Ryotan Sensei starts this Zazenkai talk with a fond fairwell to long-time practitioner Al Jones who died recently, and a fond welcome to three new practitioners who are to become formal students. Ryotan was asked by a publisher to verify some pithy “Zen” slogans from the internet. Although the slogans were not untrue, they do not capture in-the-least our truly intimate moment to moment practice. Ryotan then looks into the koan “Joshu’s New Born Baby” which asks “Does a new born baby also have the sixth consciousness?” Ryotan sees the “moment to moment non stop flow” in this story to be a miraculous ordinariness that is at the center of our experience of being human. Recorded May 12th, 2018.
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