Wherever you are, just take the role of host, and that place will be a true place.
—Record of Linji, PZI Misc Koans Case 38
The Pacific Zen Institute is a community that embraces koan practice, creativity, and real life. Our mission is to create a culture of transformation through meditation, koans, conversation, and the arts. Join us
The Manifestations of the 1000-Armed Goddess of Mercy
Great Fall Sesshin with John Tarrant & PZI Teachers
Santa Sabina Center in Northern California
October 22–27, 2024
When we are asleep we sink down into the dream world where we are not ourselves and we are all connected. When we wake, we might rise up forgetting to worry or be separate. The things of the world come to us. And when you let each thing be as it is, you might see in each thing the face of the thousand-armed goddess of mercy. That is the touch of the heart of the goddess.
Join us for our Great Fall Sesshin. This is a retreat about welcome and mercy and clarity, how we are still connected as if we were asleep and full of love whether or not we know it yet. Get details here
What’s Current
Sunday Zen with John Tarrant & Friends
October 6th, 10:30 am PDT
PZI Online Temple
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
Featured from Our Archive:
The Power of Koan Practice
Koans seem true to life because they rely on uncertainty, surprise and the imagination. They depend on the inconceivable, which is the largest part of life.
At the same time, if koans leap, they take off from a specific place, they depend on the everyday world of the kitchen and the garden and on precise language.
In this way they are like art; they encourage you to move beyond your self-imposed limits by offering a fresh view of things you have already seen, or think you have already seen. Through the koans you find freedom by entering life more fully.
—Article by John Tarrant published in Shambhala Sun Magazine, 2003
Recent Zen Luminaries Video: David Hinton
No-Gate Gateway & The Blue Cliff Record
I’ve been translating classical Chinese poetry for many years.
And slowly over those years I’ve come to realize that in translation I’ve stumbled upon a way to think outside the limitations not just of the mainstream Western intellectual tradition, but also of my own identity, a way to speak in the voice of ancient China’s sage-masters, and for them to speak in mine.
—David Hinton (Hunger Mountain)
Koan Meditation
Weekday Mornings
Online Open Temple
REGISTER
Fall Open Temple: All welcome
September 2nd–November 1st
Practice leaders bring koans and poems, ring the bells, and hold a cushion for you!
Calendar of Events
Pacific Time
Upcoming Luminaries
December 11: Classicist, Author,
& Translator Emily Wilson
The Goddesses and Women of Homer
January 27: Essayist & Author Pico Iyer
Aflame: Learning from Silence
From Our Archive
Text
Silver Cliffs and Iron Mountains
You are not going to find freedom in areas where you are already wise and a Buddha. Eventually you come to a place where you can’t go on and you can’t go back.
It’s a daunting place—that’s the point of it. And when you arrive here your life and your journey can become your own.
—John Tarrant, Summer Sesshin 2017
Video
Everywhere! It’s Everywhere You Look
Great knowledge enters in when we are not grasping for things.
Zhuangzi said,
We wander in borderless vastness; Great Knowledge enters in, and we don’t know where it will ever end.
—John Tarrant, Sunday Zen 2023
Video
In Front of the
Dead Tree Cliff
Something is always vast and still, something is always blooming—the joys and pains of life, of forgetting and remembering.
Gifts are outside of usual commerce and exchange. What is it to receive one? What comes with that?
—John Tarrant, Sunday Zen 2023
Upcoming Events
New to Pacific Zen Institute? Welcome!
WELCOME! At PZI we’re creating a culture of transformation through meditation, koans, conversation, and the arts. Explore and connect in PZI Zen Online events, our extensive Koans and Liberation Project Archive (KALPA), and more.
Fall Open Temple Pass – Weekday Morning Meditations
ENDS NOVEMBER 1st
PZI Online Open Temple
The Universe
Thursday Zen with David Parks: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
THURSDAY OCTOBER 3rd
PZI Zen Online: 4 PM PDT
The Universe
Sunday Zen with John Tarrant & Friends
SUNDAY OCTOBER 6th
PZI Online: 10:30 AM PDT
The Universe
Great Fall Sesshin with John Tarrant & Friends: The Manifestations of the 1000-Armed Goddess of Mercy
OCTOBER 22nd–27th
Santa Sabina Center
San Rafael, CA