Episode Description: Henry presents this simple koan about the Buddha, Indra and the building of a temple. This talk explores how something as simple as a piece of straw can illuminate infinite abundance, ultimate reality. Henry quotes from Sri Nisargadatta, from the 17th Century English cleric Thomas Traherne, and from Master Bansho to expose what Bansho calls “the fundamental matter.” Henry shows that to clarify who we really are, to see the fundamental point of our practice, is to lose much and gain nothing at all. We must allow all conditioning—cultural, social, religious, familial—to fall away so we may truly see reality. “The best thing that can happen is that we lose everything… the resolution of human life, promised and practiced in Zen, comes through a kind of universal loss.”

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