Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi

Zen Mountain Monastery, 6/26/2020

This talk explores a poem on meditation by Yikui, a 17th century nun who succeeded Xinggang as abbess of Crouching Lion Convent. “In moments of leisure,” Yikui writes from her hermitage, “I sit upright in the shade of the pine tree.” Shugen Roshi speaks about the great effort, profound faith, and tireless determination out of which this leisure is born, urging us to take up our practice, to “enter the scars of the burning,” with the urgency of the blazing, red hot-stove which Yikui evokes.