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 Emlyn Guiney
F E A T U R E D
September 21 Daylong: Zen and the Goddess Part I
September 22 Sunday Zen with John Tarrant & Friends
October 22–27 Fall Sesshin: The 1000-Armed Goddess of Mercy
- This event has passed.
SUNDAY ZEN: The Great Kalpa Fire – Predicament Koan 3 with John Tarrant & Friends
September 18, 2022 @ 10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Free – $10
REGISTER
John Tarrant takes up a series of predicament koans on Sundays for a few weeks.
Meaning a small path into the Dao, a class on predicaments.
Predicament koans match the perilous and lunatic quality of life when everything is changing. When you reach the place where you are defeated, a gate opens. That is a predicament. All koans might stop you— predicaments are stories about what the obstacle itself is like.
Here is a story (and koan) about the state of the world:
A student asked Dasui, “It’s clear that the fire at the end of the kalpa will completely destroy the universe.
I’m still not clear whether there’s something that won’t be destroyed.
Dasui said, “It will be destroyed.”
“It will go along with everything else?”
“It will go along with everything else,” said Dasui.
The old idea is that, eventually, the universe ends in flames, something that we have to take into account and respond to. In Australia, during the great fires that swept into the ancient Gondwana forests, a magpie imitated the fire sirens—a fire singer doing what she could.
Dasui was once the fire keeper at Guishan’s monastery. Caught between “destroyed” and “not destroyed,” the student asks their question in the light of the fire at the end of the universe. Touchingly, it’s because of a single phrase, “It will be destroyed,” that they travel back and forth for ten thousand miles, alone.
—Xuedou
Fires are in the heart, fires warm the seas, melt the Thwaites glacier, light up the heavens, make up the stars. The Buddha thought that this world was a burning house and I see his point, but in Zen we like the spaciousness inside even the most difficult and persistent flames.
Join us on Sunday?
—John Tarrant
Video now online: Predicament Koan 1, The Goose in the Bottle
Video coming soon: Predicament Koan 2, Hanging from a Branch by Your teeth
Meditation is not a task with a known goal. It’s something you can’t do wrong, a chance for the things of this world to come towards you and to meet you, for doors to open by themselves, and for us to see where the ancient paths lead.
Waking up is something we do together, in the online temple on Sunday. We love it when you join us.
—John Tarrant Roshi and all of us at PZI
Dana and donations are gratefully accepted.
Once you register, you’ll receive a PZI link for access to:
Sunday Meditation & Talk at 10:30 am PDT
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