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 8 Sunday Zen: With John Tarrant & Friends
September 21 Daylong: With John Tarrant & Tess Beasley
October 22–27 Fall Sesshin: with John Tarrant & PZI Teachers
- This event has passed.
THURSDAY ZEN: Planting the Universe – with David Parks
September 7, 2023 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Free – $10
REGISTER
Yangshan Plants His Hoe and Clasps His Hands
Guishan asked Yangshan, “Where have you come from?”
Yangshan said, “I’ve come from the fields.”
“How many people are in the fields?”
Yangshan planted his hoe in the ground and stood with his hands clasped.
Guishan said, “Lots of people are cutting water mallows on South Mountain.”
Yangshan picked up his hoe and left.
—Book of Serenity Case15
Questions are always open. At least the good ones are. Guishan knows this as he asks his question, “Where do you come from?” And Yangshan, responding, seems to rest in the conventional.“From the fields,” he says. Guishan, with the beaded skin and tight jaw of a Gila Monster, won’t let go, his poisonous bite lethal to any one who might show up. “How many people in the fields?”
I can feel his teeth sinking in. Yangshan steps outside of the expected, planting his hoe in the ground, clasping his hands: Here is a meeting. How many people? Yangshan is asked. Not to be trapped in the conventional explanation, Yangshan makes a leap, “The whole universe, right here,” he says, by planting his hoe and clasping his arms.
I think of the ways that I will sometimes come to life, grazing on the surface, trying to discern and explain to myself where my life is heading and the probable outcomes as things move along. Someone might ask, “Where are you coming from?”
Out in the fields, at work, today I took my canoe and paddled down the Kentucky River, we cut hay today, and tomorrow we will bale it. That is good enough as it is, to be sure. But, finally, the conventional view is limited to those aspects of reality that fit my idea of who I am or who others would have me be—the uncertainties, those areas that I cannot control, are discounted. I miss the breadth and depth of life, the messy complications that provide flavor and color to my experience, that serve as gates to the vastness.
—David Parks
Come join us Thursdays, for koan meditation, a dharma talk, and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome.
I hope you will join us.
—David Parks Roshi, Director of Bluegrass Zen
