For many years PZI has been experimenting with working with koans in groups and holding wider conversations about Zen and practice. We develop our understanding of Zen by practicing our spiritual methods and sharing our experience.
As part of this project, John Tarrant has developed “short courses” of six koans that can be taken up and worked with in small groups. He writes about these koans on his Zenosaurus blog. The links below take you directly to the koan study pages that make up each series.
You don’t need to be part of a group to work with these koans. You can browse and pick one to work with yourself, or let it pick you.
Short Courses in Koans
Links to the koan study pages on John Tarrant’s Zenosaurus blog.
SERIES ONE:
- Sickness & Medicine
- Cold and Heat
- My Hand
- Diving In
- Freedom from Suffering: Running Things Backwards
- Walls Falling Down at Midnight
SERIES TWO:
- The True Person of No Rank
- I Don’t Know
- Sixteen Bodhisattvas Take a Bath
- Ghost Stories
- Lost & Found
- Hearing Sounds
SERIES THREE:
- The Great Koan “No”
- No second koan in this series yet
- Scorn and Being Despised
- One Treasure Hidden in the Body
- Falling Bodies
- No sixth koan in this series yet