digitalZENDO

Lately I've felt like I'm able to hear more deeply. Given this moment, I've been taking advantage of it and going back through Teisho's with Genjo Osho. It's been saind, "the more and more you listen, the more and more you hear."

Sunday, last night and then this morning, I (re)listened to a teisho entitled Golden Carp. At one point Genjo Osho said, "In Rohatsu, we are really in it together. Really in the pressure cooker, and we do bring fatigue and pain, and all of our sorrows to the forefront and cook 'em! We cook 'em right there on the cushion. Melt them down, blend them in, mix them up, drain them out and bake, even though it's in the cold of winter. We bake and bake and bake on the cushion."

Those things that I have brought to my own zafu, that have caused me to feel broken, in authentic, to feel out of sync with myself have been like a fishing net which I have been caught in. And like the Golden Carp in the water, I've struggled, struggled and struggled to exhaustion, at various points in my life. Some have called this point "the dark night of the soul." Those are tough moments that don't seem productive at the time but somehow produce it later.

But the saving grace for me has been a force which has kept me from drowning. Some people are prone to say, "I found this," or "I found that." For me, the truth is that Zen found me and that has kept me from sinking below the surface. Once, when I was living at Dai Bosatsu Zendo, I distinctly recalled Eido Roshi saying "As much as you make think that you choose your life, that is only one half of the equation, because life chooses you as well. That is the other half." Though I don't know why I am telling you this part right now, it seems somehow important to say. It's an element that has helped to get me out of the net I had created for my self.

Genjo Osho goes on to say, "We compress or another way to think about it is compost. We become these compost heaps that burn through, heat up and burn through and transform what we call our hindrances or our delusions or our pains or our sorrows in to clarity. In to really good soil. And when we do that, we become as Sansho says in this verse, like the golden carp, jumped out of the water in Chinese mythology and if it jumps out of the water, high enough it becomes a dragon. If it can get out of the net. In this case the net is the net of our own delusions, our own sense of hindrances, of our own doubts, of our own neurosis. If we can get out of the net of our own making, then we are like a fish jumping over the falls and getting over the top. And though exhausted, spent, we are at home and we have the feeling of being a dragon. And our clarity... our insight really does have a chance to bloom."

I really cannot express more, because it has been having such an impact on my mind. If you'd like to listen for yourself, to get the full flavor, you can hear it for free on swithpod. Maybe you are hearing better too.

Gassho,

Jaye Morris, Curator
digitalZENDO