PZI Teacher Archives

trust

Audio July 31, 2023

Refuge – No Escape Hatch

Allison Atwill, John Tarrant

It is part of being human to have complex, multiple views. We are always communing with what is here. There is no escape hatch out of this life into another one. Where would we go? The Dao takes its own time with our intractable problems and suffering. We already know we want to live the truest, most authentic life we can, before we think refuge.

60' 0"
Video April 1, 2023

Gifts from the Far Ocean

Jesse Cardin

Our greatest tool from practice is a calm center in the middle of turbulence. My journey’s trajectory and outcome is not completely in my hands. It is hard to say whether circumstances are fortunate or not: are we drifting toward the rakshasas, or is it clear sailing? Lessons from a Polynesian legend: Trust your life, locate with love. As recorded March 18, 2023. Music for meditation from Michael Wilding.

71' 26"
Audio March 28, 2023

Gifts from the Far Ocean

Jesse Cardin

Our greatest tool from practice is a calm center in the middle of turbulence. My journey’s trajectory and outcome is not completely in my hands. It is hard to say whether circumstances are fortunate or not: are we drifting toward the rakshasas, or is it clear sailing? Lessons from a Polynesian legend: Trust your life, locate with love. As recorded March 18, 2023. Music for meditation from Michael Wilding.

71' 27"
Video January 25, 2023

Resting in the Great Silence at the Beginning

Jesse Cardin

Wherever you are, even in the places you are certain the silence is NOT, it is there enfolding you. Even at Walmart with a toddler, in a flood, or at the doctor’s office—it is there, blooming. We are always stepping into that emptiness. Complete January Sunday Zen session, Part 2.

69' 36"
Video July 14, 2022

Trusting Your Moves

Tess Beasley

Things talk to us and the right moves appear, and then we doubt them! From a talk in Summer Sesshin on June 15, 2022. 6 minutes.

6' 29"
Video July 12, 2022

Our Part in the Gathering

Tess Beasley

It’s all here—we’re already taking part in the gathering. We each hold our part so we can experience it together. Recorded during Summer Sesshin on June 15, 2022. 4 minutes.

3' 53"
Text September 23, 2021

Awakenings of Linji & the Great Chan Teachers

John Tarrant

John revisits the awakenings and koans of the great teachers, among them Yunmen and Linji. The love, and attention, and faithfulness at the heart of the stories and teachings of the Chan ancestors is their gift to us. And everything we bring to it is an addition into this great heritage, and is part of the layering. Transcript from a video talk in Fall Sesshin 2019.

4443 Words

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Article September 17, 2021

Carl Jung’s Red Book

John Tarrant

Jung’s journey is interesting, harrowing, ridiculous, pompous, incomprehensible, amusing, sad, frightening, wise—the whole range of the human is there. Jung’s point of meeting with Buddhism is that, at a time when darkness seemed and was near, he offered the example of a trust in the deepest possibility of transformation, and in the involuntary processes that we contain, and in the depths of what it is to be human.

2200 Words

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Article September 8, 2021

Let Me Count the Ways

John Tarrant

Love is an enlightenment story available to everyone, and that story includes being attacked by demons as well as being showered with roses. If we widen our gaze, in love, we discover what we like about ourselves and how we want to live our lives.

2661 Words
Text March 2, 2021

Koans in Your Life

John Tarrant

To turn toward the difficult thing is usually a move of compassion. We think it’ll be a fierce warrior move, but it’s not, actually. And when we turn toward what’s difficult, it becomes mysterious and unknown and strange and interesting. Whatever it is, your dilemma—if you turn toward that, it’s to let the koan be there. So we stop trying to flee. And suddenly we’re at peace, and instead of it being the thing that we don’t want to do, it’s the gateway into freedom.

4445 Words
Text February 17, 2021

Freely I Watch the Tracks of the Flying Birds

John Tarrant

Everybody, every time, has its own difficulty and crisis. This is ours. We can trust our own lives that brought us here, and perhaps we have something to do here. And we don’t know what that is but we’ll find it as we keep walking. The thing about the meditation path is, I don’t have to think a lot about what’s mine to do. You just give yourself to the meditation, and it’s produced for you. It’s given to you. The path opens by itself, you know. Transcript of PZI Zen Online Sunday Talk with John Tarrant, recorded March 29 2020.

5504 Words
Audio January 26, 2021

Trusting the Universe in the Deep Dark

John Tarrant

PZI Zen Online: Excerpted from Handing Things On in the Dark—the universe takes care of us in the middle of deep thick darkness.

1' 42"
Video July 6, 2017

The Buffalo and the Lattice Window

John Tarrant

John opens the Harvest Moon Retreat at the Angela Center with an ancient koan about a buffalo passing through a lattice window. “It is like a buffalo passing through a window. Its head, horns, and four legs have all passed through. Why is it that its tail cannot?” Meditation on the tail and the question of the tail. What is the tail, why could a huge buffalo enter but the tail cannot? —As recorded October 13, 2013.

23' 56"