Small Groups

Meditations and Conversations About Practice
ROUND 2 BEGAN THE WEEK OF FEB. 7

This new small group program has been developed by David Parks-Ramage and John Tarrant, and it is open to all members of PZI. The first round has recently been completed, and the second round is due to begin in early February.

This program consists of a number of small groups of about 6 people each, plus a facilitator. These small groups will meet once a week for 6 weeks, starting the week of February 7th and concluding by the end of March. Participants are asked to commit to the full 6 weeks.

Goals for the program include:

create a way for PZI members to become collaborators in developing a new understanding of the way koans work in our lives
provide another context for conversation about practice and the study of koans
promote and strengthen the PZI community and relationships within it
provide new avenues for leadership within the PZI community
provide an opportunity for increased commitment of PZI members and friends
add value to affiliation with PZI

John Tarrant will be selecting 6 koans for study by the groups - one koan each week. The koan of the week will be posted online and all of the groups will be working with the same koan each week throughout the program. John will also develop questions for the groups to discuss each week. The larger PZI Monday night programs may also center on these "koans of the week."

To see the koans from the first round (and presumably the next round, when it begins) go to zenosaurus.blogspot.com and use the 'blog archive' in the left column to navigate through different weeks. Look for posts with titles that begin "Zen 2.0, The Zenosaurus Course in Koans."

The small group meetings are 1.5 hours, starting with a 30 minute meditation using the koan of the week, followed by discussions that are led by the facilitator of the group. At the initial meeting each group will decide upon opening and closing rituals that they will use throughout the program.

Each group will have one facilitator. Facilitators will be chosen by PZI teachers. They will be facilitators - people with a base in practice and group skills - not people expected to have answers about Zen koans. The overall program facilitator will be David Parks-Ramage, and David will also facilitate a Christian koan group that will be open to PZI members.

The number of groups and locations is determined by the level of interest in different areas. There are 3 small group practice groups being set up in Santa Rosa for round 2, one in Oakland, one in San Francisco and one in Santa Cruz.

There will not be a fee for participation in this program, but there will be a dana box available to benefit PZI. The program is open to PZI members. If you know of someone who would like to participate but who is not a PZI member, please let registrar Carol Spooner know. Though members get priority, in some places having non members might work.

If you are interested in being part of this program please email PZI registrar Eleanor Silberman at registrar@pacificzen.org and David Parks-Ramage at dparkram@gmail.com to let them both know ASAP.

SMALL GROUPS:

Santa Rosa —

Wednesdays, 7 to 8:30pm with David Parks-Ramage, at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, Santa Rosa. This group will incorporate some "Christian koans."
Wednesdays, 7 to 8:30 pm with Ellen Fryer, at the Santa Rosa Zendo.
Thursdays, 7 to 8:30 pm with Bill Krumbein at the Santa Rosa Zendo.

Oakland —

Thursdays, 7 to 8:30 pm with Dan Kaplan, at Lisa Bowers' house in Oakland.

San Francisco —

Wednesdays, time TBA with Chris Wilson at Potrero Hill Zendo of the Wind-in-Grass Sangha.

Santa Cruz —

A group in Santa Cruz is to be announced. Please let us know if you have an interest in the Santa Cruz small group.

A Sample Week's Koan

Week One (Oct 18) — The Koan:

Sickness and medicine correspond to each other. The whole world is medicine. What am I?

This koan is from Yunmen, one of the great Chinese masters. It’s an interesting koan because you can approach it at any level, whether you have never encountered koans before or have long experience of them. The word medicine can be used alone as an initial koan. The Japanese teachers had a classification for initial koans—calling them Dharmakaya koans—good for meeting reality, before we form views about it. They open insight into the vast background underneath or inside everything we do, and into the transparence of our ideas and actions. This is the experience you have when you look at a tree or another person and it is like looking in a mirror—you see an identity of things and yourself.

This medicine koan also touches on the way that, in our assessments, we can’t be quite sure what is healing and what is painful, since outcomes are uncertain and we have unreliable maps even of the life we have now. The idea that the whole world is placebo is interesting, along the lines of the idea that the world is a dream.

Finally the koan touches the question of who we are, what we are. A very strong idea of who we are tends to hamper our experience of life and the koan is offering an attitude of wonder about being human.

Here’s the format for the groups:

Meditation

Check in: What did you leave to be here?

Questions for discussion:
1. What is sickness for you? What are some of the times when you have been sick? How did it change you?
2. What medicines have worked for you? What are your own personal “cures” ? Have you ever been surprised by something that helped you?
3. Do you feel like you know who you are? When in your life have you struggled with identity? Do you like having a self?
4. What random images or thoughts arose for you when you sat with the koan?

Closing ritual of choice.

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