Who is the Other? A Zen workshop

With Zen priest, author, and psychotherapist Manu Myōshin Bazzano

Doors: 1.45 for a 2pm start.

What makes a good host? Remembering our essential condition as guests on this earth, which may lead to what Hölderlin called ‘dwelling poetically on earth’, a way of being in the world that is diametrically opposite to fear of otherness. Fear of otherness goes hand in hand with the creation of our identity. We project disowned and unwanted parts of ourselves onto groups we deem unwelcome. This sets the scene for racism, transphobia, homophobia, hatred of the poor and the migrants. For some ethical philosophers the formation of identity is itself a form of violence. I am not you, and my place in the sun presupposes your place in the cold. I demarcate my territory with fences and guard dogs. The more brittle my sense of identity, the more the need to defend it.

The first…