This residential retreat with John Tarrant is held in a beautiful place on the ocean. It has a simple feel, and wonderful food prepared by the Commonweal caterers. There will be sitting together, koans, teachings, poetry, and conversation.

There will be meditation in the quiet of the day, good companions, walks in the hills and redwoods, talks by teachers, individual conversations with teachers, time to breathe, write, consider, stop considering, and have our lives stretch out, pretty much perfect as they are.

The great Chan teacher Luopu’s deathbed story and his emphasis on the importance of a ‘direct meeting with the source’ outside the teachings – you can’t just read about it. ‘Don’t grasp principles with words’. The story features the Book of Serenity’s compassion for the whole process toward enlightenment for these wonderful teachers.

The old Zen teachers thought awakening is the moment that changes everything—The Buddha looked up and saw the morning star and a gate opened in his heart. The spiritual path is full of stories of the journey to awakening, of dark nights and great discoveries. The Zen idea was that even hearing such stories makes gates open for you. The stories are called koans.

What does Zen have to say about the question of love; human love being the locus of our most intractable conflicts and compulsions, truly spectacular catastrophes, the source of our deepest losses and sorrows, and our greatest joys and delights.