SPP2026: Sesshin Day 3: Holding the Keys

In this third-day talk, offered during the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Ryotan takes up the habit of self-judgment — that familiar contraction after a mistake, the script of not being good enough, and the perfectionism that keeps us small. Framing her teaching through the Lotus Sutra’s Never-Disparaging Bodhisattva, who bows to every being’s capacity for awakening even as rocks and sticks are thrown at him, she invites practitioners to extend that same radical non-disparagement inward. Drawing on Joko Beck’s teaching of building a bigger container and the Heart Sutra’s teaching on boundlessness, Ryotan traces the slow, unglamorous work of meeting our conditioned minds with awareness rather than belief — noticing the thought, questioning the script, and choosing differently. The cage of habit energy is real, she acknowledges, but “not only is the door to the prison cage not locked, but we’re holding the keys.” We are gradually reorganized by practice, not all at once, but moment by moment — in the small, simple, and often mundane places where practice actually lives. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.