Study Hall and the Golden Gate Bridge

Study Hall has been severely impacted by the Tour de France since I got back from England, but I have managed to sit down with a book from time to time, and currently it is 'Hakuin on Kensho - the Four Ways of Knowing'. It is fun to be reading of something that is treated so differently in the Rinzai line; in the Soto School, we tend to stay relatively coy about the subject of kensho, although if you press a teacher about it, they will say that ultimately the practice is about waking up. At any rate, Hakuin is always entertainingly challenging. Here is a typical exhortation:
'After great will, faith and determination are aroused, you should then constantly ask, "who is the host of seeing and hearing?" Walking, standing, sitting, lying down, active or silent, whether in favorable or unfavorable circumstances, throw your mind into the question of what is it that sees everything here and now. What hears?'

I am not going to hazard an answer to this, but I will go so far as to assert that who I am is not who I think I am.  My sense is that seeing the life force of everything, in everything, is part of the picture.
When I go riding on a Sunday, I like to be out early enough to catch the sun rising as I cross the Golden Gate Bridge. Something about being out there on my bike as the sun comes over the Berkeley hills, illuminates the ocean and starts to hit the Marin Headlands is a sure way to feel the life force of the universe manifesting itself. Of course at this time of year, the chances of the sun coming out from behind the fog are quite slim, and you can't always see the mountains or the ocean, so this Sunday I was wondering about the life force of the bridge itself. In the end I carried on pedaling without finding an answer. I expect Hakuin would say I wasn't trying hard enough.