Multitudinous messages coming in from marketers and politicians intensify the sense that the future’s uncertain and potentially disastrous, that though we are all right, it’s the “other” or “others” who are the problem. Our anxiety grows.  Our minds already overflow with habits, preconceptions and prejudices, with ideas about self and other, ideas that have me here, and you over there, each of us separate and fearful –  fearful that we’ll stuff up, that our beloved will walk out on us, that there won’t be enough, that we‘re inadequate and that any minute, we’ll be found out.  Fortunately, our practice reveals a radically different “other”.

Gillian Coote, roshi explores Case 45 of the Mumonkan in her teisho at Spring sesshin 2024:  Wu-tsu said, ’Sakyamuni and Maitreya are servants of another. Tell me, who is that other?’