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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TUESDAY ZEN with David Weinstein: Caoshan’s Well Sees a Donkey
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Caoshan asked a student, “Awakening is like the empty sky.
It responds to things the way the moon appears in water.
How do you explain this responsiveness?”
The student said, “It’s like a donkey seeing a well.”
Caoshan said, “That’s most of it, but not the whole thing.”
“What’s it like for you?” asked the student,
“It’s like a well seeing a donkey.” said Caoshan.
This koan about a donkey and a well brought the peach blossom koan to mind in which reality is met just as it is without any overlay in the experience of seeing peach blossoms. Nothing but peach blossoms. That sounds like a donkey seeing a well. There’s a me seeing the well, but without overlay, the way the empty sky receives whatever passes through it. The student’s response is good, as far as it goes.
But the student’s response leaves out the other side of the coin. To say awakening is like a donkey seeing a well speaks to the way something is still being held onto… the donkey. Caoshan’s response of “A well sees a donkey” takes away what’s being held onto. When you experience, “a donkey sees a well” there is nothing to know. When you experience, “a well sees a donkey” there is no one who knows. No subject, no object, your body and mind are “like the vast sky”. The donkey is the donkey and the well is the well and simultaneously the donkey is the well and the well is the donkey and all the barriers come down. It reminds me of the seamlessness that we talked about in the last retreat. Life is not something to be observed from a corner. To be fully alive is to see by being seen and to be seen by seeing.
The fact is that even adding Caoshan’s other side of the coin ‘is not the whole thing’. We can never explain it, like the taste of tea, it is something we must experience for ourselves.
—David Weinstein
COME JOIN US on Tuesdays for koan meditation, dharma talk and conversation.
Register to participate. All are welcome.
David Weinstein Roshi, Director of Rockridge Meditation Community
