SPP2025 Sesshin Day 3: The Four Methods of Guidance: Beneficial Action, Identity Action

In this third full day of Spring Practice Period Sesshin, Sensei Monshin explores the concepts of beneficial action and identity action from Dogen’s Bodhisattva’s Four Methods of Guidance. She identifies beneficial action as “skillfully benefiting all classes of sentient beings,” noting our tendency to exclude certain beings or neglect long-term consequences in our desire to help others. With a personal story about shoplifting as a teenager, she demonstrates how her mother’s refusal to rescue her was true beneficial action. Instead of succumbing to the instinct to “ease the pain” of her daughter, Monshin’s mother showed wisdom that deeply considered her “distant future,” allowing Monshin to experience the acute consequences of her actions. Monshin explores identity action as “non-difference from self, non-difference from others,” quoting Norman Fischer: “You take the whole universe into yourself and then bring yourself to the whole universe. And that’s one movement.” She emphasizes that true authenticity emerges not from our conditioned self but from wholehearted inclusion, concluding with Dogen’s commentary: “The ocean does not exclude water. That’s why it’s large… when we do not exclude anything, we are our true selves and we are large.” To access the resources page for this program, please sign up by clicking here.