Susan Murphy on Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis, the vast meaning of Country, and Cooling Fires

Summary

Contemplify Podcast Summary

Episode: Susan Murphy on Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis, the Vast Meaning of Country, and Cooling Fires
Host: Paul Swanson
Guest: Susan Murphy
Date: September 8, 2024

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Overview of Main Theme

This episode of Contemplify features a profound conversation between host Paul Swanson and Australian Zen teacher, filmmaker, and author Susan Murphy. The dialogue centers on Susan’s latest book, A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis, exploring the layered wisdom of Zen koans, the deeply rooted meaning of "country" for Indigenous Australians, and how contemplative practice offers tools to meet the climate crisis with clarity, creativity, and compassion. The conversation seamlessly weaves together personal stories, spiritual insight, Indigenous wisdom, and poetic language.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Susan’s Sense of Place & “Country”

• Susan is based on Cloud Mountain, in Kangaroo Valley, New South Wales, Australia.

  • She describes the land as "volatile," energized, and deeply powerful (01:55).

  • “Country” in the Australian Indigenous sense is not “countryside,” but a living, 60,000-year-old web of relationships—“sharing one mind almost” (03:00).

  • The land is identified as Yuin country, traditionally acknowledged out of respect to the original caretakers.

    “Australia is very old. The rocks…are the oldest surface rocks on earth. So there’s that sort of three and a half billion year old sort of sense of time here that’s really direct, comes up through your feet. Especially if you’re barefoot.” — Susan Murphy (04:48)

2. Childhood Awakening & Embodied Experience

• Susan shares a formative mystical experience at age seven, walking barefoot at school.

  • She describes an encounter with “a vast, infinite kind of space… light was streaming… other beings [were] there” (06:04).

  • The experience felt at once astounding and familiar, “utter wonder,” yet indelible and formative.

    “I thought I had a bit of an obligation to report it to my mother. I did my best. I said something like, mom, isn’t it wonderful what we really are?... I need to put this away safely deep inside myself... Not yet. Maybe one day I’ll grow into this further.” — Susan Murphy (10:20)

3. The Contemplative Path & Zen Practice

• Contemplation as ‘not-knowing’ and intimacy with life.

  • For Susan, Zen is “not philosophy,” but a “spiritual practice” rooted in the act of not-knowing—an openness and willingness to 'give way' to what arises (13:09–16:25).

  • Contemplative practice is “the undoing of the sense of that presumed sense of self... you have to not know self in order to discover self.”

    “It’s a really wide field of awareness, field of attention and of attending upon just what is arising with as little as possible, of knowing, trying to grasp after it.” — Susan Murphy (15:22)

  • Memorable image: In Australia, a “Give Way” traffic sign becomes a koan: “Give way, give yourself away, but also open the way by giving way.” (16:00)

4. The Formative Influences on Susan Murphy

• Required works that shaped Susan:

  • Film: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev—masterful manipulation of time, contemplative and timeless.

  • Place: Childhood cove and rocks near Sydney, unchanged for centuries, ground her sense of presence (20:44).

  • Person: Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed); his concept of “the beautiful daily struggle to be congruent.”

    “The fact that it’s a struggle, is part of its beauty. And the question about congruence. Congruent with what? That remains an open question, even though you instinctively know what he’s talking about.” — Susan Murphy (23:03)

5. River as a Teaching Koan & Metaphor

• Navigating tumultuous times as a river’s through-line:

  • Drawing from a whitewater rafting analogy, Susan explains the need to “keep your attention riveted on the through line” rather than fixating on perceived hazards—requiring team collaboration and field awareness (26:15–29:30).

  • Importance of collaborative awareness and avoiding the magnetizing power of fear and extreme responses.

    “There’s another sort of expression, to hold to the middle… finding that middle is like finding Paulo Freire’s congruence as well.” — Susan Murphy (29:25)

  • Indigenous “cool fire” practice: Equanimity resembles the gentle, controlled burn that regenerates without destroying, a metaphor for wise, compassionate action (30:43).

6. Introduction to Koans and Their Use

• What is a koan?

  • A question or statement that disrupts conventional logic, inviting a total change of perspective (32:42).

  • Examples: “What is the sound of a single hand?” and “What is your original face before your parents were born?”

    “Koan is asking you to turn around completely.” — Susan Murphy (32:55)

  • Foundational koan from Yunmen: “Medicine and sickness heal into each other. The whole earth is medicine. So what is this self?” (35:00)

• The humor and profundity of koans:

  “They should [make you laugh]. It’s so wonderful because it’s sort of like shaking us back to what we’ve always known and weirdly, keep forgetting.” — Susan Murphy (36:04, 36:50)

7. Koans and Zazen: Practice Relationship

• Koans arise from and deepen the contemplative 'not-knowing' state.
  • Sitting in meditation (zazen) prepares a wide, open field where the koan can “drop in and live inside that state.” (37:35–41:13).
  • Koans are carried into life, becoming constant companions, “never fully resolve,” and match the depth of the climate crisis as a collective koan.

8. Facing the Climate Crisis: Deep Adaptation

• Reflection on “Deep Adaptation” (term by Jem Bendell):

  • Sustainability, as previously conceived, is a fiction—requires surrendering to a deeper, more honest reckoning (43:46).

  • The process of honestly encountering grief, fear, and uncertainty is transformative when done communally: “They came out of it a little in love with each other because they are facing it in a loving space.” (45:19)

    “We are the only protectors and we are what needs to be protected and we are what it needs to be protected from.” — Robert Hass, quoted by Susan Murphy (47:18)

• Reconciliation and Relationship to Earth:

  • The word “reconciliation” is questioned by Aboriginal elder Uncle Max Harrison: “How can there be reconciliation when there’s never been a relationship?” The true task is to “reconcile with this”—with the earth itself (49:09–52:03).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Attribution | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------| | 04:48 | “Australia is very old. The rocks…are the oldest surface rocks on earth…comes up through your feet, especially if you’re barefoot.” | Susan Murphy | | 10:20 | “Isn’t it wonderful what we really are?...I need to put this away safely deep inside myself...Not yet. Maybe one day I’ll grow into this further.” | Susan Murphy | | 16:00 | “Give way, give yourself away, but also open the way by giving way. Giving way. Once you start to open yourself to koans, you find them everywhere.” | Susan Murphy | | 23:03 | “The beautiful daily struggle to be congruent....That’s a deep gift.” | Susan Murphy | | 29:25 | “Finding that middle is like finding Paulo Freire’s congruence as well....field awareness which is highly attentive...undazzled, open to beauty...” | Susan Murphy | | 32:55 | “Koan is asking you to turn around completely.” | Susan Murphy | | 36:04 | “They should [make you laugh].” | Susan Murphy | | 47:18 | “We are the only protectors and we are what needs to be protected and we are what it needs to be protected from.” | Robert Hass (via SM) | | 51:07 | “How can there be reconciliation when there’s never been a relationship?...I tell both mobs reconcile with this—[earth].” | Uncle Max Harrison (via SM) | | 53:37 | “I cannot imagine a sweeter and more impossible to describe taste than water.” | Susan Murphy |

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Important Timestamps for Key Topics

• 01:55 — Susan describes her home, Cloud Mountain, and the spiritual meaning of “country.”
• 06:04 — Childhood mystical experience and its lifelong unfolding.
• 13:09 — Zen contemplation: “not knowing,” field awareness, “give way.”
• 17:45 — Susan’s formative works: Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, Sydney rocks, Paulo Freire.
• 26:15 — River as koan, finding the “through-line,” relevance for climate crisis.
• 30:43 — Indigenous cool fire: a metaphor for equanimity and regenerative action.
• 32:42 — Introduction to koans.
• 35:00 — Yunmen’s koan: “the whole earth is medicine.”
• 37:35 — Interrelationship of Zazen (meditation) and koans.
• 43:46 — Deep adaptation and the end of “sustainability.”
• 47:18 — Quoting Robert Hass: “We are the only protectors…”
• 49:09 — Uncle Max Harrison: “Reconcile with this [earth].”
• 53:37 — If this episode were a drink: rainwater.

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Tone & Language

• Warm, open, poetic, and intellectually rigorous, reflecting both Susan’s Zen lineage and Paul’s hospitable hosting.
• Conversation punctuated with laughter, humility, vivid metaphors, and gentle encouragement.
• A willingness to dwell in mystery, paradox, and deep questions, matched by practical, earthy wisdom.

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Practical Takeaways

• Contemplative practice—meeting the unknown with presence, not-knowing, and trust.
• Koans—used as living, walking companions and as invitations to perceive reality differently, especially in ecological crisis.
• Facing Crisis—leaning into community, love, and creative, poetic language as a way to transform fear and paralysis.
• Relationship with Land—orientation toward “country” as relationship, ongoing reciprocity, and learning from Indigenous wisdom.

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Final Notes

• Recommended Beverage: Rainwater (“I cannot imagine a sweeter and more impossible to describe taste than water.” — Susan Murphy, 53:37)
• Closing word: The episode ends with a call to congruence, intimacy with earth, and an invitation to walk contemplatively and joyfully amidst challenge.

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For full show notes, resources, and more contemplative content, visit contemplify.com.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Contemplify where we seek to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. I'm your host, Paul Swanson. Today I am in conversation with Susan Murphy. Susan Murphy is an Australian Zen teacher whose passionate feeling of kinship with the natural world began during her early childhood years living near the Great Barrier Reef. And I might butcher this name. I'm doing my best. The Gondawanna Land Rainforest. She is a successful filmmaker, radio producer and writer. She received Dharma Transmission from Roz Boltar and John Tarrant in 2001. She leads regular retreats around Australia and teaches an Australian wide sangha that extends internationally online. She's the author of numerous books and most recently A Fire Runs Through All Things Zen Cohen's for Facing the Climate Crisis, which holds the center of our conversation. Today, Susan and I talk about a childhood moment of awakening the vast meaning of the word country in Australia and its ringing formation in her, the punchy joy of Zen Cohen's and so much more. As always, you can visit kotopify.com for the show notes on this episode and learn more about [e-mail] au now join me in raising a glass to my guest today, Susan Murphy. I always like to begin, Susan, with a very simple question of where am I finding you today? What is the context of location of your whereabouts?

[B]

Okay, well, I'm actually sitting in a Zen meditation hall which is part of where it's on the same property as where I live. We call it Cloud Mountain. Right now, if you could see out the window, you'd see plenty of fog, mist, things like that. Volatile clouds around here. They roll across us and on a reasonably high edge of a valley called Kangaroo Valley, which is about two hours south of Sydney, very, very lush, beautiful, volatile kind of country. Volatile in the sense of lot of kind of strong energy in it, which everybody notices when they come here. It's said to be a women's area and it's also said to be black cockatoo dreaming here. So I don't know if that makes sense to you, but from an indigenous Australian point of view, that's saying that there's something like an embedded quality of these wonderful black cockatoos. They have, they're big, slow flying, they have a haunting kind of call that they make and they have beautiful brilliant yellow spots here and there on their blackness. So it's a very powerful sort of place to be. It's also of course, Australia and that's why that sense of indigenous country and country doesn't mean countryside. Country means the deep 60,000 year old template of relationships that are called. That's called country with a capital circumstance. Yeah, Human place sharing one mind almost. And so that's what country means. So this is Yuan country and it's becoming more and more conventional to actually say, you know, I'm speaking here from in Yuan country in New South Wales, Australia. So both kind of references are there.

[A]

Wow, wow. Thank you for teeing us up with that rich imagery and the history of what. Because in your book you talk about country and it's as you speak about it and you talk about learning from the depth of the tradition of the indigenous people and how it is much more layered in texture than the way that we here in the States would say. Country would mean like out in the country or lots of pasture land. But what I hear in that is just so much more to it that one can even feel the palpable presence of country.

[B]

Well, actually that's a real thing to say. You do feel it coming up through your feet in a sense. Australia is very old. The rocks on one part of Australia are the oldest surface rocks on earth. So there's that sort of three and a half billion year old sort of sense of time here that's really direct, comes up through your feet, especially if you're barefoot. And I grew up without wearing shoes till I was eight. It's a very good start from the point of view of being free.

[A]

Yes, that barefoot wisdom. There's something that you share in your book and I just want to begin with a few questions so folks can get a sense to know who you are. But one of the things that you do share in your book is an experience you had at seven and it was a barefoot experience on your walk to the bathroom. And it was something that I. It was so striking to know that these experiences from childhood where an opening occurs. I'm wondering if you might relay that story about what happened to you at seven and what has been the unfolding impact ever since then.

[B]

Yeah, well, it's still unfolding. It's really the unfolding through my whole life. But it was the most ordinary of circumstances. I was seven years old. I was in a pretty. How would you describe my school then in Far North Queensland, as it's called, quite remote, quite sort of conservative kind of place, although my family was not conservative. We were anomalous in that place. But I was in a classroom. I needed to excuse myself to go to the toilet or the bathroom, as an American would say. So that was. I Was given permission. I left the classroom, walking across to the girls toilet. Now that's a. There's two ways to it. One is the conventional way along a path. The other one is a sort of path that goes around behind the block. And that was the path that everyone took. It was just more natural. It was like a. I think town planners call it a pathway of desire because it refuses where you're supposed to go. And it goes to the more natural kind of path to somewhere. And so it gets worn across grass, for example. A pathway of desire. So I could feel this on my shoulders. I remember this very distinctly. And I could hear the nine times table being chanted from some classroom. And at that moment I was just making my way halfway down that little path, almost there, avoiding the prickles, even though my feet were pretty tough. And at a certain point, without warning, everything just utterly fell away. And I can only describe the experience of being as being one of completely held in a vast, infinite kind of space that was. You'd call it dark, except that light was streaming from whatever I was out into that dark. After a while, I became aware of other. I'd call them light bodies, if you like, or bodies of light. That I instinctively knew. That's other beings. That is some other being and another being. I don't mean special supernatural beings, just like you, me, or a dog or a cat or an ant. You know, a being. And just that sense of. It's almost like. I want to say I was not surprised, even though I was astounded. It was both at once. It was most weirdly familiar. Well, being utterly astounding. And so I was held suspended in that I don't know how long in a state of utter wonder. And then I gradually, in a way, recalled myself to the fact that I did need to go to the toilet. Like ordinary reality. Well, the other side of ordinary reality, most ordinary reality came back to me. And I went on and did that utterly filled with this hugeness, this huge, I guess you could say, sense of the dimension of being. I'd say that now I'd also say it's something like. When I tried to think about it, it felt like being a body of light, like a star radiating energy and light into a completely accepting, inconceivable kind of darkness all at once. So when I tried to. I sort of went home with this. Absolutely full of it. I thought I had a bit of an obligation to report it to my mother. I did my best. I said something like, mom, isn't it wonderful what we really are. And she sort of stopped chopping carrots from them and said, oh, yes, yes, it is so wonderful to love each other. We have a good, you know, our family is so loving and so on. And I just sort of had the sense I need to put this away safely deep inside myself, that it is not tradable in ordinary reality of that kind. Not yet. Something like, not yet. Maybe one day I'll grow into this further. So that really was a kind of, ah, indelible. It still is indelible in me. I can feel it. It often rolls up with tears. You know, that sense of that is what we are. That is what we are remains indelible.

[A]

Yes. Thank you for sharing that story. That indelible story. I find there's a warmth to it because it's. So much was, as a reader, so much was being given to you in that moment that you, as you said, the rest of your life is participating in that unfolding. And I think it helps me acknowledge some of my. Of moments in my own childhood and bearing witness as I now have two little ones, like when they come to me with their experiences, to hold them gently because you just never know the profound drop that has just happened to them in that dimension. And I just take such heart in knowing that there's these experiences from a young age that carry us through to unknown places. As we sort that out through lineage and wisdom and tradition, whatever we may find it, but that it grows along with us, kind of as a gentle reminder, tapping on our shoulder.

[B]

Yes. And it links up, of course, with other experiences that come along that open it further or in a different light or in another context or. It goes on. Yeah, it goes on unfolding. Yep.

[A]

I mean, to me that's the adventure of life and, you know, the discovery and surprises along the way. And this is something that I find in what links me and connects me to various contemplative traditions is being able to have a recognition of something that is shared in the commons. And with this podcast, we seek to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. And Susan, I'm curious for you, when you hear that word contemplative, how does that word relate to you and your work, if you think it does at all?

[B]

Well, my work being or my practice being a Zen meditation. Zen, I guess people say philosophy, but it's not. It doesn't subscribe. It doesn't concede to philosophy. It breaks. Philosophy opens. That's a bit of a problem for the word philosophy. It's A religious practice, it's a spiritual practice. And it is deeply contemplative, as in, it is the act of not knowing, but of contemplating without knowing in front of it. I can't see how you can approach, if you like God or emptiness or the inconceivable, with your own small presumed knowing in front of you, in front of it, in front of that question or that quest. So contemplation for me is the undoing of the sense of that presumed sense of self. It's an endless discovery of what self is as well. But you have to not know self in order to discover self. So contemplation is this turning around a different direction, away from that narrow focus of attention, which is like a narrow light beam trying to pick out this thing, that thing, ordinary kind of grasping after and understanding instead of that. It's a really wide field of awareness, field of attention and of attending upon just what is arising with as little as possible, of knowing, trying to grasp after it. You just keep on inclining towards not knowing. So it's like if something arises that feels like a solid grasp of something, you can just almost kindly say, not that way, not that way. You keep on adjusting, adjusting away from that narrow focus to keep it as wide and radically inclusive as possible. And then I'd say true intimacy can have a chance to reach you, to reach through, because we are very protected. This sense of self is armory, in a sense. A lot of it, a lot of it is created by fear, by almost an organism's fear of being in danger. So a lot of thought, a lot of suppositions, presuppositions, much closer to fear than they are to trust. And there's a huge amount of trust in contemplative practice. You rely on what is happening. You concede yourself to what is happening. Keep on conceding yourself. In Australia, when you come to a crossing, a road intersection, there's often a sign that says, give way. I think it's just a great. It means you're going to have to give way to the other stream of traffic. I think it's a beautiful kind of traffic. Koan. Give way, give way, give yourself away, but also open the way by giving way. Giving way. Yeah. Once you start to open yourself to koans, you find them everywhere, I have to warn you.

[A]

Well, I'm excited to dive into our book. I have one more question for you before we look into your book on Cohen's as a way again for folks to kind of get a sense of some of the formative moments in your life. This is a question I love to ask that's somewhat abstract, and maybe this has happened to you. I don't know. If someone were going to teach a class on the formation of Susan Murphy, what would be the three mandatory works? They could be readings, they could be films, they could be places. But three mandatory works that formed you, that would definitely be on that syllabus.

[B]

Oh, how interesting. Okay. There's so many possibilities. This is a.

[A]

It could be just for today, too.

[B]

Yeah. All right. So film. I have a lot of film in my background. I taught film for many years and have made films. And so in terms of film, I'd probably go. I'd go to Tarkovsky, Russian filmmaker, and probably. To which one would I choose? Possibly Andrei Rublev, weirdly enough, which is a monumental black and white film in black and white cinematography, widescreen. And at a simple level, it's about a moment when Russia is being Christian. Russia is being invaded by Mongol barbarians, et cetera, and tearing down churches. And in the middle of all this, a very young boy becomes charged with the making of a belt, the casting of a huge belt. He claims he can do it. His father, the filmmaker, has been killed and they decide to entrust him with it. But he's only about 16. And so it's an astonishing film, really, about the unforgiving nature of human reality. And yet that there is something inarguably persistent about the life of a human being, about this is getting out of control a bit. I have to slow this down. I can talk forever about this film. I think it's probably because Tarkovsky understands that time is very malleable. So there's some moments in that film that are timeless and endless close ups and other moments in it that are fast moving and there's a flow of time through the film. So he's a master of time. And that's possibly what partly draws me, because contemplative practice is about, at a certain level, becoming timeless, allowing time. Allowing the moment to have no time at all. Touching that place where there is no time at all. Escaping from TikTok. TikTok. Time, you know, to which we conform most of our thinking and lives. So there's that. Now, when it comes to. Did you say a book or something?

[A]

It could be a book or a place. I love what you've already gone with the film. Yeah. If there's a book, a place, a person that had a. An oversized impact.

[B]

This is one of those terrible questions, Paul, because I could contemplate this for A long time. A place, all right. A place I'd go to is when I first. When our family first moved from far Queensland, tropical Queensland, to Sydney. There was a little bay on the edge of Sydney. Sydney is on the Pacific Ocean, of course. And this bay has in it some rocks that I got to know very well. Rocks. It's a rocky cove. And the rocks had names for us as children we knew Big Moggy, Little Moggy, et cetera. They all had names. And that place just feels to me deeply familiar, deeply ingrained. I could go there anytime. And I'll be back in that much earlier time of my life without any trouble whatsoever. And those rocks will be the same long after I've gone. And they've also. I've seen a photograph of people sitting on those same rocks in the 19th century, in 19th century clothes. And it's the same rocks. Wow, that's a dear place for me, a home place, an astral person. Who would I name? I consider so many people are my ancestors, people I don't even. I know through books. So who's the most important ancestral presence? I'm going to jump to one. Just jump to one and I'll jump to Paulo Freire. Okay, Paulo Freire, who was the great pedagogy. He offered a pedagogy for the oppressed or of the oppressed, because he derived his pedagogy for teaching literacy from the oppressed people. He made himself, I guess, a servant, but even subject to their inherent genius, and said, I'll learn from you how to offer you literacy. And towards the end of his life, he was asked by somebody, it was clear he was close to the end of his life. And someone asked him, what is the most important thing in the world? And he said, it is the beautiful daily struggle to be congruent. And I just found that a sort of deep gift from that man. It leaves so many things open there. The fact that it's a struggle is part of its beauty. And the question about congruence. Congruent with what? That remains an open question, even though you instinctively know what he's talking about. To be with instead of in opposition. To be, moving with, to be aligned with the time and the place and the beings around us. But probably for him, it was congruent also with God, with the inconceivable. So the beautiful daily struggle to see that as a thing of beauty is wonderful. And to understand also that congruence becoming congruent is ongoing, that never stops revealing itself. And congruent of course, with the earth.

[A]

That word congruency I find so refreshing, especially out of the lips of you and Paulo Ferrari in that kind of expression. I'm reminded of one of my favorite poems by Jim Harrison, where he talks about in the life properly lived, you're a river. And what I love about that, that poem or that line is a river happens all at once. And there's no, okay, this part of the river, sure, there's sections, but it's one river all at once. You can't split it up. And that flowing congruency, just as a living metaphor for the everyday, as I see the Rio Grande every day, and just there it is, reminding me there is this congruency running all the way through. In your beautiful book, A Fire Runs Through All Things Zen koans for facing the climate crisis, you have this wonderful metaphor about rivers that you talk about a through line with whitewater rafting. And I thought it was a wonderful teaching metaphor from just the. Again, your book is full of these moments of. We had 10 hours, we wouldn't get to all of them. But as you were talking about the congruency, that one came to mind. Do you mind elaborating on how the through line of a river is an important teaching metaphor as a way for understanding. I think one of the heartbeats of.

[B]

Your book, okay, that was given the fact that we are in a very wild time in the unfolding of this human world. I don't need to explain that to anybody, I'm sure, who must be listening to this podcast. So the question is, how do we move with this? How do we navigate it? How do we lend ourselves to it without great fear and also with accuracy in some ways. So I once heard a whitewater rafting expert talking about classes of rivers, and what he said was, you know, class one river, no problem whatsoever. You completely entrust yourself to that. You'll hardly see it moving. In fact, he also said, a Class 6 river, don't even go there. The Class 6 river is not going to be safely navigated. So then he talked about a Class 5 river, whitewater, full of extraordinary hazards and rapid decisions that need to be made. All kinds of savage rocks that can tear the boat apart or the raft apart. And he said, in a Class 5 river, do not let your attention be drawn to the. And magnetized by the obvious ferocious hazards. You have to keep looking for the subtle through line and follow that. You keep your. He said, keep your attention riveted on the through line only that just keeps. And it takes a Wide kind of openness to keep seeing it. He also said that you need all the people in the boat. You need the eyes of all the people in that boat to be able to keep discerning that subtle through line. So it's a beautiful kind of image of how we can collaborate in not being sucked into a kind of whirlpool of fear, panic, hatred and crazed behavior which will sink the boat. It will draw us straight to the dangers. It will actually not just magnetize attention, it'll magnetize energy. It'll claim the energy that is needed. So that sense of a flow that can be followed, a through line that can be followed, and it'll always be. It won't be close to the edges. It'll be. It'll tend to be. There's another sort of expression to hold to the middle. You know, hold to the middle of each circumstance, not the kind of extreme edges. I think if you read that out to the extremism of the world right now, finding that middle is like finding Paulo Freire's congruence as well. You know, it's the same sense of having that field awareness which is highly attentive at a certain level. It's empty. It's empty of supposition, it's utterly alert, it's very intelligent. And partly because it's not easily dazzled, it's undazzled, it's open to the beauty and the astonishment of being here, but. But not dazzled by it, not blinded, able to stay, to keep that calm, that sort of equanimity at a certain level that is the foundation of any kind of ability to offer compassion, to feel joy. Equanimity is at the basis of it. There's an expression in indigenous fire stick farming which is like that regenerative use of fire, which is a cool fire. The idea of a cool fire. It's another kind of koan, in a way.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's a fire that will never consume the canopy. It will never rise to the canopy. It is set with exquisite sort of sensitivity to what plant groupings are there, what moisture there is in the grass and the leaves. It's a very deeply felt awareness of the place before that fire is lit. And that fire will remain cool. It will never become a hot, dangerous kind of fire. Children will be able to walk on that ground soon after with their bare feet, and creatures will be able to make their way out of the fire and return for the pickings soon after. So it's regenerative, it's inclusive. I just Think cool. Fire is a beautiful way of understanding equanimity because there's compassion, there's fire and love in it. But it is kept on the side of what will be of help here, what will be regenerative, what will mitigate against harm, what is at the very middle of the middle here, that place of poise at the middle. And getting back to your first question, Paul, contemplative practice is a constant return to the middle of the middle, which is so open in all directions.

[A]

Well said. The middle of the middle. And I would love to have you share what a Cohen is, because I think for some folks it'll be a new thing or it's been used in popular culture and it's can get taken in different directions. And so we've been hinting at it. I would love just to get kind of your. Your concrete sense of how you would explain this to someone who's never kind of experienced or sat with a koan. How would you introduce somebody to what a koan is?

[B]

Okay, well, a koan is. It's either a question, a direct question, or else it's a statement which does not seem to fit with what as an answer to a question. So therefore it's already an interesting. It's got a sort of coal in it. It's got a sense of there being something more to see here. Much, much more to see. In fact, koan is asking you to turn around completely. So I'll give you an example. One that people might have heard of is the sound of a single hand. It's often called a single, you know, taken as one hand clapping. It's not about clapping. It is actually the sound of a single hand. What is that sound? What sound is left out of it? What does it look like, the sound of a single hand? How do you hear it or feel it? So that's one example. Another one that maybe is easier to approach is what is your original face that you have had since before even your parents or grandparents were born? What is your original face? So you need to find that effectively. You need to find it in the most ancient mirror of all, which is just where we are. Just what this is to find your own unmistakable and original is looking back to beginningless. It's looking back to that which has no final definable source, an inconceivable sort of source. So there's a couple of koans, but let me give you another one which I think is probably so foundational to my book, the Fire Runs Through All Things. And that one is a statement, a series of statements by Yunmen. This is Yunmen being one of the great Chan, sort of towering figures of Chan Buddhism. Chan, of course, is Zen. It's the Chinese way, or rather Zen is the Japanese way of saying chan. So Yunmen, 9th, 10th century China. He said, medicine and sickness heal into each other. He then said, the whole earth is medicine. And he then said, so what is this self? What is your self? In the light of those two astonishing statements. What is this self, which is the fundamental human koan? What is this self? How did it get here? What the hell is it?

[A]

Yeah. Yes, thank you for that. I. Yeah, Cohen's always make me laugh.

[B]

They should. They should.

[A]

Yes. You have that punchy line about they reveal the undivided too. And I think the way that humor does that, the way that koans do that, the way that poetry does that, there's a sharing of some sort of DNA in all those things because Totally. That you just shared. Like, when I first read that in your book, I was just like, mouth agape and just like, wow. And then I would just walk around it for the rest of the day, you know, like, this just keeps tickling me.

[B]

Yeah, your mouth is a gape. But you know it's true, don't you?

[A]

You know, that's it. That's exactly it. That's exactly. Every cell knows it's true.

[B]

Yes, yes. Yeah, we have to laugh. It's so wonderful because it's sort of like shaking us back to what we've always known and weirdly, keep forgetting. Yeah.

[A]

I was so smitten by the connection you made between Zazen and Koans, because I don't know that I'd ever heard or, you know, from my own tradition, seeing that connection as a Zen, as. As just sitting and being open and then that prepares the ground to interact with the koan. Is that something that. Am I articulating that correctly or how would you point to the relationship between the two? That there's a. There's an inter. Practice that could happen between the two?

[B]

Yeah, sure. Well, that first state that we talked about of allowing yourself to fall more radically open with less and less self construction and the kind of mental soundtrack that tends to be making I statements or preference statements or suppositions in some way. After a while, you begin to notice the whole self itself. What you call my self is already a small supposition. Like it's a small presumption. Actually. That is a lovely discovery. So already the self is becoming more like a koan than A knowing more like a question, a state of open question, because no koan ever fully resolves. Like, they always keep opening further, as do we, in a contemplative practice. So already there's a kind of alignment there between a practice like not knowing, a practice of not knowing. And the only way a koan can be approached is through not knowing. Unknowing, undoing, knowings. The other part of it is that if you're going to work with a koan, like the whole Earth is medicine, for example, you don't sit and think about it. You lay yourself open in the way I just described, and then you allow the koan just to sort of drop in and live inside that state. From time to time, you might touch it with your mind, but the other thing is you get up from meditation or from wherever you're sitting and allowing yourself to be, you walk it into the world, you take it with you. It becomes a kind of companion that never leaves you. You fall asleep with it, you wake up with it. What, the whole. While Earth is medicine, it becomes very easy to approach that colon if you take it for a walk in the bush, as we call it in a forest, or in what people like to call the natural world, as though it's somewhere other. When people say, I'm going out into nature. So this human body is not already utterly nature, you know, nature itself. Yeah, most entirely natural. So, yeah, there's a. Inasmuch as a koan is a kind of tipping point in consciousness. Well, so indeed is contemplative practice. It is allowing yourself to be vulnerable to that and to sit right at the edge of that tipping point in consciousness. And that's also, of course, Paul, why I see such a congruence between the kind of tipping point, in geophysical terms, where we are living now in climate crisis, and the sense that that is the great column facing human beings right now. So to bring the mind that can be with the tipping point in consciousness seems most apposite, most valuable.

[A]

Yes, yes. I love how you're able to so poetically and beautifully bring together practice. And this reminds me, you have a word that you've created or that has been created. The practition, the way that you bring practice in the meeting of this impasse, this con of climate crisis, and that you allowed the unfolding of. We are part of the. Those who have been harming our planet and are being harmed by that harm, and yet we're also trying to protect the planet from our harm, while we're also part of the of the healing of the planet. And there's so many different layers that get like kneaded in. And so I know of no other language beyond poetry. I would include cons in that, like this language that is non linear, but it creates a container that can hold the multiplicity that is needed of presence to be able to allow that inter healing.

[B]

Yes, totally agree. Many koans are in fact lines of poetry, or, you know, they are remarkably hard to tell apart from a poet. A statement. And when we say poetry, we don't mean you. And I do not mean sort of trivial verse. We mean that kind of poetry that reaches right to the limits of language. Right to the limits of what can be said and dares to say it, dares to attempt to say it. Yeah. Stretching language, stretching the ligaments of language. Almost a snapping point. Not by deforming it, just by agreeing to not move off from the vital thing itself, to allow it to be the unsayable to be felt.

[A]

Yeah. And it's only in those spaces, I feel like, where you speak about, like the. The deep adaptation, like there's that bending that happens and it needs language to match that, to be able to bend and stretch that to those points so that you can see the bending that's possible. I would love for you to just touch on, you know, deep adaptation and how you see that in relationship to what, what koans are inviting us into, or what the earth as a koan is inviting us into.

[B]

Right. Well, the phrase deep adaptation was coined by Jem Bendel in a remarkable piece that he circulated back in about 2018. 19. That was his own confession in a way of. I've come to the limits of my possibility of calling myself a sustainability expert. This is him speaking at length, saying, I can't say it anymore, because sustainability is sustaining what can't be sustained. It's conceding to a way of understanding the world that is unsustainable and is sort of patching it up and it's actually almost supporting it. So what he did then was he began to look really deeply into his own fear and horror at what we are facing, if we dare to face it. And then he came to the sense he actually started to delve a little into contemplative practices, actually. Well, the spiritual dimension of this extraordinary crisis. How could it not be a spiritual crisis? You know, it is. The word existential is worn out by now. It is an existential crisis, but it looks right into the very nature of who the hell we think we are, what the hell we think we're doing here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So what are we going to find out is when you offer or subject people to this degree of. And himself included, and then other people in small groups to this full dimension of what we're facing. When people are doing that together, they come out at the other end, not crushed, but enlivened. They came out of it a little in love with each other because they are facing it in a loving space. And that sense of being able to reach beyond me and my fear to you are, therefore I am. We're in this utterly in a kind of accord. When you touch that accord, it starts to be a regenerative energy. So this is the turning. This is fear being turned into something close to love, really.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's probably the very deepest thing I've taken from his process of looking at deep adaptation, looking at the fact that we need to make a remarkable. Actually, we need to do a remaking of what a human being is on this particular Earth. Not Mars, not Venus, not cloud cuckoo land, but this Earth. The terms of this Earth, this remarkable, astonishing. And I can't get over the Earth I've never been able to get over. But I'm like Emily Dickinson. She said, you know, life is so astonishing, it leaves very little time for anything else.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

The remarkable thing is people appear to have got over it. How did they do it? So, anyway, so deep adaptation is really taking on the fullness you use. The word came back to the idea that, in a way, it's only poetry that can reach to this. Well, it was a poet, Robert Hass, back in around 2004, I think he just offered this almost theorem of what we are. He said, we are the only protectors and we are what needs to be protected and we are what it needs to be protected from. So when you have it like that, you either have a sense of the walls are closing in, there's no way out of this, or you have a sense of this is the multidimensional basis of every right action we can ever find. From here on, it has to be aware of all three of those facts. We are the only protectors, the only ones who can protect or in a sense, defend against the forces that are so destructive. We are what needs protecting and our values, and we are what it needs to be protected from. So it is. What is it? Well, you know, it's the wholeness of where we are, what this is us, this planet, and not just us. That us is very big. It's all the creatures. It's all. And creatures Creatureliness. I don't know how to take life out of any part of this earth. It's. The whole damn thing is alive.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's an alive reality.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So I feel the deep adaptation asked by that set of three propositions, in a sense is highly creative. And sometime long time ago, a while back now, I was with the person. I dedicate this book to Uncle Max Harrison, the great indigenous teacher of mine. And for 25 years I worked with him in all sorts of contexts. I walked in country with him, I sort of sat on the earth to learn from him and with him and the congruence between Zen and my Zen training and practice and that inflow of understanding of country, of letting country hold the conversation with me, they came together with considerable ease. Once you sort of stop listening with Western trained ears, it flows in, it flows in. So one time we were out with a group of people, very well intentioned people, an organization called Australians for Native Title and reconciliation. So maybe 20 people, assorted people, were out in country, in walking in country with him, by which I mean he's teaching from the, you know, the live facts of this twig or this piece of burnt wood, or this little intimation of water crossing the path here, or each thing was a source of teaching. And at a certain point he turned around and said to everybody, you know, I don't hold with this word reconciliation. Everyone was a little aghast, you know, what do we do? What will he do with this? And then he said, how can there be reconciliation when there's never been a relationship? How do you conciliate a non relationship? But then he turned around, picked up a handful of earth and held it out to everybody and he said, I tell. He said, both mobs. Now that's a deeply indigenous way of talking about the people. So the people in all situations, you know, I tell. And he was talking there about indigenous and native reconciliation with colonial history and so on, you know, you know what he's talking about? I tell, both mobs reconcile with this, the handful of earth. What a great koan, you know, reconcile with this.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And what would be left at the end of reconciling with this handful of earth and all the life in it, by the way, as well as what it signifies, what would be left of. Of all the sort of brutal way human beings are with each other and with the earth?

[A]

Yeah, there'd be nothing, there'd be healing, all the way to healing. And I think that's a wonderful note for us to land our conversation on your book A Fire Runs Through All Things is incredible and you have stories and koans and quotes and poems and insights all the way through in such a beautifully crafted book. That is the condition of the person who's writing this has to match what is being written. And you have done that in such a congruent way I could not put it down while I also knew I had to chew it slowly because these are words that I think can not to butter your bread too much. But these are words that can help me walk through my days and pass on to my children and Susan. So I just want to say thank you for writing this book again. And we always like to close by asking our guests to keep ourselves embodied and to touching the earth. If you were going to pair our conversation on A Fire Runs Through All Things with a drink, what would be your drink of choice and why?

[B]

Paul it would be water. Rain water?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I cannot imagine a sweeter and more impossible to describe taste than water.

[A]

Amen to that. Someday I hope we can clink glasses in person.

[B]

I'd love to do that, Paul. Yeah.

[A]

So appreciate you and your work.

[B]

It's been a great delight to talk with you and blessings on all, all the people on earth who care. Who care enough.

[A]

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this slow cooked episode of Contemplify. May its delights spark wonder and may any sour patches be sweetened by their folly. Head over to contemplify.com to find the show notes for this episode. Sign up for the monthly Contemplify non required reading list and also the weekly contemplative practice, Lo Fi and Hushed. If you are enjoying Contemplify, rate and review it on your podcast player. The Internet tells me this helps spread the contemplative cheer. The theme song for Contemplify is called Langside by Charles Ends and Darren Hovius. Fellas, thanks as always and of course I am looking forward to bringing you more musings and more conversations with contemplatives kindling the examined life in the world. Until then, be well.

[B]

Sam.