Bodhin Kjolhede on the late Toni Packer (Zen in America teaser)

[@unclealand]

I’d like to hear the rest of this talk.

[@wiltonhall]

Toni had great candor in her teachings discussing her departure from institutional Zen practice. She is best compared to Krishnamurti in her awareness that all images - including the images that sustain institutional habits, hierarchies, and rituals - can hold no authority over a mind truly open. Rather that politeness and praise, it would be wonderful to hear Bodhin Kjolhede address these substantive concerns for her leaving. In his statement here, there is a slight tone of disapproval or "she is compassionate but..." and then a story of interrupting Kapleau on sabbatical. A more interesting inquiry would be into the emotions reactions assumptions and further images conjured in the experience of her leaving Zen - and in Bodhin Kjolhede's account of it, selected as it must be from his own experience. In her teachings Toni frequently goes to such places of inner disclosure. She is not propping up her authority as freer than others. She is often admitting that she too gets lost in the mind's tricks of replacing the moment with the image serving something undiscovered and un-listened to. She will even inquire on the spot and correct and wonder about herself in the moment. Her discussions of her own process of grief with the loss of her husband have always touched me deepyl as a true testament to an honest individual struggling in the world. She was inspiring... I wonder if Bodhin Kjolhede and others in his tradition could also do this. If so their practice would be compelling for me, but without it, there feels more of a projection of an ideal self rather than an encounter with what is, a parade of the trappings -- robes, statues, incense, mats, forms, schemes -- rather than humans listening together.

[@ancestralhypnosis]

thank you for this inquiry which I relate to very much. Could it be that the trappings of life - robes, statues, children's graduations, funerals, career highs and lows, sickness and healing, grief and joy are the very relative flavor of life from which the listening heart can't escape, in which compassion is not an escapist abstraction, but a deep, bluesy yes to the truth that "there are no Buddhas without sentient beings"? It would seem that Bodhin and Toni represent two poles that maintain the tension by which life's blood flows, and the we'll never know what Bodhin or Kapleau represented to Toni or her to them. We may be forced to willingly accept our incarnate stroll through the hall of mirrors, and at last ask, how does this show up in my life, death and taxes?

[@grenadillapassion4867]

Truly is a teaser....