The conversation moves on...

I was sitting the first mini-retreat I'd been able to have in years  - or returning therefrom - when Joshu Sasaki died.

Brad Warner somewhere talks about saying something about Sasaki and getting a bunch of vitriol in return.

The vitriol was in hindsight reasonable to have been expected.

But...  the retreat....

We have an essence that is fundamentally empty and awake, and we can know that fundamental emptiness and awareness of subject and object, host and guest,  ailing and caregiver.  Putting all thoughts and conceptions away - including the one about putting all thoughts and conceptions away - is key to this awareness.

This awareness is very....important...it's sort of the thing that is.

In view of that, your transgressions, my transgressions, Joshu Sasaki's transgressions are not excused,  and are certainly not condoned or encouraged, but they're also ... harmonized, or in a sense "justified."  By justified I don't mean that it was in any way morally or ethically correct for any of us to transgress, but rather by justified I mean that word in the sense that the transgressions are exactly in the place and time they are in, and in the presence of boundless compassion, are not really so problematic.

It presents a couple of new koans though... such as OK, so we're all awake fundamentally, so what to do with perpetrators of transgressions, those who've done things significantly more harmful than dropping cigarette ashes on a stone Buddha?  And what to do with those who can't even get to the vantage point to be able to ask the last question?

It's why I had some questions recently about some teachers' "teaching," in response to the scandal thing.

But I must say I don't have great pat one-size-fits-all answers to those questions, and perhaps we're not supposed to have them.  Your view?