Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei
Zen Center of New York City, Fire Lotus Temple, Sunday 05/14/2023
For Mother’s Day Hojin Sensei introduces us to Ambapali, one of the important female figures in the Buddhist tradition alive during the time of the Buddha. Her enlightenment poem is found in the Therigatha (awakening poems of the elder wise women at the time of the Buddha) where she directly faces and expresses the questions we are inquiring into this Ango about our lives: the questions of birth, aging, sickness, and death. How do we live these realities—these simple recognitions that are with us every moment? How might she show us how to gain access to our heart from her heart? How might the insight she sang in this poem 2,600 years ago in India, reach across time and place and infuse our hearing it sung today?
