In this dharma talk, Koshin Sensei shares a day of stark contrasts: one meeting filled with praise — “You’re awesome, the best teacher” — followed by another with harsh criticism — “You’re the worst, no good, unhelpful.”

How do we meet the swings between feeling wonderful and feeling terrible? How do we strive to “be on the right side of history” in a world that is both brutal and beautiful?

Koshin invites us into Uchiyama Roshi’s teaching of Having Few Desires, exploring what it means to rest with dissatisfaction rather than trying to fix or erase it. As we are taught:

“Gloom, anger, or offense can never be resolved by continually being gloomy, angry, or offended.Only by letting go of gloom, anger, or offense can those feelings subside.”

We cannot simply swing to the opposite of what we’re feeling, Koshin says. Instead, we return to the practice of zazen (seated meditation); to seeing precisely and wholeheartedly.