Manjusri Fails to Awaken the Young Woman. Is failure "wonderful indeed"?

Recorded November 16, 2024. With this teisho Roshi Martin looks into the nature of painful failure: “Is it wonderful indeed” as the koan of “Manjusri and the Young Woman” (“Gateless Barrier” 35) proclaims? If so, how? Roshi Martin begins with the opening lines of "The Odyssey” pointing out how they reveal that it is Odysseus’s failure that sets the epic of a man overcoming difficulties and temptations to return to his true home, in motion. Then he reads and comments on Chapter 5 of his recen...