{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fawakening-streams-the-one-river-zen-podcast.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2Fam-i-dreaming-6ctZUzgq","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Am I Dreaming? Blue Cliff Record Case #40, Nansen's \"This Flower\"","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/4da961e6-efa0-4707-805b-b8a30bc97a5c/e64f1fce-9e72-40e6-8601-5285717301fc/episode-1.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"","height":200,"description":"In this episode of Awakening Streams, Sensei Michael Brunner takes up Case 40 of the Blue Cliff Record (Hekiganroku), “Nansen’s ‘This Flower.’” Riku Taifu quotes the Buddhist scholar Jō Hōshi: “Heaven and earth and I are of the same root. All things and I are of one substance.” Nansen responds by pointing to a flower in the garden and saying, “People these days see this flower as though they were in a dream.”\n\nWhat is the difference between understanding the Dharma and actually being awake?\n\nSpeaking on the final morning of retreat at One River Zen, Sensei Michael explores how even profound Buddhist teachings can become fixed ideas that distance us from direct experience. Nansen’s flower points beyond conceptual understanding to the intimacy of things as they are, before we divide experience through judgment, explanation, and ideology.\n\nDrawing on the pointer to Blue Cliff Record Case 40, “When the action of the mind is stopped and swept away, the iron tree will bloom,” the talk explores samadhi, prajna, beginner’s mind, koan practice, Zen meditation, and the relationship between wisdom and direct experience. When we stop forcing life through what we think we know, even a single blade of grass can reveal the immediacy and wonder of the Way.\n\nThe talk concludes with an invitation for practitioners leaving retreat: rather than automatically picking up every old story, concern, and burden, examine what you are carrying, leave behind what no longer serves, and return to everyday life with open hands, ready to serve and fully meet what is here."}