things are not what they seem. It is a qualitative shift. Zen is not intended to be a teaching. Embodied by us, its power is in the experience, not in knowing, not in understanding.
In this nakedness the spirit finds its rest,
for when it desires nothing,
nothing raises it up,
and nothing weighs it down,
because it is in the center of its humility.
John of the Cross
Post & Featured image: Hummingbird by skeeze, CCO Public Domain.