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
Zhuangzi
Dharma Theme: Animal Teachers
Animals 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, and that is a primary Zen move. The way we become the world that we are part of, is a profound part of Zen.
Watching the Tracks of the Flying Birds
John remarks on being freed from the hospital after a brush with Covid and more, and feeling our ties to the birds, symbolizing freedom through their ability to take off at will. Also: The legend of the painter who disappeared on the back of a painted crane, and the Zhuangzi’s fish named Kuhn who becomes a bird. Recorded April 23, 2023
Watching the Tracks of the Flying Birds
John remarks on being freed from the hospital after a brush with Covid and more, and feeling our ties to the birds, symbolizing freedom through their ability to take off at will. Also: The legend of the painter who disappeared on the back of a painted crane, and the Zhuangzi’s fish named Kuhn who becomes a bird. Recorded April 23, 2023
Everywhere! It’s Everywhere You Look
Zhuangzi said, “We wander in borderless vastness; Great Knowledge enters in, and we don’t know where it will ever end.” Dharma talk given by John Tarrant in a Sunday Zen session on February 26, 2023.
Everywhere – It’s Everywhere You Look
“Feeling the time,” is a line from the poet Du Fu—the time is always with us. And it’s always too early to despair. We’re just here. Not wanting anything to be different. Objections are full of knowing! You step out of the way you are perceiving the world, the dream of who you are, you turn the light backward. Recorded February 26, 2023.
Carl Jung’s Red Book
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.
Solstice, Juneteenth, a Butterfly Flies Up!
Even a time of torpor, or a time when plans come apart, or we thought the culture was going in one way and it’s going in another—we rely on the spaciousness, we rely on not what we’ve planned and schemed, but we rely on what’s been opened up in our hearts. Transcript from the PZI Zen Online recording from Sunday, June 21, 2020.
Free & Easy Wandering Series: Meditation
A guided koan meditation with John Tarrant, recorded Sunday May, 2021. PZI Zen Online. 6 minutes.
Free & Easy Wandering Series: Following the Scented Grass
John Tarrant begins with a wild Daoist story from the Zhuangzi, about a giant fish named Kun. The freedom is in your own breast and the koan path opens the way. Includes meditation segments, music from Michael Wilding, vows from Jordan McConnell & Amaryllis Fletcher, Cantor. PZI Zen Online. As recorded May 2, 2021.
The Great Turning: Solstice, Juneteenth, A Butterfly Flies Up!
Solstice and the big wheels turn. Juneteenth celebrations & demonstrations are encouraging. Navigating and feeling the covid bardos of long confinement. Has nothing happened? Maybe all sorts of things are happening? “We can’t stay here long.” What is a border? Old injustices are looming. Readings from Slave Narratives, poetry of Li Bai, Alberto Rios, Czeslaw Milosz. Sunday Zen session recorded June 21, 2020.
The Transformation of Things
Allison talks about the transformation of things from a story in the Zhuangzi, where Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly. Our plans to become a butterfly are a kind of pressing into ourselves and the world. The flaw is in thinking we have to learn how to transform. Morning dharma talk in Summer Sesshin at Mount Madonna Center, recorded in July 2019.
Knock on Any Door – Daoist Masters and Zen Koans
John Tarrant talks about the bond between Daoism and Chan Zen. See transcription with same name https://www.pacificzen.org/library/knock-on-any-door-daoist-masters-zen-koans/
Zhuangzi Dreamed He was A Butterfly
From Sunday July 21st Introductory talk for the 2019 Summer Sesshin