This is the third day of this March, 2025, seven day seshin, and we've been reading from Flora court was account of her awakening experience. I
the question, what is reality arose as a natural koan, for her, it came up on its own, organically and and asking, what is reality? Is really not different than asking, what is this? What is mu
what is the sound of one hand clapping?
Who am I?
She spent a lot of time pouring through books and meeting with different people, consulting the priest at the Catholic Church that she grew up in, and she came to realize that what she's looking for can be found in those things that's looking outward, what she needed to do is turn inward to what she was experiencing.
She needed to pay attention to her direct experience, so Picking up from where we left off, she says, again and again, I returned to considering the sense of sight. It seemed to me that how one saw the world, not what one saw, but how was the crux of the problem, somewhere in a psychology textbook, perhaps in a chapter On Gestalt psychology, I had read a discussion of figure and ground perception, I now notice that while the focus of sight moved from figure to figure, the nature of the ground largely determined the nature of the figure. But what and where was the basic ground for all perception? Was it just another but larger figure with a fixed boundary, I seemed unable either to penetrate its nature or to find its limits.
The premise of Gestalt psychology is that the sensory information that we receive is an organized whole. It comes to us as a whole, rather than a bunch of individual elements that we have to put together. It's kind of like how when we look at another person's face, we see and we recognize the whole face all at once. We don't identify and isolate the different parts that make it up and then try to piece it together, all at once, we see it as a whole. So when Flora describes this distinction between the ground. And the figure. It's kind of like looking at a painting and distinguishing between, say, a blue sky that's in the background and a tree that's in the foreground. And the tree being the figure and the sky being the basic ground. And we can say that they're each distinct. We can recognize them as separate things unique in form, and yet at the same time, they're inseparable. You can't recognize one without the other. You
nothing separate.
And she goes on, it came to me that I had always thought of the center of myself, as in my head and the rest of my body as somehow incidental. My head was so full of activity, it was almost as if it were disconnected from the rest of me. Just before falling asleep, sometimes I would have the illusion of having an enormous head. I thought of the various parts of my body in sequence. It seemed to me there was something wrong with all this, if one were a whole and single human being, Surely there must be some way to realize oneself all at once, to think with one's feet as well As with one's head. We do tend to think of our head, or the matter inside our skull, the brain, as where the self lives. And there is some truth to that in the sense that the prefrontal cortex plays a huge role in our sense of self and our ability to think about and analyze what we're experiencing. So we end up with this idea that it's our brain that does all of the thinking, but in fact, the rest of the body is also engaged.
That's probably why we have expressions like trusting my gut and speaking from the heart.
And as for the gut, some say that it's a kind of brain of its own, the gut, it contains all these microbes that influence how we experience the world. It's even believed that some illnesses, including depression, among others, are in Part shaped by what's happening in the microbiome.
So what this means is that what we see as a self that has thoughts is rather mysterious. It's the product of these interrelationships within the body, which interact with what's outside the body and.
Can we really say anything is separate?
It's also telling that in in Zen and in Japanese culture in general, I believe the center of the body is not the head, but the hara located about an inch or two below the navel. That's the center of energy,
and when we engage our practice from the hara from down below, instead of in our head, we experience practice and awareness itself has a full body experience.
The same goes with breathing, the simple act of breathing that we do all on our own without having to think about it, that too isn't located up in the head. It's not limited to the air that flows in and out of our nostrils and our mouth. It's not the whole of it. We all breathe the same air. I
back to flora, she says, My My pursuit of this elusive ground of all things perceived, began now to bring to my attention a welter of forgotten memories and feelings. Over many hours, I reviewed past experiences with my parents, relatives and friends, realizing gradually that this web of memories made an ever shifting pattern, never quite the same from moment to moment. Where was the changelessness in change I sought here? This is very much what many of us experience in the midst of seshin as the mind settles all this stuff can start bubbling up out of nowhere, memories, fantasies, feelings, unresolved problems, incredibly random thoughts. And we observe this phenomena that's just passing through the mind,
and notice that it's constantly changing. And
it's not static.
Things are things because of mind, as mind is mind because of things and
But what is the ground of it?
She says, Now it was if I were being pulled down into the vortex of a maelstrom within me, pulling me ever further down and away from everyday life and involving me in. All consuming life or death struggle, although I never completely lost touch with other people around me, I began to wonder if I would ever be in close communication with other human beings again, their lives and daily preoccupations seemed so remote from mine, the simplest tasks distracted me and took an excessive amount of time. I remember standing over an ironing board and concentrating so intently on the question, what is the ground of everyday reality that it took me all afternoon to do a small ironing. This was certainly no way to hold a job. I remembered a remark of Nietzsche's that it was dangerous for anyone to go too far alone. This frightened me, but I could not give up now. I felt compelled to go on, no matter what the outcome. Now, I made two urgent attempts to find someone who could understand and help remember she didn't have a teacher, nor a Sangha. One Sunday morning, I went back to mass, which I had no longer been attending at the campus chapel. It was a clear, cold day, and the chapel was jammed with other young people dressed in their best clothes. The priest was a popular, hearty young man who kept the social life of the parish churning. The whole ritual affair appeared to me, in my frame of mind, as a highly mannered charade after listening to his sermon, the possibility of ever communicating my acute concern to this man seemed remote. Perhaps I did him an injustice, but I never went back.
I next paid a visit to a philosophy professor whom I'd heard was a kind and understanding man. When I told him of my intense interest in discovering the nature of reality, he suggested I take a course in epistemology the following term the
Both so she's still grasping,
wandering through the darkness by the way, epistemology is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, how we know what we Know, and also the limits of what we can know, unlike Zen, which relies on direct experience, philosophy relies on logic and reason the thinking mind.
She says, I left his office feeling utterly forsaken, thinking I don't want another course. What I want is the thing itself. I began to despair of ever communicating this to anyone. About this time when in my room alone, I began. To have occasional visions. These were not hallucinations, nor were they dreams. They were more like the visions one sometimes sees just before sleep, they were astoundedly Clear. In one of them, a scene appeared as from an incalculably incalculably remote and primitive time, I seem to be a member of a small family of cave dwellers. There was a darkness, a gloomy dankness about our lives and surroundings in our cave, we had found a place of security and protection from what I sense to be a hostile world. Gradually, however, we found within ourselves the courage as a family to venture forth together to seek a brighter, more open place. Now we found ourselves on a great open plane which stretched in all directions, and where the horizons seemed to beckon to us with untold possibilities.
To my surprise and horror, the others in my family found this threatening and decided to retreat to life in the cave again
and then she says, I felt profoundly convinced that this vision represented a critical decision, a fork in the life of the family and indeed of the whole human race. The challenge was of the next important step upward. I now knew that the choice I had to make was whether to remain within the safe fold of the group, or to continue on leaving most of humanity behind. If I went on henceforth, I would go alone. After this, my sense of aloneness deepened still further. You. It.
So this was one of two visions, as she refers to it, that she had, and perhaps it speaks to why she's often referred to as a mystic. In mysticism, visions are understood as deep, profound, even supernatural experiences that reveal some Hidden Truth.
But in Zen, visions are actually seen as a form of makyo makio being the Japanese term for hallucinatory or dream like states during zazen, they can be visual, auditory, Physical, emotional, or some combination. And they can be incredibly vivid, like seeing faces on the wall, seeing a menagerie of. Animals, speaking from experience, hearing strange sounds or having odd bodily sensations and conversations, also fantasies, very elaborate fantasies, bouts of crying.
There's so many different forms of makio, and sometimes they're hard to discern, especially the ones that are emotional, can get really sucked in
of course, the thing to do when you're having a makyu, if you're having one, is to recognize it as such,
and go back to your practice,
and usually it takes care of itself that way, just Like thoughts, it's not something to be concerned about. I I can't derail you, but it's interesting that Flora said that her vision wasn't a hallucination, nor was it a dream. Of course, we don't have her here to ask her about that, so who knows. Still, we can understand what she's describing in the context of practice, especially in seshin. You know when she says I now knew that the choice I had to make was whether to remain within the safe fold of the group or to continue on leaving most of humanity behind. I That's like saying I can I can choose to coast along and play it safe. Stick with my routine. Stick with what is familiar and comfortable, or I can plunge myself completely into this I
this into just This.
That's a choice we each have to make. It's not a one time choice.
We have to make it many times during the course of seshin. You
and it's likely that Flora's sense, her deep sense that she was alone, this loneliness that she felt and that's something a lot of lot of Zen practitioners experience as well. But really it's it's not from being isolated or separated from what one is experiencing. It's a different kind of lonely loneliness. It's the loneliness of experiencing complete oneness and.
Of seeing that there is just this one.
We are alone in this practice, that's what makes it intimate. Yet at the same time, we're not alone. Here we are sitting in this Zen do a Chapin Mill, at the Madison Zen Center. Zen do? There's a group of people sitting together and in the zoom. Zen do? We're not alone. Everything's interconnected.
There's also the trees, flowers cushions, the wood floor, the fans, the windows, the birds, cars, this whole universe of things, it's not possible to be alone. You
she then describes a second vision.
She says, in another vision, I found myself standing in a familiar room where apparently I had already spent many years, the place had an abstract geometric quality, squared off in flat, Two dimensional planes, as in certain modern stage sets. I seemed to spend a great deal of my time at a desk facing a wall, manipulating assorted colored blocks without actually seeing them. I also knew that all around me in the same building, up and down long hallways, there were others in similar cubistic rooms, busy day and night, with the same kind of abstract manipulations. Once in a while, we came out of our rooms and met in the hallways to chat a while before returning to our separate cubicles one day, without knowing why or how, I turned completely around and there, to my surprise, was a long open window opening directly onto a breathtaking Vista. It had apparently been there all along. Stepping outside in wonder, I found myself again in an airy, light scene where there was a mountain, fresh stream winding beneath shade trees, where the colors were deep and translucent, everything seemed alive and dancing, and the horizons And the firmament extended to infinity in all directions, along with everything else, I seemed to dance in ecstasy, then standing still and looking back at the building, I thought sadly of the people in their cubicles, unaware of the wondrous universe all about so easily accessible, if only they would turn around and look, I felt I must return to communicate this message to them. To my dismay. I on re entering the building, I found I had no words for it. Nothing I did could alert the attention of these others running up and down the halls or working furiously in their walled off rooms.
Now I realize in my reading her description of these visions that she had, there's a risk that you're going to think, Wow, that's pretty crazy. That sounds like some kind of out of this world experience and kind of scary as well. Is that what happens when you get deep into your practice? Am I going to have visions
if I don't have them? Does it mean I'm not doing it right?
You know, some people do tend to have makio and some don't, just like some people have blue eyes and others have brown eyes,
and some people seem to have them more than others. Some never have them at all.
Such a mysterious thing. I I
forget about visions and hallucinations and makio dreams. It's a waste of time to sit there and think about them and analyze them, or wonder why You're not having them. Don't fall for that.
Whatever it is you're experiencing, whatever conditions
your one job is to keep returning to Your practice. You
then she says, it is hard to adequately describe the depth of conviction, the sense of mysterious truth these visions carried with them, a conviction grew in me that humanity had become over civilized and degenerate, just as in my visions somewhere on the evolutionary path, a wrong fork had been taken, where people had retreated from a critical challenge to return to the living source, walling themselves off and manipulating their constricted environments. So for her, she came to see these visions as some kind of insight into the human condition.
And with the one that involved cubicles of people working furiously, you can say the modern human or post modern human condition, in particular, I guess, the version we. Have today. Of this vision would be everyone frantically on their cell phone, scrolling and walled off you.
She goes on, they had become humans civilization. They had become artificial, intellectual creatures out of communion with the rest of nature. I began to seriously consider the possibility that I might have to go into the woods to live a more wholesome life alone with the animals. You could also go to Chapin Mill at the same time, hoping that a few human beings with similar feelings might eventually join me there, a few human beings with similar feelings might join me there. Sangha. Sangha, and we can take all of this to mean that her doubt and her faith had grown through having these visions, doubt being this persistent question, what is reality? Was really taking a hold of her. She needed to know what it is. And so for her, it was, you know, the way she describes it. It's kind of sounds like how Mumon described it, like a red hot, fiery ball caught in your throat. Can't swallow it. You can't spit it out. You
that's why sometimes it feels like you're not working on mu, but mu is working on you or the breath this
her faith also grew, because she really was sensing that what she was experiencing was necessary. She was trusting it again without having a teacher or Sangha, she trusted that you
and as for the insights she had from these visions, without having anyone to help her process it, this is what she says next. I developed messianic feelings about having to write down these truths, I began to write a long paper sitting up far into the night for several nights. The general theme of the paper was that the human race was lost and could save itself only by returning to its roots in nature. When it was finished, I telephoned Doctor DeWitt Parker, my philosophy professor, and persuaded him to let me bring the paper to his house that very evening, it was a bitter winter night with waist deep snow. So in my urgency, I called a taxi, a wild extravagance for me. Then I had a swollen lip from a bad cold sore, and I must have been a strange dishe As I stood on Doctor Parker's doorstep, manuscript clutched in hand, sitting at one end of his pleasant living room, Dr Parker patiently read through the entire paper. Well, I sat by. I sat nearby, anxiously waiting. When he finished, he told me, in a kindly manner that the. Paper made him think of Rousseau. Then, as he was showing me to the door, he gently suggested that it might be wise for me to have a talk with the university psychiatrist.
She goes on, she describes further how other faculty saw her behavior as unusual, and in the interest of time, I'm not going to read it word for word, but she had been sitting in class with a very intense look on her face, which others found strange. You know the this is the equivalent of what we're doing facing a wall. And at one point, while seated during a lecture, she says, I suddenly became aware of space in an extraordinary manner. That is, I was equally aware of it behind me, underneath, above, all around and in fact, it seemed to be all through me. This so astounded me that I held my eyes wide open and my breath still for fear of losing this incredible experience. This was too much for the visiting British professor who brought his lecture to a full stop, leaned over the lectern and asked me if something he had said had unduly surprised me. I blinked, breathed, and replied, No, sir, so eventually she ends up staying in the college Infirmary for about five days, and after getting some rest, she returned to her questioning with new energy. She says, sitting on a bus one day, I concentrated intently on trying to recapture the awareness of open empty space in all directions, until I suddenly realized several people sitting opposite were staring at me in some alarm, I finally decided that reality must be unlike any preconceived idea I might have about it, and reached a point of just waiting and letting be for long periods, I simply sat saying inwardly, no, not This, as if waiting for what I knew not i I'm sure many of us can relate to what she's saying about trying to recapture an experience for her was a experience of open awareness, spaciousness that she had at some point. She tried to hold on to it at the at that at the time, of course, and lost it. How could I make that happen again?
How can I get back to that good place? This is turning experience into an idea, turning it into an object, as if it's static and not ever changing, whatever Flora had experienced it was long gone. You.
