Good News

Bear Gokan Bonebakker, Senior Monastic and Dharma Holder - Zen Mountain Monastery, New York, Sunday 02/19/2023 - Gokan invokes the Buddha's words on fear and dread, how we can't work through such mental formations and barriers without confronting them. To confront them, we can't run away when we encounter such habitual reactions. We may even need to welcome such disturbances as opportunities to really stop and see what's happening below the thoughts. This is the arena of zazen, where we can experience the bareness of sensation as we relax the mind and learn to trust that, rest in that. Gokan asks, "How much of our thinking is reactivity?" To explore this further, he brings in Yogacara teachings. The late Zen Master Bernie Glassman epitomized these teachings with the refrain, "That's just my opinion," recognizing that any reaction and opinion is based on one's own conditioned perceptions. Gokan concludes by saying, "This is the good news! This is the possibility of liberation."