Joan Halifax: Seeing Without a Seer…Hearing Without a Hearer

On the eve of Rohatsu, the celebration of the Buddha’s awakening, Roshi Joan Halifax considers the theme of “breakthrough”. How do we breakthrough our own limiting beliefs and behaviors to serve a suffering world with a sense of equanimity? Roshi describes such a breakthrough as an experience of life unmediated by thoughts, opinions and judgements. Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida described it as “seeing without a seer”. From this intimate experience of life as an unfolding process, we meet things as they are, grasping nothing. Roshi delves into the Buddha’s teachings on the Seven Factors of Awakening, which point to the qualities and practices of such an awakened mind: mindfulness, curiosity, wholeheartedness, joy, ease, concentration, and equanimity. Equanimity, translated by Thich Nhat Hanh as “inclusion”, means our practice encompasses everything: Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, suffering and joy.