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
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MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: Feast On Your Life
REGISTER
Sit. Feast on your life.
These are the last lines of the Derek Walcott poem, “Love after Love.” Walcott, whose family was of English, Dutch, and African descent, and who grew up in the Caribbean, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. When Edward Espe Brown recently visited our Luminaries Series, I asked him to read Walcott’s poem, which he included in his latest book, The Most Important Point. Edward recited it from memory.
On reading and then hearing the poem, powerful thoughts and references welled up for me. This verse is often seen as a song of rediscovering oneself, of finding a new self-acceptance after being awash in heartache and loss.
The time will come
when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
Here we meet Dongshan’s old woman from The Five Ranks, who wakes up late one morning, looks into a mirror, and finds in her own face a new reflection.
And the monk Jinniu, who in The Blue Cliff Record laughs and dances heartily as he serves the monks food, saying: “Bodhisattvas, come eat your rice!”
Walcott continues:
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who is your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
(Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-84)
Edward recounts a private meeting with Shunryu Suzuki:
The roshi tells him: “The most important point…” and he paused as I prompted
myself to listen intently as the words came out slowly, “is… to find out… what is… the most important point.”
Going into our Luminaries chat, I asked myself, as I do daily:
What is the most important point?
What is my inmost desire?
Why am I practicing?
Who am I?
—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
