Moshan's Mountain Summit — Hidden Lamp 25 (September 2019)

With scandals and power misuse being common in Zen, Tibetan and other sanghas, what could a healthy teacher-student relationship look like? Can a rock, a river, or a fellow retreatant be your teacher? And what does it take to put down our hats and trust the universe? This talk, one of earlier teishos Sensei Kanko gave in her teaching career, falls roughly into two parts. In the first, she offers detailed practical instruction on breathing technique and koan practice in her lineage.In the second part, roughly 17 minutes in, she turns to the koan itself: the monk Guanxi arrives at Moshan's mountain and refuses to bow or remove his traveling hat, demanding that this woman teacher transform herself into a man. Sensei Kanko uses the story in this koan to address what Buddhist practitioners face when meeting a new teacher (such as a less experienced one, like she was at the time), a new sangha, or a new practice place, and to offer her own vision of a less hierarchical and warmer student-teacher relationship. She speaks candidly about the power embedded in a spiritual teacher's role, why that power must be held skillfully, and why she asks her students to be her mirror. The story in the koan also shows a student who challenges his teacher rudely and is still received — and the unskillful challenge becomes a learning point for both.In these times when many practitioners are shaken by scandals or doubting the spiritual traditions altogether, Sensei Kanko offers a path that holds firm to the gifts of tradition and rigorous meditation practice while fully acknowledging its limitations and the need for humility and openness to feedback. She closes with instructions for nature practice — posing a question to a river or a tree, and reading the patterns in the natural world — as a way of recognizing that teachers abound: trees, moose, rocks, creeks, clouds, lichen, sunlight, and each other.Sensei Kanko gave this talk on the third day of a Zen retreat (sesshin) in September 2019.Thank you for listening to the Boundless in Motion podcast. You can access more information about our programs and retreats by going to boundlessinmotion.org or kriteekanko.com