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Part 2: I vow to set endless heartache to rest. Tess talks about the 2nd of the 4 Vows, the richness of heartache, and how we are drenched in tenderness and love for the world. Fearing drowning, we put up walls: “This shouldn’t be happening.” Seeing the endlessness of it allows it to move through, trusting the great river which carries us along. Setting heartache to rest is setting a kind of certainty to rest. Excerpt from the Sunday session on August 1, 2021.

Excerpt from a longer session co-hosted with Allison Atwill. Tess tells a story of a transformative moment. As recorded May 31, 2021.

Tess Beasley sends sesshin participants off to dream on April 8, 2021. As recorded x minutes.

Tess Beasley leads off the Zen Tuesdays Series with thoughts about encountering immensity, examining creative process, and koan practice as inclusionary. As recorded October 6, 2020.

PZI Zen Online: Audio excerpt from Tess Beasley Sensei’s opening talk at Fall Sesshin. Harvest Moon, and leaning into the images that hold us for sesshin, the ancient vessel. Moon haikus. “What Is Your Light?” As recorded October 1 2020.

Audio excerpt from Guanyin in the Pavilion Under the August Moon. Tess Beasley Sensei and the winged pavilion of summer. The various ways compassion can manifest. Water offers compassion at unfathomable depths and in reflections. As recorded Aug 16 2020.

Audio: Guanyin in the Pavilion with Tess Beasley. Guanyin’s watery nature. Water: ‘the softest compound that can overwhelm the hardest’. Compassion dissolves and connects us. The ‘call and response’ of our relationship to Guanyin. A force greater than any striving. Like Buddha at the brink of starvation opening to the offering of milk. We can’t know how she will call us or what our response will be. The great intimacy & spaciousness of abiding nowhere together. She enters when we need a new path. Michael Wilding on flute, Jordan McConnell guitar, Amaryllis Fletcher, Cantor on violin. Aug.16 2020.

PZI Zen Online: Audio excerpt from Guanyin in the Pavilion Under the August Moon. An introduction to the many faces of the Goddess Guanyin, with Tess Beasley Sensei & Sarah Bender Roshi. As recorded Aug 2 2020.

Audio: Sesshin Sunday – Tess Beasley on her maiden teaching voyage. Hoping to do the beautiful practice justice. What terrified her and excited her were the same thing. Discovering sangha – the importance of meeting each other. We have no idea where we are going these days but doing it together.

Beautiful Winter Sesshin Opening Ceremony with John Tarrant & PZI Teachers. John Tarrant, David Weinstein, Tess Beasley, Jesse Cardin, Jon Joseph, Sarah Bender, & David Parks all speak koans and phrases into the Temple. Michael Wilding plays solo flute for meditation. February 1, 2022. 14 minutes.

Tess Beasley comments on the way dreams of awakening can be huge or small, in image and duration. She reads Hakuin’s amazing awakening dream record from his journal. As recorded on December 5, 2021, during John Tarrant’s Dreams of Awakening Sunday session.

With dreams, whatever part touches your heart, that’s the part you want. The universe is providing these personal and archetypal myths in the perfect formulation for your awakening. Dreams help us because we can’t control them. The gold is wherever you are. As recorded December 5, 2021. Music from Michael Wilding & 4 vows from Cantor Amaryllis Fletcher & Jordan McConnell. Comments and dream stories from Allison Atwill, Tess Beasley, Michelle Riddle, and others.

To befriend the dream, or koan, or your life, is to participate in it and enter its imagery and mood. Befriending begins with a plain attempt to listen, to give it time and patience, drawing no conclusions. Tess Beasley reads from Jungian analyst James Hillman’s “Dreams and the Blood Soul,” during John Tarrant’s Sunday Talk, The Animal Heart Mind, on September 26, 2021. Excerpt.

Everyone is assailed by demons right now. Demons have a long history in the culture. If you’ve got demons, you’re alive! But you don’t have to get on board with them. Demons come out of your own heart, just like enlightenment. Tess Beasley reads from James Hillman’s “Dreams & the Blood Soul.” Michelle Riddle & Jon Joseph chant a Zen spell for dispelling demons, the Sho Sai Myo Kichijo Dharani. John reads Keats and Coleridge.

Tess Beasley “Opens the mouth of the dead,”— a quote from Carl Jung—and contemplates the big questions at the heart of Zen, like,”‘Who am I?” and “What is the Way?” through the turning words of Zen masters that were handed down at the Blue Cliff.

John Tarrant and Tess Beasley welcome everyone to Summer Sesshin. Participants add their voices, forming the vessel of sesshin. Music from Jordan McConnell, Cantor Amaryllis Fletcher, and closing words from Jon Joseph.

Part 3 of a 3-part series: The Three Pure Vows as Enduring Koans of Everyday Life with Allison Atwill, Tess Beasley & Jesse Cardin. Talks by all three teachers on the vows of our tradition. Complete session, as recorded June 21, 2021.

Part 2 of a 3-part series: The Three Pure Vows as Enduring Koans of Everyday Life with Allison Atwill, Tess Beasley & Jesse Cardin. Talks by all three teachers on the vows of our tradition. Complete session, as recorded June 14, 2021.

Jordan McConnell on guitar and vocals, playing a variation on PZI’s Four Boundless Vows. From a Sunday Meditation & Talk with Allison Atwill & Tess Beasley, as recorded May 30, 2021. PZI Zen Online.

An excerpt from the full Sunday session with co-host Tess Beasley. Allison Atwill tells a story of a moment when she knocked on a door and entered the vastness of the universe. As recorded on May 30, 2021

Allison Atwill & Tess Beasley are guest hosts in John Tarrant’s Free & Easy Wandering Series. They each tell a story of being at a threshold—knocking on doors not knowing who would answer, and how the gifts of the universe appeared. PZI Zen Online, as recorded May 30, 2021. Vows with Jordan McConnell. Music for meditation from Michael Wilding archived separately.

Allison Atwill, Tess Beasley & Jesse Cardin lead us into the heart of PZI practice—what it means to take refuge, and how to work with the vows as koans. Purification Sutra and vows sung and played by musician Jordan McConnell. PZI Digital Temple. As recorded April 25, 2021.

Tess Beasley invites our voices into the room, acknowledging the interwoven yet not-interwoven vessel of sesshin. We are each a unique presence, yet it is when personal identity and ambition recede that feeling and empathy emerge. PZI Digital Temple. As recorded April 11, 2021.

Tess Beasley’s portion of the PZI enlightenment firm Atwill, Riddle & Beasley’s case for Ordinary Mind. As recorded March 28, 2021.

Tess Beasley asks, “What is it to meet things?” as she introduces The Ink Dark Moon – stories on Meetings, Love, and Zen. Love brings something forth in us. We stop into noticing and find ourselves within the vast, strange territory of love. Poems from Kyoto’s Golden Age. The beauty of longing, missing, loss. Dokusan, the meeting without barriers between student and teacher. Audio excerpt from The Ink Dark Moon. As recorded Feb. 14th 2021, PZI Zen Online.

Winter Sesshin: Through Winter Silence into the New Light. Audio excerpt. Tess Beasley on the subject of transformation, as recorded on January 15th, 2021. 7 minutes.

Four Women Zen Teachers of PZI tell a winter tale, the story of a vast moment that interrupted a battle in the middle of World War I. The Guanyins Allison Atwill, Tess Beasley, Sarah Bender & Michelle Riddle share the telling and teaching with meditation, poetry and reflection. Jordan McConnell on guitar. PZI Zen Online, as recorded Dec. 27, 2020.

PZI Zen Online 1-Day Retreat: On the Banks of the Ghost River, afternoon session. Reflections on the koan and the story of Tam Lin and brave Janet. Comments. Tess Beasley & John Tarrant reflect. Sesshin closing. As recorded Oct 31 2020.

PZI Zen Online 1-Day Retreat: On the Banks of the Ghost River. Morning session with John Tarrant Roshi & Tess Beasley Sensei. John Reads the Ballad of Tam Lin in which a brave girl helps her lover, caught in the Faery Queens’s caterhaugh (boggy fen), transform. Dharma talk and comments from participants. Complete session. As recorded Oct 31 2020.