The Fleeting Kiss of Beautiful Things
with John Tarrant & Tess Beasley

March 16–19, 2023
Thursday Eve through Sunday Noon
Commonweal Center, Bolinas CA

IN PERSON

Spring returns with green shoots, gestures, embraces, optimism, plans, and most of all, desire. These simple things make us human. There is beauty in incompleteness and imperfection and the not-yet-achieved—inside the longing of becoming. We strive to understand our lives and often disapprove of ourselves, thinking that will help. Spring arrives with its blossoms and rain. It has few opinions.

Dreams also appear without our efforts or interference, the Dao moves and carries us, love does too. Inside our own skin, spring steps forward before thought, before words, before knowing.

Join us for an exploration of the great way of Zen—koans, stories, meditation and dreams. We’re looking forward to it, and there are limited numbers, so sign up early.

—John Tarrant

John Tarrant Roshi taught Zen in a traditional Japanese manner for about 15 years and then developed new ways to teach people who had no previous experience of Zen koans or even of meditation.

John has a Ph.D. in psychology and is the author of Bring Me The Rhinoceros & Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life, and The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul, & the Spiritual Life. He directs Pacific Zen Institute. He has a special interest in leadership and in creativity.

Tess Beasley Sensei is a koan Zen teacher based in New York, and also serves as Pacific Zen Institute’s Board President.

She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Jungian and Archetypal Psychology and is particularly interested in the ways Zen and depth psychology complement each other to kindle creativity and transformation.

About PZI Open Mind Retreats

Pacific Zen Institute’s Open Mind retreats come out of our impulse to make a Zen meditation retreat that is native to American culture. When we take away the barriers to understanding, things just naturally shine.

This is a residential retreat held in a beautiful place on the ocean with a simple feel, and wonderful food.

There will be sitting together, koans, teaching, walking on the beach, poetry, conversation, writing and time to find out what our lives might be like without our usual stories. We will do exercises that help our attention to deepen. We will make discoveries and our lives will open.

This is a retreat that people find has a powerful effect on their lives and their understanding, both of the practice of the inner life and of the world of work and personal interaction. It has the deep strength of an intensive meditation retreat inside a form that works for people with all different levels of meditation experience. It has a flexible schedule that makes it work well for those who would like to bring a partner or a friend.

No particular background in spiritual practice is required.

Bring a notebook. Also, if you want to paint or draw or play an instrument you can bring your gear.

Cost:
Members Shared Room (double): $825
Non-members Shared Room (double): $875

Members Single Room: $1025
Non-members Single Room: $1075

Location:
Commonweal Center, 451 Mesa Rd, Bolinas, CA 94924

Dates and Times:
Begins Thursday, March 16th, at 5:30 p.m. (Pacific Time)
Ends Sunday, March 19th at 12:00 p.m.

Our registrar is Eleanor Silberman at [email protected]

In Bolinas, the grey whales are migrating north with the calves close in, pelicans fly by like royalty, osprey carry fish and hermit thrushes pass through. Foxes are stealing shoes, small badgers are peeping out of holes, the ocean is breaking on Duxbury reef, and the great forces carry us too, as we had hoped.

In the field of meditation we welcome a spring that is larger than our difficulties or fears. There is a joy and renewal. We don’t have to get back into life. We are there already.  —John Tarrant