Audio Library

PZi Zen Online: Handing Things on in the Dark. The dark silent time of the year has lasted for 9 months in covid. ‘The whole meaning of your life is in the current matter happening now.’ No explaining it – ‘To be deeply in zen is to be deeply in how to express it.’ First vaccines too and the mysterious freedoms. Jan. 3 2021.John Tarrant welcomes the new year and tours the deep thick dark of midnight. He reads poems by Gerard Manly Hopkins, Anna Swir, Czeslaw Milosz and more. Music from Jordan McConnell & Amaryllis Fletcher.

Audio Excerpt: Handing Things on in the Dark – the freshness of the new year. The dark silent time of the year. ‘To be deeply in zen is to be deeply in how to express it.’ The mysterious freedoms of the dark. Jan. 3 2021; 2 minutes

PZI Sesshin Dedication and thanks to our Ancestors. Music written & performed by Richie Domingue.

PZI Sesshin Closing Ceremony: Dedication for Remembrance chanted by Rachel Boughton Roshi.

PZI Sesshin Closing Ceremony: Dedication of Remembrance. Music written and performed by Richie Domingue.

PZI Zen Online: Four Women Zen Teachers of PZI tell a winter tale, the story of a vast moment that interrupted a battle in the middle of World War I. The Guanyins Allison Atwill, Tess Beasley, Sarah Bender & Michelle Riddle share the telling and teaching with meditation, poetry and reflection. Jordan McConnell on guitar. As recorded Dec 27 2020.

PZI Zen Online: The last Journey Into Awakening on the last Sunday of 2020. Meeting the intangible in the dark. Showing up for mysterious possibility. Trusting the mystery to make a feast of this strange time. Zen is familiar with impossible tasks! Showing up for them is a blessing for others too. As recorded Dec 20 2020. 15 minutes.

PZI Zen Online: Jon Joseph Roshi invites us to have tea with Tathagata. As recorded Dec 7 2020.

PZI Zen Online: Journey Into Awakening with John Tarrant Roshi. John’s Sunday dharma talk and meditation session included original music written and performed by Michael Wilding on saxophone. Thank you from all of us. As recorded Dec 13 2020.

PZI Zen Online: The Journey into Awakening. A student asks Baizhang, “What is the most marvelous thing—a matter of special worth?” He answers, “Sitting alone on Mt. Courage Peak.” Our internal vastness is always there. The importance of an imaginative response to any time of change. The wisdom of an indigenous storyteller who embodies a much longer timeline of radical earth changes. The freedom of not being you. Dec 13 2020. Music posted separately.

PZI Zen Online: At PZI we say that every bit of awakening is all of awakening. In fact, the barrier for awakening is so low that our sutra dedication says that “ants, sticks, and grizzly bears can easily jump over.” The bar is low, the gate wide open, the invitation given and never rescinded!

PZI Zen Online – Audio Excerpt: John Tarrant reads Naomi Nye’s famous poem, Kindness. Losing everything to find it. Every day small kindnesses open into the silence. The universe is so rich in destinations that you are always already in one! As recorded Nov 29 2020. 21 minutes.

PZI Zen Online: Journey Into Awakening. Where is your true nature? Right there in your wild temple.

PZI Zen Online – Jordan McConnell plays during Sunday meditation. As recorded Nov. 29 2020.

PZI Zen Online – People go to wild places to find their true nature? The wild is here right now in your own wild temple. Anything can happen in the wildness of now. Small kindnesses that open into the silence. The universe is so rich in destinations that you are already at one! The beauty of joining in meditation in difficult times. Complete session recorded Nov. 29, 2020. 1 hour – Music from Jordan McConnell , Amaryllis Fletcher.

PZI Zen Online – The Journey Into Awakening: A story excerpted especially for this Covid lockdown Thanksgiving. A woman gets a task that seems impossible and which she must practice without fail for a year. As recorded Nov 22, 17 minutes.

PZI Zen Online- Journey Into Awakening – A talk for Thanksgiving in this unusual time of covid lockdown. The benefits of doing something difficult and the ‘palace of solitude’. Within emptiness intimacy is always available, so we can touch what is beautiful and hear the voices that always accompany us. Mazu – ‘Your current circumstance, where you are now is the meaning of your existence’. As recorded Nov. 22. 9:23 minutes

PZI Zen Retreat – Ordinary Mind, Extraordinary Times:

PZi Zen Online – Hanging Lanterns in the Autumn Valley. The Valley Spirit holding us – the mother deep. A big moment in our time, post election. How to cope with Bad Emperors and accord with change. Also: What is my place in the mandala? Finding joy in the thusness of things in all circumstances. Not seeing the light is also the light. ‘Where is Medicine? – bring me something that is not medicine’. Bring me something that is not the light! Nov. 8 2020.

PZi Zen Online – An audio excerpt form John Tarrants’ Sunday session. Music: ‘Sugar’ from Jesse cardin Roshi. As recorded on zoom Nov. 15 2020

PZI Zen Online: John Tarrant on the Journey into Awakening in zen, in our lives and how it purifies. Deshan’s cart full of Diamond Sutra commentaries and our own strategies of resistance. Music from Jesse Cardin, Amaryllis Fletcher, Jordan McConnell. As recorded Nov. 15 2020.

PZI Zen Online 1 Day retreat: On the Banks of the ghost River – Part 2 – Afternoon session. Reflections on the koan and the story of Tam Lin and brave Janet. Comments, Tess & John reflect. Closing. As recorded oct. 31 2020

PZI 1 Day retreat – Part 1, Morning Session of On the Banks of the Ghost River with John Tarrant & Tess Beasley. John Reads the Ballad of Tam Lin in which a brave girl helps her lover, caught in the Faery Queens’s caterhaugh, transform. Dharma talk and comments from participants. Complete session as recorded Oct. 31 2020.

Audio Excerpt from PZI 1-Day Retreat – Morning Session of On the Banks of the Ghost River with John Tarrant & Tess Beasley. John Reads the Ballad of Tam Lin in which a brave girl helps her lover, caught in the Faery Queens’s caterhaugh (boggy fen), transform. As recorded Oct. 31 2020. (complete session in 2 parts available)

PZI Zen Online – Zen Tuesday session with Sarah Bender. Sarahs’s talk with comments. Features Sarah’s tender story of her brother, Tom plus meditation & reflections on immensity entering a life in so many ways. Vimalakirti’s room. ‘What’s so so close you don’t even think it counts’. As recorded, Oct 27 2020.

PZI Zen Online: John Tarant’s talk as part of recorded Sunday session on Oct. 25th, 2020.

PZI Zen Online – Part of the Zen Tuesdays in October 2020. Zouzhou’s message to a novice: ‘Wash your Bowls’. A zendo plaque in Japan: ‘Look under your feet’. – focus on what is hidden in plain sight, right under you, obvious and overlooked. Like the migratory Golden Crowned Sparrows returning in fall. Ikkyu’s Attention! Attention! Attention! Complete session as recorded Oct. 20, 2020.