Episode Details

I am just returning from my first in-person Zen sesshin here in Ohio. It was wonderful to practice the familiar rhythm of a silent, Zen-style meditation retreat so close to the place I currently call home. We practiced as the winds and rain from Hurricane Helene blew through South Western Ohio felling tree branches and power lines on the property of the Jesuit Spiritual Center where we were sitting our retreat. Despite a days long power outage on the property, we continued to practice and deepen into our shared vows and sense of interconnection. 

Our prayers and dedication of merit began to open up and include those living in areas that are affected by the winds, floods and destruction of the hurricane as well as those suffering in other ways all over our world—may they and we find relief from suffering and realize true happiness.

Sesshin has this way of amplifying our aloneness and our togetherness. With nothing to do but sit, walk, eat and sleep, we have the rare opportunity to really let-go of or soften the reification of some of the ordinary functions of the mind, such as naming, conceptualizing, narrating, story-telling, etc. 

One is free to just be. And what is that? Something we are invited to continuously discover. 

So we sit on the edge of knowing and not-knowing, the precipice of becoming, the mystery of appearance inchoate. Being nothing and everything at once. Stopping for times the need to define or find a foothold in such existential territory. 

For me, it has been a while since I sat a full sesshin completely as a student. 

I felt like I had permission to rediscover what this practice is, from the embodied source—ground up. And zazen also had permission to be nothing in particular. There wasn’t something to resolve, or fix or some insight to get. 

In a place of such permission zazen got to be so many things. At times a warm loving embrace, other times a sharpening stone, a quiet refuge, space, a place to explore fears + tensions, to make friends with myself in all its forms and manifestations, a hub of bodhicitta, the entire universe unhinged, rain + wind, a leaf falling, love of the ancestors through our teacher + guide, an iron yoke, a lover…nothing at all.

I am appreciating how the practice does practice us, and how over the decade and a half that I have been engaged in intensive practice, there are so many practices that visit me, offering momentary medicine in this process of living. I don’t need to take anything with me from moment to moment, I can trust that practice truly does continue. Though I do find myself drawn to creating the conditions to recognize the dharma in all times and places.

I left sesshin feeling humbled and full. Daniel Terrango, our teacher and guide kept reminding us that the dharma is generous. Ah, yes. Can you feel it too?

Right here is the heart of bodhicitta, a commitment to awaken together with all beings. Right here, all beings are awakening together in the sometimes maddening, sometimes heart-wrenchingly beautiful conditions of our current world-systems.

In the teaching realm, I have been exploring a Zen poem called the Sandokai or Harmony of Difference and Sameness. In this dharma talk I zoom out and look at how we encounter difference and sameness in our dharma practice as well as our daily lives. It was rich and enlivening for me to engage in this contemplation, and I would be curious for those who listen to the talk or read the transcript—how it is for you.

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I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality