Teisho: "Coming Home: Zen's Path of Awakening" with Valerie Forstman
37 min
The Egyptian Nobel Prize-winning author, Naguib Mahfouz, famously wrote, "Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease." More than a few Zen koans begin with a master asking a newly arrived monk, "Where have you come from?" The question is not a matter of geography or of coordinates on a map. "Where have you come from?" is an invitation to discover and embody our own true home – not a place but the fundamental reality that includes all our coming and going while being subject to none of it. Home. Here. Nothing outside it. In this talk, Valerie explores the native ground of "home" by turning to case 15 in the Mumonkan or Gateless Gate, "Tozan's Sixty Blows." The monk, Tozan, arrives and Unmon's teaching begins: "Where have you come from?" Their exchange brings Tozan to great doubt and beyond – to the ground of awakening that stretches out in all directions. Please consider supporting Mountain Cloud with a donation or becoming a member, so we can continue to offer these programs freely. Donations: https://www.mountaincloud.org/donate/
