{"id":16458,"date":"2017-06-27T07:19:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T14:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=16458"},"modified":"2017-06-27T10:38:37","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T17:38:37","slug":"enter-helen-dreaming-miracle-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2017\/06\/enter-helen-dreaming-miracle-workers.html","title":{"rendered":"Zen’s Kensho: Anne Sullivan as Zen master, Helen Keller as Zen student"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Helen<\/a>Perhaps you\u2019re wondering what Zen\u2019s\u00a0kensho might be?\u00a0Kensho or satori are the experiences (although some will challenge, and for good reasons, the use of that word experience) of insight into our deepest reality.<\/p>\n

While perhaps most closely associated with the Zen tradition, if there\u2019s a natural insight into reality, then obviously it is owned by no religion.<\/p>\n

There are just a ton of stories that illustrate the moment. Here\u2019s one.<\/p>\n

In the early middle of the nineteenth century the brilliant, driven, and sometimes monstrous Samuel Gridley Howe<\/a>, while Director of Perkins School for the Blind<\/a>, building upon earlier work, particularly the theoretical musings of the philosopher Denis Diderot, and making it his own, discovered the secret of educating the deafblind.<\/p>\n

His first success was Laura Bridgman<\/a>, a girl from New Hampshire. She, and with her, Dr Howe and Perkins became world famous. For a time Laura was second only to Queen Victoria in her fame. Charles Dickens visited the school and befriended it and Laura, writing of them in his book American Notes<\/em>.\u00a0In later years Laura would become one of Anne Sullivan\u2019s<\/a> teachers.<\/p>\n

The story continues. As it happens\u00a0Helen Adams Keller<\/a> was born on this day, the 27th of June, in 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her father had served as an officer in the Confederate Army, and was now a newspaperman, working as an editor for the Tuscumbia North Alabaman<\/em>. Her mother the daughter of a Confederate general.<\/p>\n

At nineteen months Helen was stricken with what was probably scarlet fever. It left her deaf and blind.<\/p>\n

After her tragic illness, her mother was desperate for help. But she could not find anyone who actually could. Then she read Dicken\u2019s American Notes<\/em>, and his description of\u00a0his visit to Perkins and meeting the remarkable Laura Bridgman.<\/p>\n

She immediately wrote to the school.<\/p>\n

They sent her Anne.<\/p>\n

(Yes, nice to have resources\u2026)<\/p>\n

Later Anne & Helen had a small confrontation over water.<\/p>\n