PZI Teacher Archives
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Allison Atwill -
David Parks -
David Weinstein -
Eduardo Fuentes -
Jesse Cardin -
John Tarrant -
Jon Joseph -
Michelle Riddle -
Tess Beasley
Yunmen
Winter Sesshin – Trusting in the Dao
Explanations of Zen, or of anything, are not it. Zen does not try to make you pure—it tries to make you whole. We can trust in the Dao, but by explaining it, we move away from it. Something deeper is going on, carrying us.
Sickness & Medicine – Deep Listening
It’s all medicine, really. Everything has Buddha nature, beauty and value. Healing is the big point of view. So the point is not to panic when the big moments come. If you can move out of your own point of view it becomes clearer. Complete Sunday Zen session from March 5, 2023.
Falling with the Koan NO
John Tarrant gives a talk on Zhaozhou’s NO: This koan is often offered as a first “gate,” but I think you need to already be in trouble and falling before it’s useful. Life is always offering us that cliff—that door of falling. When you’re falling, you can’t screw it up because actually there’s not a lot you can do. But what you do will be very free and won’t be constrained by the usual. From a recording made in Fall Sesshin 2022.
Sickness & Medicine: Healing Is Like Kissing – A Poem
It’s all medicine, really. Everything has Buddha nature, beauty and value. Healing is the big point of view. John Tarrant reads his poem, Healing Is Like Kissing, written for the dedication of an integrative medicine center. From Sunday Zen on March 5, 2023.
Sickness & Medicine – Deep Listening
It’s all medicine, really. Everything has Buddha nature, beauty and value. Healing is the big point of view. So the point is not to panic when the big moments come. If you can move out of your own point of view it becomes clearer. Complete Sunday Zen session with John Tarrant & Friends, recorded March 5, 2023. Includes comments from PZI teachers and music from Michael Wilding.
Winter Sesshin: Trusting in the Dao
Explanations of Zen, or of anything, are not it. Zen does not try to make you pure—it tries to make you whole. We can trust in the Dao, but by explaining it, we move away from it. Something deeper is going on, carrying us.
What Is This? An Ancient Question
What is this? is an ancient question—it holds our whole lives. That wondering is the essence of what it is to be human. If you allow wonder into a hard time, it will change it. The attempt to discover something is where the question or problem will change.
This Is the Treasure
Dharma talk given by John Tarrant on the last eve of Winter Sesshin 2023.
Carried by What Is True
When we meet, as in sesshin, we create and participate in a field of knowledge. There is a necessity of being lost on the path. Yunmen wants your descent—the better to allow the whole of life in. He asks, What is your light? He trusts the field to help people find their own way. Complete talk from Winter Sesshin 2023.
We Are Carried in the Dark – On Lostness & the Spiral Path of Practice
The Dharma is a spiral path of lostness. What will happen next? It’s dark. We’re here no matter what. When you think okay, I’m lost, what’s next? Trusting in the dark is the Way—it is not our business how we awaken.
The Project of Suffering vs The Reaching
What if, suddenly, it’s midnight? The usual navigational tools are not available. The reaching is the important component of this moment. Understanding the suffering we fabricate, which separates us, versus a fitting suffering which opens our hearts in connection. Complete talk from Winter Sesshin 2023.
The Project of Suffering vs The Reaching
What if, suddenly, it’s midnight? The usual navigational tools are not available. The reaching is the important component of this moment. Understanding the suffering we fabricate, which separates us, versus a fitting suffering which opens our hearts in connection. Complete talk from Winter Sesshin 2023.
A Koan Story – East Mountain Walks on Water
John Tarrant tells a long koan story of awakening: The East Mountain Walks on Water. Recorded during Sunday Zen on December 18, 2022: The Transformations in Things. 36 minutes.
The Transformation in Things
Complete Sunday Zen session recorded on December 18, 2022. Music from Jordan McConnell.
The Transformations in Things
In the darkest days of the year, we tend toward year’s end assessments as a kind of emptying of heart and mind before the new year. John Tarrant tells a shaggy-dog transformation tale beginning with the koan, “Where do all the Buddhas come from? East Mountain walks on water.” There is a strange journey, a fox, carp, tiger, dragon’s cave, and a meeting with the Buddha. When we are free in the current matter, it is easier to love others, and our hearts flow out and touch each other.
Fall Sesshin 2022: Falling Into the Well of Sesshin
Falling into the well of sesshin involves dissolving the you that had the problem. In Zen we are solving things one level down. We all have this ability, though it can be hard to see. John retells Jiashan’s strange journey toward awakening: He was falling and found purchase with an unexpected teacher, the mysterious Boat Monk. Comments and “teach us!” responses from teachers and sangha are included. Complete session from October 5, 2022.
The Lion with the Golden Hair
The tip of each hair on the golden-haired lion is itself a whole world, an image of all the galaxies, all piled together. This lion is warm-hearted, delighted with everything, having a generally good time no matter what kind of time we’re having.
The Great Collaborators of the Blue Cliff Record
Deep in Summer Sesshin, we are in the middle of the Blue Cliff Record. We, ourselves, are under the Blue Cliff, with Yunmen and Yunmen’s friends. We are all those people. The Blue Cliff is still being written, and we’re helping out with that project.
Talking to a Rock
Rocks come to everyone’s aid at a gathering, bringing enchantment and connection. From a talk in Summer Sesshin, June 15, 2022. 5 minutes.
Enter Here! Just Turn to the Koan
Just enter here—there’s no guilty or innocent. Turn to the koan, there is your refuge and simplicity, the deepest teaching. Recorded at Summer Sesshin on June 14th, 2022. 4 minutes.
What Is Most Urgent for Me? with Tess Beasley
Tess Beasley talks about what it means to turn toward pain and loss by embracing uncertainty. Memorial Day 2022. 5 minutes.
Enlightenment & Jam – Shopping for a Rhinoceros
Shopping for enlightenment. What is this? Things come at us and over us during an enlightenment experience—sometimes quite unusual. You are being carried by the Dao; it doesn’t care what else you’ve got going on. Music for meditation from Jordan McConnell and Micheal Wilding. Recorded May 15, 2022.
Beyond Clarity & Confusion
Jesse Cardin gets a phone call about a warrant for his arrest and enters the realms of clarity and confusion. Who can wait quietly till the mud settles? It’s not our business if we’re clear or confused. Whatever arrives carries us through. Stories and koans from the Odyssey, Daodejing, Yunmen, and a hermit who enters the jumbled mountains without a backward glance. As recorded April 24th, 2022.
Some Treasures of the Lost Cities
A quest, a treasure hunt, through cities overtaken by sands and ghosts and overwhelmed by the sea. We search for hidden teachings in scrolls, clay tablets, or dreams. Being lost is primary. In the koan lands we side with being lost when we turn toward uncertainty and wait, and whether we can bear it or not, a path opens. There is no end to this opening.
A Map for Getting Lost
It helps to be on the side of lostness when the world goes to hell in a handbasket (Ukraine). All we have to do is be here and be lost—no usual schemes or regrets. Let the universe teach you. Accomplishing is not the deepest thing. Being lost is a promising beginning. Getting lost is good for finding personal practices.
Zen & the Art of Meditation Series: Part 1
Dharmakaya koans open the body of reality—this is one of those koans: Yunmen’s “What is your light?” The light is always happening, so it is a good thing to notice. In times like these, this koan is one to ally with. Is there an art of meditation? It begins and ends with you. Music from Michael Wilding, Amaryllis Fletcher & Jordan McConnell.
Unexpected Gifts: 10,000 Feet Down, The Stone
John Tarrant talks about living in an underworld time, in a descent as a culture and as a world, and as a planet. 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.
Awakenings of Linji & the Great Chan Teachers
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.
Placebo, Chronic Fatigue, & Dormitive Principles
I’m getting used to the thought that many things that seem as if they belong in the realm of the body are also influenced by the mind. Placebo studies indicate that even surgery can be a placebo. In medical school the faculty will sometimes say to students that they should use a drug a lot when it first comes out while people still believe in it. There is a Zen koan that goes “The whole world is medicine,” and the joke is that it could go, “The whole world is placebo.”
Dharma Theme: Summer Sesshin 2021 – In the Palace at the Blue Cliff
Here is a curation of sesshin dharma talks on a single page, for easy finding and listening. A sesshin is always more than the sum of its parts or its recorded talks. There are morning rituals, greetings, incense passed magically through the screen, the changing light, rich silences, moments of humor, tech gremlins, tears, synchronicities, dogs barking, dreams, and awakenings that we share. It is the timeless play of the universe, with each other. As recorded in the PZI Digital Temple, June 22-27, 2021.