In this dharma talk Kisei explore's the phrase from Hongzhi in Silent Illumination:

If serenity neglects illumination; murkiness leads to wasted dharma.

This life is a play of emptiness and illumination, yin & yang. When the emptiness side (which also can be defined as silence, serenity, darkness, unknowing) gets off balance--what happens to our lives? our practice? our awakening?

This talk is a deep exploration of the ins and outs of emptiness. 

In this talk we explore illumination as an aspect of our awakened nature, sometimes experienced as clarity, brightness, lucidity, alertness. We also look at what happens when illumination is overly emphasized in our spiritual practice and our culture.

We are following the teachings of Zen Master Hongzhi from his poem on Silent Illumination, in this stanza he reminds us:

If illumination neglects serenity, then aggressiveness appears.

We all have had experiences of being in the flow of life. What is this flow? How do we find it? What do learn from the times that we feel obstructed, and what do we learn from being in the flow?

Inspired by Zen Master Hongzhi's poem Silent Illumination, this talk explores the flow of the natural world as well as the research on flow & the flow-state by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.