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 15 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: Beauty Blooms & Demons Dwell in the Garden of the Heart with David Parks
March 7 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Free – $10
REGISTER
For ten years at sea, I have sought my enemy; until I find my enemy I cannot rest.
Blossoming peony flowers, like bodhisattva’s faces;
scattered palm fronds, like demons’ heads.
—Gushan Shigui’s Gatha, Entangling Vines Case 56
Quickly, before thinking good and evil,
what is your original face before your parents were born?
—Huineng, Gateless Gate Case 23
The coin lost in the river is found in the river.
—Yunmen, Miscellaneous Koans Case 64
Does this life make any sense? Sometimes things go my way, sometimes not. I find myself adrift in preferences, my likes and dislikes. I’ll grasp the pleasant or the positive; ignoring, denying, even throwing out the possibility that things can go another way. I’ll look for the peonies of late spring, turning a blind eye to scattered palm fronds browning and rotting in the summer sun.
I set forth seeking angel atoll, only to we swept off to the land of the rakshasas.
—Demons, Entangling Vines Case 39
There are parts of myself I would avoid. There are demons I would cast out. Here come the slings and arrows: to prefer some experiences over others is to suffer. “There must be some way out of here, said the Joker to the Thief.” (Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower). One of our PZI Miscellaneous Koans says, “Things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise.” The way out? To fully enter this one life embracing what is here, now.
Gushan Shigui taught in the 11th century. The Chinese characters that Thomas Kirchner translates as “enemy” can also be translated as “lover.” Enemy, lover. Lover, enemy. Heads, tails. In this time of fervent ideologies and making enemies, in not clinging to judgments my preferences are thrown over. It is one coin after all.
As I move towards what I might avoid or seek to destroy, I move towards integration, towards accepting life as it comes, nothing left out.
Join us on Thursday.
—David Parks
COME JOIN US on Thursdays for koan meditation, dharma talk and conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate.
David Parks Roshi, Director of Bluegrass Zen
