“ Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke
Artwork by Jennah Felix felixartflow
In her book A Fire Runs through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis Susan Murphy introduces the Zen tradition of the koan as companions for our time of planetary crisis. Koans, are a tradition of holistic enquiry based on “encounter stories” and as a practice, were themselves born out of a time of crisis carrying the capacity to equip us in a way to meet our current planetary disaster and the unpalatable fact that it is our own doing. The koan through presenting a question and response invites a crisis in the mind providing an unending adventure, forever unfolding, koans never stop opening and moving our consciousness. This shift in consciousness is the groundwork to meet the challenges of the polycrisis through sitting with the discomfort, confusion, wholeness, wonder and uncertainty they offer and this is what is offered by Susan in the koan of the orange in response to Here We Are.
A number of contributors to Here We Are have made reference to research in neuroscience and psychology that identifies the value of embracing uncertainty - which is a not-knowing mind. Susan Murphy provides the koan as psychological tool to cultivate the not-knowing mind, a mind that can rest even in conflicted complexity, bring curiousity and a widening to our view. “Koan’s create a crisis in the mind. To sit with a koan is to become a question. That crisis is resolved into something much, much bigger, more generous, more trustworthy, more rich. When that resolves, you begin to see the entire ecological intelligence of the earth”. Not knowing is an active process that is humbling and expansive, a very generous state of mind that has a widened perspective and deeply connects you to everything. A mind and consciousness that can turn the distress signals and prayers for our children, grandchildren and other beings from one of panic and fear to fierce love of the earth. The koan ‘takes away the strange dream of standing alone’. Koans like the orange reveal that we are embedded - “we are with the Earth, and how, in a sense, we’re here to think along with the Earth. To the extent that if we’re remote from that ability to think along with the Earth, we’re damned.. as human beings”. Susan Murphy quotes Aboriginal elder Auntie Beryl Carmichael to express the urgency and gravity of an awareness that “reality is connectedness - if you are not in connectedness you are not in reality”.
Referring to a conversation that Zen Master and peace activist ‘Thich Nhat Hanh decided to have with the Earth - which means a meditation on the socio-economic, political and ecologicical circumstances and implications of what we are facing - “He asked the Earth, Can I rely on you? —that was his question. He waited for the response, and it came back: Can I rely on you? It’s the same question. And then Thich Nhat Hanh looked deeply into himself, and he said, in all honesty, you can mostly rely on me. And the Earth said, you can mostly rely on me”. (from Susan Murphy’s conversation with Emergence Magazine).
To help us move beyond fear and despair one koan offered by Susan in an interview with the ABC comes from Chan (Chinese Zen) Master from Zhaozhou:
His student asked - When difficult times come to visit us, how should we meet them? Zhaozhou gave one word response Welcome.
So Susan offers us an orange at this time, at this juncture to help lay the cognitive ground work for the creativity, compassion and capacity to engage on a practical level with climate change and the polycrisis.
“A sense of self is a practical necessity, but it is possible to live a life unaware of how much it can constrict the heart and block the light, leaving us unaware of the bigger picture of the current crisis. Even as we struggle to act passionately within it. Without holding the self as a question - a live question, we’re caught short of the full potential of our intense feelings about the suffering earth..But to question and break open the dream of the self is to find the remarkable tipping point in consciousness that lies latent in the question and latent in this crisis, waiting for us to discover the medicine in the sickness, the healing in the suffering.” (Susan Murphy, A Fire Runs Through all Things p. 22)
Sitting as an orange does “transmutes hurry and worry into true being - complete well being” a place from where we may be ready to suffer planetary healing as offered through this message - a koan Susan received from the earth herself when facing the threat of bushfire
“your suffering with me is my care for you.”
Here We Are
Thank you for the orange Susan.
Dr. Susan Murphy Roshi is the founding teacher of Zen Open Circle in Sydney, Australia, as well as a writer, radio producer, film writer and director. She is the author of ‘Minding the Earth, Mending the World: Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis’ and ‘A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis’.
Endless thanks to the audio, visual and editing legends of Here We Are:
Matt Woodham Treat Lightly
Music by Michael Garfield ‘Listening to plants’
