Description
Accepting the descent, and accepting the quality of being lost when it appears, is profoundly important. And there’s a great, strange, and interesting mystery in that.
Descent! Darken Further
Links to Audio, Video, & Text on the topic
Accepting the descent, and accepting the quality of being lost when it appears, is profoundly important. And there’s a great, strange, and interesting mystery in that.
In the dark, darken further.
—PZI Miscellanous Koans, Case 51 (Daodejing)
Accepting the Descent
In the Sea of Ise, ten thousand feet down, lies a single stone.
I want to pick up that stone
without getting my hands wet.—Pacific Zen Miscellaneous Koans, Case 27
TEXT: Unexpected Gifts: 10,000 Feet Down, the Stone – John Tarrant,
Sunday Zen, Spring 2020
AUDIO: 10,000 Feet Down, the Stone – John Tarrant, Sunday Zen, Spring 2020
AUDIO: Mysterious Tasks & Impossible Problems: The Stone – John Tarrant, Fall Sesshin 2021
The clearly enlightened person falls into a well.
—Baling’s Falling into a Well, PZI Miscellaneous Koans, Case 74
GUIDED MEDITATION: Falling into a Well – Jon Joseph, Winter 2021
TEXT: Falling with the Koan NO – John Tarrant, Sunday Zen, Spring 2023
Gifts of the Dark
INTERVIEW: Spilling Down Through All the Realms: The Light Inside the Dark – John Tarrant interviewed by Wes Nisker and Barbara Gates of Inquiring Mind Magazine, Spring 1999
Descending, we leave behind the way we were. Everything we have believed dissolves beneath us, as we enter a journey whose end we do not know.
—John Tarrant, from The Light Inside the Dark
John Tarrant reads his book, The Light Inside the Dark, paperback published Fall 1999
AUDIOBOOK: The Light Inside the Dark – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four
Gifts of the Deep Journey
Don’t keep lifting the lid on the rice pot. Things have to cook. There is the pressure of the journey as well as dissolution of the pressure. It is a vast journey—take the ride.
—John Tarrant
VIDEO: Paths in the Underworld: Music, Koans, & Stories for Our Time – John Tarrant, Garrison Institute, Spring 2020
AUDIO: Journey to the Underworld through Myth & Story – Jesse Cardin, Sunday Zen, Spring 2020
AUDIO: Allowing the Fall – Allison Atwill, Fall Sesshin 2020
AUDIO CLIP: Promising Darkness – Journey Into Awakening – John Tarrant, Sunday Zen, Winter 2020
AUDIO CLIP: Our Dark Fairytale Dreams Are It, Too – Allison Atwill, Sunday Zen, Winter 2021
MUSIC CLIP: The Journey Itself Is Home – Michael Wilding on saxophone, Sunday Zen, Winter 2022
VIDEO: Ancestral Stories: Opening to the Treasures of the Unconscious –John Tarrant, Weekend Retreat, Fall 2022
VIDEO: Trusting the Dao – John Tarrant, Winter Sesshin 2022
As koan work deepens, we get held, more—we’re just here. Something opens out in the darkness.
—John Tarrant
Related Materials & Koans
Hearing a crow with no mouth crying in the deep darkness of the night, I feel a longing for my father before he was born.
For ten years I was in turmoil, seething and angry, but now my time has come.
The crow laughs, an arhat emerges from the filth, in the sunlight a jade beauty sings.
—Poet Ikkyu
KOAN: Step by Step in the Dark – PZI Miscellaneous Koans, Case 72
KOAN: Dark Way Bird Path Open Hand – Dongshan
KOAN: The Journey Itself Is Home – Poet Basho
STORY: Dark Woods – Koan Story from Dante’s Divine Comedy
DHARMA THEME: Dragon Teachers & Magical Creatures – Into the Blue Dragon’s Cave