Recorded at Upaya Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006.
This talk by Roshi Joan Halifax looks at the four practices in Zen: zazen (sitting meditation), teisho (teachings), dokusan (interviews), and samu (work practice). She then concentrates her talk on an exploration of work practice. She notes that our spiritual practice does not function in isolation. It must translate into the activity of living and working in our daily everyday lives. A daily caretaking period and formal work practice offer the opportunity to explore labor that is nourishing to ourselves and others. Samu provides a way of taking one’s practice off the cushion into one’s daily life. Samu practice is not a substitute for sitting meditation. It is rather the extension of meditation to its function. Samu and sitting meditation are therefore highly interrelated and interdependent. She then explores the koan “Sweeping the Ground.”In this talk, Roshi Joan explores samu, work practice. She begins her talk with an amusing story about the calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi and his humbleness, and Brother David Steindl-Rast and his “nothing extra” way of being. She speaks of the appreciation of the differences, the importance of diversity, as well as the appreciation of the ancestral continuity of the Zen Buddhism that is practiced at Upaya. Roshi then drops into her theme, the richness of work practice and opens this wonderful subject for all of us as she explains how samu supports the monastery as well as our mind.
I am enjoying your podcosts.
I will try download them all.
Thank you
Anthony