Audio Library

PZI Zen Online – Jidu’s story of awakening and meeting with the mysterious prediction of the teacher Heavenly Dragon. The absurdity of life’s journey. His meeting with the strange woman and her interrupting request: ‘Say a Word of Zen!’. How do you allow something different to arise? – one finger! As recorded May 24, 2020.

PZI Zen Online – We are in a time ‘before moonlight’ with covid and massive unemployment that has resulted- with great unknowns ahead. Dreams in zen are not so different from waking life. We make up stories about what will happen. But we are passing through a gate of meeting and not recognizing. How do you make your way? Step by step. As recorded May 25.

PZI Zen Online Audio – What moves, what is stil? How does stillness move? I am movement as I live, as I age, or dance but how am I part of it? Michelle shares various audio files T.S. Elliot reading a poem, David Bryne & Brooklyn Youth Choir. As recorded May 22, 2020.

PZI Zen Online – Living words come from the our hearts and the vastness of connection. We try to cut things up to manage our lives. Beliefs inhibit our natural responses and gets in the way of what the universe offers. If we avail ourselves of the mystery – it’s alive! The words love & trust are alive and so are the teachings in the koans.

PZI Zen Online – The pandemic alter the usual ways we choose. What is ‘picking’ and ‘choosing’? When does choice occur? When do I ‘not choose’ but say yes to life’s flow? David recounts many of life ‘yeses’ before thinking picking or choosing. How we find what we don’t think we are looking for.

Audio PZI Zen Online -Taking the role of the host everywhere & Abiding Nowhere guide Allison’s talk. Solitude as resting in vastness. Loneliness – you may even be in company, but something is missing. revisiting childhood’ solitude and the solitude of mountain trails. Abiding ‘somewhere’ keeps me out of vastness.

Audio PZI Zen Online- The koan: Sea of Ise inspires Covid dreaming. Dream vacation: scuba diving in Brooklyn Harbor? What is feared opens to beauty. The dark Sea of Brooklyn held a surprise. As recorded May 18 2020

Audio PZI Zen Online – David Parks with the 3rd of his zoom sessions on The Bird Path. Returns to the question: Where are you coming from? What we come out of in this time. Where we change our focus. As recorded May 14 2020.

Audio: PZI Zen Online – Sarah investigates the other within and the call of the beloved with ‘The Crag Called Empty One’ & the ‘Lindworm Tale’. Otherness, longing/yearning. What is required of the beloved? As recorded May 15 2020.

Audio PZI Zen Online- Deshan’s story of Mirror Bright Mountain, a Diamond Sutra scholar and his journey to awakening. His meeting with the zen teachers: ‘Tea Shack Lady’ & Dragon Pool. How his journey transforms everything including his destination. Suffering from our views and expertness. As recorded May 17 2020. Music Jordan McConnell, Michelle Riddle, Sarah Bender, Amy Fletcher.

Audio PZI Zen Online – ‘The Sieve’ koan – and the woman finding enlightenment. Michelle enters the nature of the Bodhisattva way and how we find ourselves on that path.

Audio: Dreams appear nightly reminding us not to chase shadows, and lose sight of our lives. They are the lives we are telling and showing.

Audio: ‘King’ Jesse is tired of talking about Zen, drinking the dregs of the real. He talks about the aliveness of his starter dough recipe vs ‘talking about Zen’. ‘Hope is the seed of delusion!’ Take the leap into the now. As recorded May 13, 2020

Audio: PZI Zen Online – Tess unleashes demons. Demons abound in our lockdown and they can be helpful! Our protective Psychic Immune system and what triggers a response. How we protect our ‘self’ image. Demons tend to employ certainty and cultivate a life or death field of response. What are they protecting? As recorded May 12 2020

Audio: PZI Zen Online – ‘Where are you coming from?’ What is is like to be you right now in covid 19 lockdown – navigating sadness, loss, looming poverty and loneliness. As recorded May 7, 2020

Audio: PZI Zen Online – As recorded May 6th 2020.

Audio: PZI Zen online Allison sits with Awakening. What is it? Awakening experience is outside of our control or will. It comes in a from a direction we don’t know about – a direction we have darkened. The sufficiency of the moment. Hakuin Ikkaku as a teacher and seeing into your essential nature. As recorded May 5, 2020.

Audio: PZI Zen online Tess talks a bit on zoom fatigue and what that implies .Practice as a way of focusing attention – on noticing – noticia or ‘how things become unhidden’. The intimacy of noticing and being noticed. As recorded April 28th.

Audio: Zen Online. John Tarrant on Mother’s Day sits with Hakuin’s : ‘The Woman at the the Inn’. Everything shines with a great light. Even in the shit! The mind thinks- not here, this can’t be it. Includes music by Ritchie Domingue, Jordan McConnell and Amy Fletcher.

Audio: PZI Zen Online – ‘Layman Pang asks: ‘What about the person who does not keep company with the 10000 things?’ Sarah Bender, Roshi muses on Mayday as a distress call that in French simply means Help Me! and other implications of the day as labor strike. The multiple nature of our existence now in lockdown. Stillness vs online connections. As recorded May 1 2020

Audio: PZI Zen Online, John Tarrant reminds us to enjoy the moment of now just as it is. There is empathy and delight even in dark days. The dark feminine endures. There is a spaciousness and transparency in all situations. The Way is open and does not depend on Me. As recorded with music from Jordan McConnell and Amaryllis Fletcher. May 3 2020.

AUDIO: PZI Online Zen. David sits with the koan: Bless Poverty. Talk, Meditation & closing music as recorded April 30th, 2020.

PZI Zen Online: Jon welcomes far flung participants on zoom and remembers the original Earth Day walks and festivities and all comment on vast implications of Yunmen’s koan. As recorded April 27th.

John Tarrant at Fall Sesshin 2019 – Being lost or between places is a fundamental human predicament. Being lost delivers you to yourself with an unknown outcomes. The teacher takes away the student’s need to know what’s unfolding on his pilgrimage. Zen likes predicaments as signs that things want to change.

John shares his interest in investigations onto reality – inquiry koans, koan types. The Watou of zen stories and more recorded at winter Sesshin January 2020.

PZI Zen Online: Michelle Riddle, Sensei on what we do when we feel trapped – whether from the Covid 19 lockdown, or our own expectations and beliefs. How do we escape? As recorded April 24th.

PZI Zen Online: Our ‘disorderly karmic consciousness’. John Tarrant, Roshi on ‘the mind at midnight’ explaining our experience even though we have: ‘No foundation to rely on!’ Koans stop our insistent minds. With an image, or a predicament they allow for a pause, a gate. As recorded April 26th.

Audio: Allison sits with the beautiful preface to the Blue Cliff Record – before Bodhidharma’s encounter with Emperor Wu. Noticing our strategies of controlling experience, which shut life out. Issa’s story of love and loss. As recorded April 21st.

Audio: Jesse reimagines Deshan’s classic enlightenment story. Some of the essential features of the journey of awakening, how we make koans our own, and the role that imagination plays in Zen. As recorded April 22nd.

‘Peach Blossoms’ – With John Tarrant, Roshi as recorded online, April 19 2020: Meditation & Dharma Talk plus comments from participants. Seeing the crimson of the peach blossoms across a canyon after seeking 30 years, a teacher is enlightened.