Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘You, in returning to your own practice, and allowing for “this is what I’ve got to work with,” will make some space and ease that will dynamically change the situation. I can’t tell you how that happens, because nothing is fixed, and in some ways we are waiting for an answer but nothing exists unto itself – it doesn’t have an inherent identity – so our changing changes everything that we touch, everything that we are relating to, if for no other reason it’s because we are relating to it differently. Does it change it absolutely? Well there isn’t such a thing; it’s all just a co-arising…. And that’s something that is very, very challenging for us to trust, because we’re wanting an outcome – of course we are. And there’s nothing wrong with that either. So we fold the desire that we have for the healing, the aspiration for whatever the crisis is to be solved, to be addressed for people to come out less scathed – we fold that in and we meet Now. And we meet it again. When we feel disappointed that it didn’t turn out the way we expected it to, and we meet it again.’ (from the SFZC Dharma Talk Archive)

This section comes from the question and answer portion of the talk, which – sometimes regretfully – I edit out before I post the talks online, to preserve people’s confidentiality in asking their practice questions. The rest of the talk does illuminate the same points.