During the Koan Dreaming and Zen workshop this week-end we’re looking into a koan that brings up the importance not only of being able to access quiet, open awareness, but also to bear witness to all conditions in the day-to-day round that help us to awaken in our life. Open awareness is not only available in the impeccable conditions of zazen – the quiet, with nothing else to do and nowhere to go. But open awareness is also available as we go through our daily routines. We can access and suspend ordinary mind and be aware of a larger embrace within which the concerns of our personal lives are altogether unfolding.
When we drop self, we see through the limited sense of self and realize how our self is composed of so many “non-self elements”, as Thich Nhat Hanh phrases it. The self that we live out is vast and all inclusive. So that when we look into a koan, as we are doing in our workshop this week-end, we approach it as we would a dream, where every element of the dream is an aspect of self. We can speak from all aspects, any aspect, of a dream… Any of us may notice in the course of practice that we can trace our sense of suffering or dissatisfaction in our life to how we are actually living out of only one small set of the infinite elements of our life. We get cut off from the spaciousness, the openness, the possibilities that every moment offers. Our Zen practice, koan work, our nighttime dreams, all offer possibilities for opening previously unnoticed Dharma Gates.