Using Zen Discipline to Check Assumptions

Contemplatives down the centuries have expressed a sense of unity with the All That Is, the Heart Mind of the Universe, whatever we want to call it. The words may be different, but the sense of non duality, of immanence, awe and inter-being seem universal. Only in our western world do we resolutely decide that the world is made of atoms and nothing really matters. 

Except clearly it does, and if we have one central crisis in our world today, it's one of meaning-making. Even more than our failure to make sense of anything, is our search for a sense of meaning and purpose that must, surely, underlie everything.  Where we fall down is in thinking that what we can see, hear, taste, smell, feel is the sum total of all there is: if we can't sense it - if we can't measure it - then it isn't there - and it doesn't matter.  This is the kind of frame that underlies the entire death cult of predatory capitalism; it's the core of how we have made the world work…and it's falling apart under our feet and in front of our eyes.

Which makes it a really good time indeed to talk to someone who spends their entire life contemplating the nature of reality, in finding ways to be fully present and then being this in a way that ripples out to anyone and everyone nearby, human and more than human. Brother Phap Linh, also known as Brother Spirit, is a Buddhist monk from Plum Village, the Zen monastery founded by the late Thich Nhat Hanh near Bergerac in south west France. Brother Phap Linh is someone who radiates presence, that sense of inter-being or inter-becoming that arise when we are fully present.  As you'll hear, he began life as a musician and mathematician and then, in searching for the nature of reality, found Plum Village and his teacher.  He and Thich Nhat Hanh planned a book: Wonder: Where Zen meets Science. It's being published later next year and we'll have another conversation explicitly about the book, but today, we wanted to explore the routes towards a way of being that all of us can follow. This was a wide, deep conversation and felt absolutely right for the chaos of these times.  Please share the calm with us, and the joy of discovery.

Links

Plum Village
Being Peace (Monastery in the UK)
Books by Thich Nhat Hanh
Books by Mae-Wan Ho

—About Accidental Gods—

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