Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi

True Dharma Eye, Case 88

Zen Mountain Monastery, 11/23/2019

In a koan featuring Layman Pang’s daughter Lingzhao, Shugen Roshi helps deepen our understanding of delusion. With compassion we can see our fixed beliefs as delusions and mistaken ideas, eventually realizing that at every moment the path is complete. And yet, delusions are what our natural, thinking minds produce, and yet every experience of them is “bright and clear” by nature. Roshi asks us to consider how to recognize and acknowledge our imperfections, and actualize this in our practice and our lives: to be without anxiety about non-perfection.