PZI Events Calendar
W E L C O M E to the PZI Events Calendar! Here you will find all upcoming events and registration links for PZI Zen Online retreats, sesshins, and weekly meditations & talks. Search by individual event, day, or month. Save to your Google Calendar or iCal Calendar. No experience required to participate. All event times are Pacific Time. Questions? Contact Lucas at PZI Support.
F E A T U R E D
April 26: What Is This Light That Everybody Has? – Deep Sit Sunday Zen with John Tarrant & Tess Beasley
May 7–10: Say A True Word & I Will Stay The Night – Open Mind Retreat with John Tarrant, Tess Beasley, & Allison Atwill
June 8–14: Dragons & Tigers, Oh My! – Our Great Summer Sesshin with John Tarrant & PZI Teachers
- This event has passed.
MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: There Is a Light That Shines in All of Us
REGISTER
Yunmen taught, “Everybody has a light inside of them. Sometimes it is dark, dark and dim, and hard to see. What is the light that shines in you?”
—Blue Cliff Record Case 86
Zen is about seeing and appreciating the light in all things. Some of that is finding the light within the light: This early winter morning, broken sunshine illuminated wet grass in the olive orchard across the drive. The grass, thickened in the seasonal rains.
Perhaps the greatest work is in realizing the light within the dark: This afternoon an unhoused woman stood in the portico of the local Walmart, soaked from the cold rain, possessions in the shopping cart standing by her. Perhaps she was weighing her options. She too shone with a kind of light.
A few nights ago classics translator Emily Wilson visited with us and reflected on the light within the dark in her work. Of The Iliad, Homer’s poem of the Trojan War, she writes: “Human mortality is at the center of it all …” Yet The Iliad makes the whole world feel gloriously alive.
How is that possible—so much death and so much life? So much blood and so many tears?
Wilson ends her introduction like this:
You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth again and again.
In the above koan it is Yunmen who guides us toward appreciating the unfathomable by celebrating the fathomable. He points to the fact that the light is only knowable in its ordinariness, in its expression of this complicated life. In responding to his own question, “What is the light that shines in you?” Yunmen answers “Kitchen pantry and temple gate.” Dark and dim, how wonderful that it shines on this plain of Troy.
—Jon Joseph
COME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome.
Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
