Qinglin’s Poisonous Snake
A student asked Qinglin, “What about when a student goes along the path?”
Qinglin said, “There’s a poisonous snake on the path. I advise the student not to run into it.”
“What about when the student runs into it?”
“She must mourn her life.”
“What about when she doesn’t run into it?”
“But there is no way to avoid it.”
“Then how about at that moment?”
“It completely disappeared.”
“I wonder where it went.”
“The grass is so deep that we can’t find it anywhere.”
“You too should protect yourself against it.”
Qinglin rubbed his palms together and said, “We’re both poisonous snakes.”
—Book of Serenity, Case 59
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After twenty years of teaching koans in a classical way, John Tarrant discovered ways of teaching koans that can orient anyone, including people who have no experience with meditation or Zen, towards a rich, full engagement with their own lives and towards awakening.
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Meditation is not a task with a known goal.
It’s something you can’t do wrong, a chance for the things of this world to come towards you and to meet you, for doors to open by themselves, and for us to see where the ancient paths lead.
Waking up is something we do together, in the online temple on Sunday.
We love it when you join us.
—John Tarrant Roshi and all of us at PZI
Most Recent Sunday Talk:
The Hazy Moon of Spring
Though you find clear waters ranging to the vast blue sky in autumn,
How can it compare with the hazy moon on a spring night?
Most people want to have it pure white,
But sweep as you will, you cannot empty the mind.
(Keizan, Transmission of Light Case 6, Aitken & Yamada translation)
Enlightenment happens inside this life that we have. It’s not some other more satisfactory life with special conditions. So, you set off!
You go through one archway, and then you go through a second, and then a third archway, and eventually your worries fall away though you didn’t ask them to, all desperation falls away and any cause of suffering in the mind is illuminated.
Life after life you have been doing this and it’s not a surprise that you come eventually to the Buddha, who is sitting on an ordinary zafu, smiling, saying, “Yes, that’s it, you are doing it alright, just do zazen like that!” and happiness comes over you.
—John Tarrant, Allison Atwill, & Tess Beasley on March 29th, 2026
Most Recent Podcast:
Ending the Project of Suffering
To end this project of suffering that many of us take on, we need first to identify the types of suffering. Only then can we begin to look past the suffering to the root causes.
We can learn to make use of our suffering by reaching for the light. What does reaching for the light look like? Why does the mind manufacture misery?
This episode features stories of awakening to what was always already here and on our side.
Most Recent Luminaries Guest:
Choreographer & Dancer Denise Fujiwara
Denise Fujiwara, Zen Luminaries guest and longtime PZI member, is a highly acclaimed choreographer and performer of Japanese Butoh and contemporary dance.
Creating a dance is very much like the process of contemplating a Zen koan; it is difficult to learn because vocabulary is foreign to the dance experience.
If you want to do Butoh, the first thing you must do is kill the self. Of course, you can’t kill the self because there is no self but you must figure out what no-self means, not by words but through physical research.
Within dance, what do notions like emptiness and no-self mean?
(Denise Fujiwara)
—Pacific Zen Luminaries Series on February 23rd, 2026
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