On Day three of the Fall Practice Period Sesshin, Hoshi Senko begins with Suzuki Roshi’s simple reminder: “Appreciate your life.” Senko describes sesshin as a means for this, saying sesshin is “a kind of resensitizing to our lives, a coming back into that kind of intimate contact with our lived experience.” Through the quiet repetition of meals, sitting, and silence of sesshin we relearn how to be our true selves. “After all this,” he says, “we are normal. We weren’t normal when we came in.” The talk moves between humor and depth as Senko shares two koans of Xiangyan: his awakening to the sound of a tile striking bamboo, and his later response to a student after that awakening—“A dragon is singing in a withered tree.” In both koans, Senko suggests, the ‘sound’ of awakening cannot be held (or heard), only lived through our own practice within our own life.
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