[Challenging Times] -(18)- Finding Peace - Diane Shoshin Fitzgerald

[Jundo]

We are at page 196 in the book ...

A fitting topic for this week, sadly and once again: Peace in a world of war, as well as a variety of other crises such as Global Warming, political divides, the Opiod crisis in America.

I like the "bait and switch" she confesses!

This is a essay to help you find peace ... but not in the ways one may first expect.

I am pleased to report that Rev. Fitzgerald may come as a Guest Teacher to Treeleaf sometime in the early New Year.


For those who do not yet have a copy, I have made a PDF version available here for those waiting for their ordered book, or those unable to afford or obtain the book (second half of the book):https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yQV...usp=share_link

Feel free to jump into the readings and discussion even if you have not read other chapters.

Gassho, Jundo

stlah

[Onkai]

This was a beautiful essay. Nothing we expect is quite like we expect it to be, including inner peace. I appreciate how Sensei Shosin connects inner peace with not knowing, with "beginner's mind," and how being fully awake is the antidote to divisions.

Gassho, Onkai
Sat lah

[Hōzan]

Yes, yet another great essay.
I found it to be a short and sweet summary of the essence of zen; by seeing emptiness you develop equanimity.
It demands that a person reframes his/her problem and chose a radical, yet tried and true solution.

Gassho, Michael
Satlah

[Tairin]

What a wonderful essay and so very timely.

Our longing can be just as sincere when we first encounter Zen. We envision a technique we might master to deliver us from our inner turmoil and outer conflict, imagining ourselves as that serene, robe-clad figure sitting silently in the light of the full moon as pictured in a Zen centre's flyer.
…
So, then, what does Zen offer as an alternative? Zen practice invites us to entertain the possibility that peace may not look the way we imagine it.

This section of the essay touched on a key part of my Zen path. Yup, no question I came to Zen with a goal in mind. What I encountered is what is best described as a paradigm shift. What I imagined and what I found are different in ways that would be hard to explain but I think most everyone here understands.


Tairin
Sat today and lah

[Heikyo]

Enjoyed this chapter. I can totally relate to the idea that undertaking zazen to achieve some goal is inherently dualistic. When I first started Zen practice this was something that I had to 'unlearn' from other Buddhist traditions that were very goal-oriented. I think this quote sums it up nicely:

Zen practice invites us to entertain the possibility that peace may not look like the way we imagine it. Instead of trying to create a self that feels and acts more peaceful, Zen asks us to abandon our conception of a self at peace and consider the much more radical possibility that there may be no self that needs to find peace.

Another idea that resonated was deepening the feeling of 'no-self' by immersion in nature from time to time (but remembering that peace needs to be cultivated within the everyday world as well):

The natural world offers us a chance to transcend our illusion of separateness and come to understand something about our lives that we may not be able to articulate but which we fell most deeply.

Gassho
Heikyo
Sat today, LAH

[Alina]

It took me some time to finish reading this essay because of how timely it is. World news had hijacked me, I was shocked, outraged, terrified... so I wanted it all to just go away, stop, enough already, it cannot be true, not again... and so on and on and on...

But Shoshin Fitzgerald is right, like Heiko and Tairin have also mentioned,

Zen practice invites us to entertain the possibility that peace may not look like the way we imagine it.

Reading this essay in the context we are living in right now is helping me to move a little bit closer to actual acceptance of things as they are... it's a work in progress of course, the fear of what may come is still strong but I think I am slowly understanding a bit more why the Buddha's teaching is wisdom and compassion, both are necessary, 50/50, at all times. Not running away from "inner turmoil and outer conflict", but waking up to what is...


Gassho,

Alina
ST + LAH