“Who will teach me how to live?” a student asks in Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.

In this talk, Zuisei speaks on the seventh paramita—truthfulness—and its critical place on the path to cultivating freedom for ourselves and for all beings.

Only each one of us can learn from our own expression, our own actions, skillful or not. But because every time we set down a mark, take an action, we affect the whole world, we’re actually saying that teaching ourselves how to live is the same as everything—every creature and every thing—teaching us.

Recorded at Zen Mountain Monastery 02/28/2016