SPP2026: Sesshin Day 6: Entering the Marketplace

In this final talk of the Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Ryotan and Sensei Shinzan bring the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures to their close with the tenth stage — Entering the Marketplace — the return to ordinary life, barefoot and unadorned, carrying what was glimpsed back into the world. Ryotan traces the inner movement this stage points to: the small self receding as the larger self comes forward, and the precepts as the ground from which genuine freedom becomes possible. “We open up the windows of our relative self,” she says, “in order to let the winds of the absolute blow through.” Shinzan takes up the same teaching through two stories: the Hotei koan — the laughing Buddha who awakened sweeping a courtyard — and a quietly comic encounter between a Zen master and his Theravada friend. Both cases point to the same truth: enlightenment is not enacted in isolation but expressed in how we meet each person and each moment. To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.