Workshop: Zen and the Ethics of Joy

There is a saying in the Zen Buddhist tradition: a broken heart is an open heart. It neatly describes the Buddha’s first noble truth, usually rendered as ‘life is suffering’. To affirm that ‘a broken heart is an open heart’ turns the first noble truth from a metaphysical statement – a given, a dogma even – into a task, an ennobling task. It turns the statement into a form of practice, rather than a mere belief. To be willing to feel the full force of the heart breaking – be it in relation to personal loss or separation, or the ever-present reality of pain on a collective and global scale – is to embark on a path of active acceptance. In Zen we say that this is an act of faith – a trust without an object, a deep trust in life itself. There are equivalents in other traditions: in Christianity, the deep sorrow of Good Friday comes before the joy of Easter. For Spinoza, any intense feeling and emotion lived truthfully opens the path to joy. He wrote of the ethics of joy, a form of morality that goes beyond the morality of accountability, of assigning moral debt and credit and is founded instead in active acceptance of our human condition and a sense of solidarity with others.

The workshop is experiential: the above ideas will be explored through silent meditation, gentle movement (a Japanese form called Butoh), dreamwork, safe shared communication and discussion.

About Manu: Dr Manu Bazzano is an author, psychotherapist, Zen priest and Butoh dancer. He facilitates meditation retreats and groups having studied Eastern contemplative practices since 1980. He is a visiting tutor at Cambridge University and Goldsmiths College London where he teaches existential philosophy and therapy. Among his books: Subversion and Desire: Pathways to Transindividuation; Nietzsche and Psychotherapy; Zen and Therapy: Heretical Perspectives; Spectre of the Stranger; Buddha is Dead, and the forthcoming *Difference and Multiplicity: Adventures in Philosophy and Psychotherapy. *www.manubazzano.com

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