Editor's Note(s): Just a few weeks ago, Jisho Siebert, teacher at Zen Fields in Ames, Iowa offered the first guest-teacher dharma talk for our summer Commit to Sit. It's an incredibly refreshing take on a classic Zen story which you may have heard a number of times and we are glad to share it with you here.
Alongside it, we are very delighted to announce our three Fall courses are now open for registration, the first of which features the guest teacher herself:
- The Diamond Sutra: Offering Care Without Grasping with Jisho Siebert
- Catch Your Mind: How to Live in a World on Fire with Koshin Sensei
- Living an Ethical Life: A Study of the Zen Precepts with both Koshin Sensei and Chodo Sensei
Now, a bit more about Jisho's moving talk...
“I found this story really annoying for a long time.”
That's how Jisho Siebert opens her exploration of one of Zen's most famous teaching stories, the tale of Master Hakuin, falsely accused of fathering a child, who responds only with “Is that so?” When the truth is revealed a year later and the baby is returned, he says the same three words again.
On the surface, it's a story about equanimity. But Jisho invites us to slow down and ask the questions the story leaves out: What was this like for the young woman? For the baby, separated after a year of bonding? For the fish market worker who never came forward? For the parents, the villagers, the storytellers who passed this down, erasing women's perspectives along the way?
Drawing on decades of crisis response and violence prevention work, Jisho shows how equanimity in action looks like curiosity instead of judgment, questions instead of arguments, and fierce care that doesn't collapse into either passivity or reactivity.
When the whole fabric of a community shifts (as it does for those involved in this classic tale) so does the experience of those within it. There's no one who isn't involved, so how can we act like it?
MUSIC
Heart Sutra by Kanho Yakushiji – Buddhist priest and musician of the Rinzai sect and Imaji temple in Imabari, Japan. In 2003, he formed “KISSAQUO”, a songwriting duo based in Kyoto.
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