Description
WELCOME! A Dharma Theme is a curated content collection on a topic or theme. This list contains all of our Dharma Themes to date, including topics of interest and sesshin audio collections.
List of Dharma Themes
WELCOME! This list contains all of our dharma themes to date, including topics of interest and sesshin audio collections. You may browse it by scrolling. To search by name, visit our KALPA Library and type in your search criteria.
What Is a PZI Dharma Theme?
These are curated events from our vast KALPA library, based on a theme from our sessions and practice. So, a compilation of various types of files: transcripts, audios, art, music, and videos.
TOPICS of INTEREST
ADRIFTThe mind is a great artist, ceaselessly creating and assessing problems. The territory of the koan is finding the delicious helplessness of the mind and body, and settling into that—it’s the robe of the moment.
ANIMAL TEACHERSAnimals give us the gifts of their living presence, and we feel the profound effect they have on our lives. Animals surprise and enlarge us. We become the animal we are seeing—a primary Zen move. The way we become the world that we are part of, is a profound part of Zen.
ARTICLES BY JOHN TARRANTHere you’ll find a list of links to published articles written by John Tarrant. Publication credits are included in each file.
BAIZHANG’S FOX – CAUSE & EFFECT IN A FOX LIFE
How many lifetimes do we spend in our fox suits? They are not wasted. All forms are part of the lively package of existence. Turning words and sudden awakenings even from long-suffering can appear anywhere and in the most unexpected ways.
DEALING WITH DEMONSIf you’ve got demons, you’re alive! But you don’t have to get on board with them. Demons come out of your own heart, just like enlightenment.
DESCENT! DARKEN FURTHERAccepting 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.
DRAGON TEACHERS & MAGICAL CREATURES
Anything might be in the Blue Dragon’s cave: awakening, memories, sorrows, dance moves—all the possibilities of your life might be there. You just fall into meditation in the Blue Dragon’s cave. Perhaps your whole life is blessed—every struggle and confusion itself.
FIRE: THE EXTREMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE
We know that we’re felling ancient trees, burning fossil fuels, melting the sustaining ice, finding leaders who pretend we have no part in the changes that overwhelm us. We are suffering from forces greater than us and also from ourselves; we too are forces beyond our control.
FRIENDSHIPS & MEETINGS – ATTACHMENTS FORMED IN THE DAO
Zen is about meeting—we make friends with each koan and allow the universe to work with and through us. The sweetness, and even the gnarly bits of friendship are part of the intimacy at the center of meeting.
GREAT ANCESTOR DONGSHAN: stay tuned
GREAT ANCESTOR LINJIMeet Great Ancestor Linji: “A nine-colored Phoenix, a thousand-mile horse.” That’s how Linji was described in early Chan times.
GREAT ANCESTOR YUNMEN – CLOUD GATE: stay tuned
GREAT SILENCEHave confidence: just go into the silence. The absolute is always there. Inside it all, there’s freedom. There’s no situation where infinity is not there.
GREATEST HITS – MASTER MA, DONGSHAN,
LINJI, YUNMEN, & ZHAOZHOU: stay tuned
GUANYIN IN THE PAVILION UNDER THE AUGUST MOON
Four PZI Teachers give talks on Guanyin Manifesting in the Elements:
Space, Earth, Water, Air, Fire.
GUANYIN’S TASK – COMPASSION: stay tuned
HAIKU FOR YOUKoans and poetry tumble over each other. Old Zen masters used snatches of poetry as koans. Good poetry has an objective quality and is related to koanville in that way. It does not try to persuade or recruit.
HAKUIN’S PRAISE SONG FOR MEDITATION
Four PZI Teachers give talks on Hakuin’s Praise Song for Meditation.
HOME AND NOT HOMEIt is the Chan way to understand that the fullness of life resides in us, and the experience of life, whatever it is, is all for you. Our task is to have the life we have.
IMMENSITY IS TAPPINGFour talks explore awakening as a fundamentally creative act, in which we discover that we ourselves are that immensity, and learn to listen more closely to the humming intelligence of all life.
INK DRAWINGS OF HAKUIN EKAKUHere you will find a sampling of ink drawings by the great Zen ancestor Hakuin Ekaku.
IN THE WILD: MOUNTAIN KOANS & POEMS
You have arrived at the base of cliffs; you can’t scale them, you can’t get around them, and there’s no handy tunnel through them. It’s a daunting place—that’s the point of it. And when you arrive here your life and your journey can become your own.
JOHN TARRANT’S ZENOSAURUS KOANS
19 Koans with introductions and commentaries from John Tarrant, as first published on his website, tarrantworks.
KARMA & SCORN: stay tuned
LANDSCAPE AS TEACHERWhen we wake up and see our true place in the universe, it’s as if we have stepped out of a landscape and then we’re willing to step back into it. Then, we have our true place in the universe.
NOT GETTING IT – DOING IT WRONG
Making a mistake opens the tenderness in us and can be more helpful than not making one. Then, the mistakes are not mistakes.
OXHERDING: stay tuned
PAST MIDNIGHT – DISCOVERIES IN THE DARK
These dharma talks and texts, like Dongshan’s First Rank, wander in the hours before moonrise when anything can appear. Being lost, or in the dark, is a necessary condition on the Way.
PRIMAL DARK, MASTER BROADRANGE, & CHAOTIC BLOB!
DAOIST ROMPS IN THE ZHUANGZI: stay tuned
Here you’ll find audio clips from various PZI Talk Live meetings, presenting topics of interest, wonder, or confusion—the intent being to help ourselves sit up and notice that we are alive!
PZI SUTRAS: stay tuned
SICKNESS AND MEDICINEWhen I am sick, wellness is the me I imagine I’ll get back to. I can’t always be sure what is healing and what is the opposite.
STOP SUFFERINGWe’re always looking for a recipe or data points to get a handle on happiness. The most profoundly simple but difficult challenge is to let ourselves transform into ourselves.
TEACHINGS OF GREAT MASTER MAThe teachings of Great Ancestor Mazu: A curated list of references from our KALPA Library, on this old teacher in our lineage.
TEA LADIES, HERMITS, & OTHER STRANGE TEACHERS ALONG THE WAY
An unsuspecting traveler—consumed with their own knowledge and problems—may encounter a tiny wayside establishment with a deeply mysterious proprietor on hand.
THE PANGS: stay tuned
WHAT IS THIS, ANYWAY?What is this? is an ancient question—it holds our whole lives. That wondering is the essence of what it is to be human.
WHERE DO WE GO WHEN WE DIE?Questions about death and the after-death are a part of the traditional Chan koan curriculum. Dignified by their antiquity, they are the primordial instance of that which cannot be negotiated with.
YOUR LIGHTIn Zen, one lamp lights another but is never extinguished.
ZEN LUMINARIES ARCHIVEJon Joseph & Friends host a series of Zen Buddhist scholars, writers, poets, translators, and practitioners for lively discussions, with a focus on our Chan lineage.
RETREAT AUDIO COLLECTIONS
Silence,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
The Autumn of Awakening,
in person at Mount Madonna Center
Mountain Flowers Bloom Like Brocade, Valley Streams Are Deepest Indigo,
in person at Mount Madonna Center
Hearing the Voice of Raindrops
online in the PZI Digital Temple
The Manifestations of the 1000-Armed Goddess of Mercy,
in person at Santa Sabina Center
The Summer of Zen: Meeting the Inconceivable,
in person at Santa Sabina Center
Where Do You Go When You Die? & Other Miscellaneous Koans
in person at Santa Sabina Center
All of Autumn Is in the One Leaf,
in person at Santa Sabina Center
The Storehouse of Treasures Opens by Itself,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
Creatures of the Summer Dawn,
in person at Santa Sabina Center
A Solitary Boat Making Its Way,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
Door After Door Opening Inside: Meditations, Dreams,
and the Deepest Teachings, Under the October Moon,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
Taking Part in the Gathering:
Great Sesshin, Great Gathering, Summer Moon,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
Winter & Silver, Moonlight & Snow,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
Metamorphosis and the Miscellaneous Koans,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
Summer in the Palace at the Blue Cliff:
Master Koans and Masterpieces for Transformation,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
2021 SPRING SESSHINAfter the Dark and the Cold, Come the Blossoms,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
Through Winter Silence Into New Light
online in the PZI Digital Temple
Gathering in the Valley of Our Time,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
2020 SUMMER SESSHIN: stay tuned
Into the Blue Dragon’s Cave,
online in the PZI Digital Temple
2020 WINTER SESSHIN: stay tuned
Knock on Any Door: Daoist Masters & Zen Koans,
in person at Mount Madonna Center
2019 FALL SESSHIN: stay tuned
Fall Sesshin,
in person at Mount Madonna Center
2019 SUMMER SESSHIN: stay tuned
Summer Sesshin,
in person at Mount Madonna Center