Top Highlights

• Mazu, however, tells us that these things are only ever experienced in the very midst of what it means to be human in this moment.
• in Buddhist traditions, meditation practice is based on two fundamental elements – anchoring and experiential inquiry.
• We think, we see, we hear, we taste, we smell, we experience sensations, we have thoughts. This is just the organism functioning. Anchoring helps us to open up some space, so it’s not so relentless – not so repetitive and automatic. Thus we can experience some freedom, some creativity and spaciousness. We can exercise choice.
• And by cultivating questioning – asking ‘What is this?’ – we generate more openness. We learn to be with uncertainty, which sensitises us to change. Thus we can experience change through questioning, or we can experience change through looking directly at change.
• We ask ‘What is this?’ not as a way to define the experience of the moment, nor to fix it, but just as a way to open to it.