Transcribed by Angie Boissevain, edited by Judy Cosgrove and Shinbō Joseph Hall — Jikoji Zen Center, 2016
Kobun's sesshin talks, 1974 to 1993, transcribed by Angie Boissevain and edited by Judy Cosgrove and Shinbō Joseph Hall. Published by Jikoji Zen Center, 2016. Excerpts only — the book is in copyright.
These talks were given at sesshin between 1974 and 1993 — after 1980 at Jikoji, and some of the material earlier still, from the Monday Morning Class held in students' homes in the early seventies.
Almost none of it would exist in writing but for Angie Boissevain. She first came to Haiku Zendo in its early years, a young mother of three, and began helping Mary Kate Spencer write down what Kobun said in the Monday morning teachings. That grew into typing all of it, and then into decades of transcription from audio tapes which, as her co-editor puts it, "were difficult to decipher." Judy Cosgrove notes the reason it mattered so much: Kobun "never wrote them down in English, and never spoke from notes," working instead from memory through Buddhist history and story.
Angie describes what that was like to sit in front of. The Dharma he expressed "seemed to emerge in slow spirals, and we learned to listen with our hearts and bellies, and had to abandon linear thinking as he spoke." Some complained that he did not make sense. Others recognised a way of speaking that pointed at what cannot be said.
Judy Cosgrove edited the text and arranged it in four parts, each named for a sesshin marking an aspect of Buddha's life: Rohatsu for the enlightenment, Denko-e for the teaching relationship, Tanjo-e for the birth, Nehan-e for the final Nirvana. She is careful to say the order is the editors' rather than Kobun's — he "often varied his lectures according to what struck him as appropriate for whatever was happening in his and students' minds."
The book carries a foreword by Angie Boissevain and a biographical introduction by Shinbō Joseph Hall, and was published by Jikoji Zen Center in December 2016.
What follows here are excerpts only. Embracing Mind is in copyright and reserved by Jikoji; the full text belongs in the book, which is linked below.