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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260420T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260420T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260217T165402Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260417T113144Z
UID:10002309-1776708000-1776713400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Never Born\, Never Die
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nOn a hilltop outside of Otsuchi\, Japan\, stands a telephone booth painted white. Inside is the simple rotary-style telephone\, called the “Wind Phone (Kaze no Denwa).” It is not connected to any telephone lines\, but is there for anyone who has lost a loved one to go into the booth and give them a call. Since the Tohoku Earthquake of 2011\, which killed ten percent of Otsuchi’s population\, many thousands of people from around the world have gone there to hold one-way conversations with the departed. Where do their loved ones go when they die? \nIn Zen\, there is a famous triptych of koans called Doushuai’s Three Barriers. The first asks\, As you’re searching for your true nature in the weeds and dark places of life\, where is that nature right now? The second asks\, When the light of your eyes dims\, how will you be free? The third questions: \nWhen you’re free from birth and death\, you know where to go. When your four elements separate\, where do you go? \nLast weekend I attended the memorial service for a Zen friend at one of the zendos he frequented over his many decades of practice. It was a warm tribute to the “Trickster Monk” as his son called him\, but I was also surprised at how simple it was. The hundred or so people took seats arrayed around the altar\, upon which sat an urn of the monk’s ashes. Three officiants\, all Soto priests\, came in and said a few words. The assembly chanted a couple of sutras\, drums were hit and bells rung\, the family spoke\, and then everyone filed out. Rain beat down heavily on the Zendo roof. A quiet ceremony. Low key. Loving and honoring. Where did he go? \nTraditional Buddhist faith says that there are nine states of mind; including the six senses\, the ego\, the karmic storehouse\, and pure consciousness itself. Yamada Koun wrote that upon death\, the senses may be lost\, but the ego and karmic storehouse remain; all a function of the greater pure consciousness\, which is neither born nor dies. These states of mind are “as though they were waves on the water of a vast ocean.” One time during a teisho I remember him admitting he really had no idea if there was some transmigration of the soul after death. All that is immutable is pure consciousness: “We were not born\,” he said\, “And we do not die.” \nThe weekend I left Japan for good after some years\, Yamada fell down some stairs and was incapacitated. A year later\, I was in Japan by chance for one week\, and visited him during a Sunday Zenkai. Unconscious in bed\, he was very pale. Three days later\, the Roshi passed away. On Friday night\, about a dozen people held a wake before the formal funeral\, to be held the next day. We sat in the Zendo\, only steps away from his casket\, and then chatted and drank sake late into the night. Finally\, we laid out our futons\, the ones we used during sesshin\, and slept in the Zendo with Yamada’s casket. It was one of the most blessed sleeps I have ever had. Early the next morning\, as the run was rising\, I put away my futon and headed to the airport for my return trip to the U.S. \nWhen he was dying\, Yunmen concluded as his last admonition\, “If you don’t understand\, the Buddhas have a clear teaching—follow and practice it.” To practice\, we don’t need to know where we are going after we die. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-7/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Otsuchi_wind_phone.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260413T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260413T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260217T165443Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260411T104759Z
UID:10002310-1776103200-1776108600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Starry Night
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nNanquan then added\, “The Way does not belong to knowing or not-knowing. Knowing is delusion; not-knowing is dullness.\n“When we really have reached the true Way beyond all doubt\, we find it as vast and boundless as outer space.\n“How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong?” \nThe ineffability of outer space\, of Sol\, Luna\, stellae\, and beyond: star systems upon star systems\, galaxy upon galaxy stretching to the furthest corners of the universe. And what is all that vastness? \nZhaozhou leads off the koan by asking his teacher Naquan:\n“What is the Way?”\nNanquan responds simply:\n“Ordinary mind is the Way.” \nNanquan is telling us our lives\, which we often see as small and narrow\, are larger than we can possibly imagine. That our ordinary\, everyday mind is actually vast and boundless; it is the universe itself. We somehow know this to be true and seek a kind of intimacy with the ineffable by seeking to name it: Venus\, Jupiter\, Crab Nebula\, and other star systems which make up the mages of heroes and serpents moving across the dark night fabric. We dream of going out to meet the unknowable. \nMy own ordinary thoughts have been saturated with stories of space travel in recent weeks. NASA’s Artemis program\, with its fresh pictures of the dark side of the moon\, took me back to the summer of 1969. My father had just bought us a new color set (“Don’t sit too close! The radiation is bad for you!”) and the whole family\, including us six kids\, two parents\, and our terrier Daisy\, crammed into our small T.V. room to watch Neil Armstrong step off the lander’s ladder (in B&W\, of course). How exciting it was! \nI have also been recently inthralled by a grand tale of humans\, aliens\, and microbes venturing into the outer Dao in Project Hail Mary. In the movie\, a fantastical Hollywood blockbuster\, Ryan Gosling is sent twelve light-years away to the Tau Ceti system to find out why the microbe Astrophage (“star eater”)\, which is happily supping on our Sun’s life\, is not destroying that distant star. Gosling portrays Dr. Ryland Grace\, a brilliant molecular biologist who flames out of academia\, becomes an ordinary middle-school science teacher\, and then saves all of humanity. \nAs good as the movie was\, I’ve finished the audio version of the Project Hail Mary novel by the sci-fi master Ron Weir\, and enjoyed it even more. The audio book is read by actor Ray Porter\, whose voice has an uncanny resemblance to Robert Downey\, Jr. \nBut if inside and outside are not two—ordinary mind and space are one single body–what about the mind of the inner Dao? So often in practice—at least it has been my experience—we look outside for purity\, solutions\, salvation\, when we can only really find it inside our own hearts and minds. \nTwo friends\, Yantou and Xuefeng were stuck in a small hut during a snow storm on Tortoise Mountain. Yantou sleeps while Xuefeng meditates. Xuefeng tells Yantou he should be meditating\, and Yantou replies his friend is sitting like a “clay buddha” and should get some food and rest. Xuefeng admits that his heart is not yet at rest. Yantou responds\, “Haven’t you heard it said that ‘what comes in through the gate [from outside yourself] is not the family treasure?’…You must let it flow from your own breast\, and in the future your teaching will cover heaven and earth.” Yantou’s words changed his friend’s life. \nPerhaps the most valuable lesson from the Artemis program and Project Hail Mary is that we need not catapult into outer space to try and find decency and wholeness. In a world beset with digital poisons and social cruelties\, these space tales provide messages of friendship over isolation\, sacrifice over personal gain\, knowledge over ignorance. We need to tell ourselves and each other again and again that these things matter. Hail Mary is a prayer whispered for our salvation; one perhaps worth listening to. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-9/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Starry-Night_500.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260406T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260406T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260217T165512Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260403T181248Z
UID:10002308-1775498400-1775503800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: It's Hard Being a Human
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nA student asked Zhaozhou\, “For a long time I’ve heard about the stone bridge of Zhaozhou. But now that I’ve come\, I see only a log across the river.”\nZhaozhou said\, “You only see the log\, you just don’t see the stone bridge.”\n“What is the stone bridge like?”\n“It helps donkeys cross over\, horses cross over.”  \nI recently came across Koun Yamada’s commentary on this case: \nThe essential world is not one thing. Just as a perfectly white movie screen is covered with various images as the film progresses\, the bridge lets donkeys and horses cross. The bridge corresponds to the movie screen. Although the screen is still white\, in the essential world\, which is the stone bridge\, even the color is gone. It is across the bridge of emptiness that horses and donkeys pass. \nSince the early months of my practice\, this metaphor has made a deep impression on me. We need the empty screen of the universe as a kind of bridge and the screen needs the content of our movie—the horses and donkeys of our lives—to be fulfilled. How we appear and pass over together is a mystery. \nOnce a year\, I sign onto the intoxicating glamour\, creativity and beauty of the Oscars. It was especially fun this year because a friend had a small role in a film up for Best Picture\, an adventure he detailed a few months ago in a newspaper article. They shot some of his scenes in Japan\, which he calls home. Often self-effacing\, he mentioned to me that he took the role mostly to support his family\, but also for him\, he said\, it was a leap into the unknown. Horses cross over. \nIn the early 1980s\, I too got an invitation to appear in a Japanese movie. Through an acquaintance\, I met Yumiko\, an ekisutra actress. She needed a “foreigner boyfriend” to partner with\, so we agreed to meet on the set in a couple of weeks. The movie series Otoko wa Tsurai Yo (It’s Hard To Be a Man)\, popularly known as Tora-san (Mr. Tiger)\, is named after the n’er-do-well street merchant who always falls in love with a leading lady of the time\, then bolts just before the consummate their friendship. It was a hugely popular genre series that appealed to the Japanese working class: Tora-san was the antithesis of the new Japanese salaryman\, who increasingly felt regimented by the country’s economic miracle and estranged from traditional home and family. The series ran twice annually for 26 years and became one of the iconic franchises in Japanese film history. \nWe got to the film location\, a Western restaurant outside of Kamakura\, and briefly met Yoji Yamada\, the writer and director. We were soon handed us off to an assistant director and I got a backpack and baseball cap to wear. Tora-san and his sister’s family were having lunch. As extras\, our role was to walk by the family’s table\, bump into the kid star\, and quickly exit the restaurant to be seen in an action background through a picture window as the family continued to talk. On the second take\, I jostled the boy and said “Sumimasen! (excuse me)”\, which turned out to be the one speaking role of my movie career. Uncredited. Later\, the director called me a “natural.” Donkeys cross over too. \nYamada had known Yumiko since she was a child; her father was a well-known novelist and she grew up hanging out on the Shochiku lot picking up occasional bit parts. On the lot\, she met a young man and they decided to go to Hollywood to break into American movies. Unsuccessful\, they left the city and moved to the mountains of California. While there\, her young husband got sick\, was rushed to the hospital\, but succumbed to his illness. The doctors later diagnosed bubonic plague\, which rats first carried to California on a steamship from Asia at the turn of the last century. Though rare\, the plague continues to live in the ground squirrel population in the Western U.S. \nUtterly devastated\, Yumiko returned to Japan\, and Tora-san’s Yamada read about her tragic story in the newspaper. He called her up: “I want you to be in my next film\,” he said\, “But you need to find a foreigner as your boyfriend.” It is wonderful when we can cross over together. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-10/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/donkey-bridge.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260330T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260330T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260217T165831Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260327T143426Z
UID:10002306-1774893600-1774899000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Muddy Water: Love and Life in the Midst of Pain
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nA student asked Zhaozhou\, “Does a newborn baby have consciousness?”\nZhou replied\, “It’s like tossing a ball on rushing waters.”\nThe student went on to ask Touzi\, “What does tossing a ball on rushing waters mean?”\nTouzi said\, “Moment by moment\, non-stop flow.” \n—Blue Cliff Record\, Case 80 \nHow do we find resilience in a world of darkness and despair? How do we get our footing\, come to laugh and love in a world filled with loss and hardship? Some people make a song of it; that’s how they enter the non-stop flow. \nMuddy Waters once said\, “Exactly I fits one shoe\, and that is the blues.” His one shoe\, his one life; it fit his music just exactly so. Soon after being born to a sharecropper family in the Delta\, McKinley ‘Muddy Waters’ Morganfield’s father ran off and his mother died\, leaving his grandmother to raise him on a cotton plantation near Clarksdale\, Mississippi. \nSelf-confident\, gracious\, and commanding on stage\, Muddy was also an oft-absent father and had a half dozen children outside his marriages. Eventually he was able to bring most of them under his roof. \nA couple of mornings ago\, I was walking through downtown Clarksdale\, searching for a breakfast place. About a third of the businesses look shuttered\, though the County Courthouse-Jail and four or five juke joints looked busy. Somehow\, this small\, rather plain rural town\, an hour and a half outside of Memphis\, became the birthplace of the blues. Countless musicians have come from there including greats like B.B. King\, Sam Cooke\, Ike Turner\, John Lee Hooker\, and Muddy. \nWe found Our Grandma’s House of Pancakes. One review complained about cockroaches crawling about the floor and wall\, saying\, “I had to take a shower when I left.” Another said the food was “cooked to perfection!” My huge plate of “fully-loaded hash browns\,” served with a plastic utensil kit\, cost about five bucks. It was good; lots of bacon fat and salt. \nFor the half century beginning in the 1920s\, six million African-Americans moved north\, going against the flow of the wide river. The Great Migration was trying to escape cotton and the Jim Crow South\, hoping to find jobs in the industrial North. They brought their music with them; to St. Louis\, Chicago\, and New York. They brought their heart and soul. \nThe gypsy woman told my mother\, before I was born\nYou got a boy child’s comin’\, gon’ be a son of a gun\nHe gonna make pretty womens jump and shout\nThen the world wanna know what this all about \n~ I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man (Listen here) \nThe muddy waters run deep through New Orleans. Last week\, I found myself standing on the deck of a Mississippi paddle wheeler\, originally built as a casino but turned into a tour boat. Staring into the brown waters\, I could see clouds of silt endlessly billow and swirl\, with Forster’s terns and double-breasted cormorants diving for fish unseen. The captain came on the loudspeaker\, “Kids\, I already told you once: Stop running on the deck!” \nWell I wish I was a catfish\nSwimmin’ in a oh\, deep blue sea\nI would have all you good lookin’ women\nFishin’\, fishin’ after me \nSure ‘nough\, after me\nSure ‘nough\, after me\nOh ‘nough\nOh ‘nough\nSure ‘nough \n~ Rollin’ Stone (Listen here) \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-11/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Muddy-Waters_500.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260323T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260323T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260217T165911Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260313T121142Z
UID:10002307-1774288800-1774294200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Jon Joseph is not teaching today\, but will return on March 30th. We hope you join us then!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-12/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260316T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260316T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260217T170030Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260313T121126Z
UID:10002304-1773684000-1773689400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Jon Joseph is not teaching today\, but will return on March 30th. We hope you join us then!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-14/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260309T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260309T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260217T170057Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260306T191440Z
UID:10002305-1773079200-1773084600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Just This. This.
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nAs Dongshan was about to go\, he asked\, “After your death\, if people ask whether I have your portrait (grasped your teaching)\, how should I respond?” \nAfter a long pause\, Yunyan answered\, “Just this. This.”  \n—Book of Serenity\, Case 49 \nTurning sharply left into a grove of eucalyptus we entered the one-lane road that leads down to the Zen farm. My daughter\, who has a few weeks off as she decides what graduate program to attend in the fall\, is on a two-week meditation retreat. She met us in the parking lot\, and soon we were hiking down a gravel path to the beach. At the beach she went for a quick dip in the frigid Pacific\, dried off and\, after hanging out a bit\, we walked back to get her to the evening meal on time. \nPart way up the trail\, our dog\, who was on leash\, jumped the resident bobcat which ran into a small side temple. To the left of us was Redwood Creek\, thick in willows and gushing with new rains. On the right were the winter gardens of the farm\, planted with fava bean cover crop\, and beyond them chaparral blanketed the slopes of the creek’s gulch. \nThe retreat includes a study period\, and my daughter had picked from the library A Flower Falls\, a translation of Haku’un Yasutani’s commentary on Dogen’s richly poetic Genjo Koan. I have been working with the Five Ranks commentary by Yasutani\, our ancestral teacher\, over the past year and have become pretty familiar with his world view. \nMy daughter said she was surprised at how critical Yasutani was of his own Soto School of Zen and his strong advocacy of an embodied kensho experience. Thinking the need to explain Yasutani\, I started to tell her about the differences between the Rinzai koan and the Soto shikantaza schools. But almost immediately my words sounded small and flat to my ears. So I stopped explaining and just said\, “They’re all nice people.” \nWe continued walking without speaking for a time. I gave her a hug as we moved up the trail toward the zendo and dining hall. Soon enough\, the magic of the farm returned; the ambient light of the hall mixed with the smell of vegetables cooking in shoyu. \nNot long after Dongshan left his teacher\, he saw his own image reflected in the water while crossing a creek and wrote: \nLooking through others’ eyes is not necessary; we only create distance.\nI now go my own way entirely alone\, yet I meet it everywhere.\nNow it is just who I am\, at the same time I am not what it is.\nWhen we come to understand\, for the first time we know this true suchness. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-15/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/flamingo-reflection_500.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260302T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260302T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260217T165958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260227T191041Z
UID:10002303-1772474400-1772479800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Taking Refuge in Awakening\, the Way and Our Companions
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nI take refuge in awakening\nI take refuge in the way\nI take refuge in my companions \nThese are the Three Refuge Vows\, the first of sixteen that an aspirant takes in receiving the precepts before an assembly of their Sangha. It is a celebration we call Refuge\, and is essentially a lay ordination: the one taking Refuge receives a dharma name and the small robe called a rakusu. The ceremony is usually joined at sesshin\, but in unusual circumstances\, held remotely. \nThe Refuge ceremony begins with an invocation: \nWhen knowing stops\, when thoughts about who we are fall away\, vast space opens up and love appears. Anything that gets in the way of understanding this is a cause of suffering and something to refrain from. \nMoment by moment\, thought appears\, the earth appears\, we appear. When we test each bit of life against the heart\, we find we cannot reject anything\, for we are the only hands and eyes that eternity has. With our virtues\, our failures\, and our imperfections\, this is the body we take refuge in; this is what we offer to the world. \nThe aspirant works for a year\, or more\, with their teacher reviewing each of the sixteen vows\, which include the Three Pure Vows (I vow to do no harm/to do good/to do good for others) and the Ten Bodhisattva vows (I vow not to kill/to steal/to misuse sex/to lie/to misuse drugs/to gossip maliciously/to praise myself at the expense of others/to be stingy/to indulge in anger/or to disparage awakening\, the way and my companions.) \nEach of these are treated as a koan: what is their inconceivable nature and how do we realize that truth in our lives? The only way we can investigate these koans is to “test each bit of our lives against our own heart.” \nThe invocation goes on: By their nature\, vows are not things we hold perfectly. Vows are the bridge we build between the spacious world and the things we do every day. They encourage us to follow our questions when they arise. Underlying our vows is compassion for everything that has the courage to live. \n—Jon Joseph \nJoin Jon Joseph and Friends as we hold a refuge ceremony on Monday night! \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-13/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/rakusu.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20260130T154236Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260203T120508Z
UID:10002282-1771869600-1771875000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:PACIFIC ZEN LUMINARIES: Japanese Butoh & the Heart of Zen – Jon Joseph & Friends in Conversation with Denise Fujiwara
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nDenise Fujiwara is one of Canada’s leading contemporary dance artists. \nShe has won numerous awards for her highly creative choreography and dance\, most recently in 2025 the Canada Council’s Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts and Lifetime Achievement\, recognizing “the highest artistic merit and career achievement by a professional artist in music\, theatre\, or dance.” \nDenise’s nearly half-century in performance dance began in the 1970s as Canadian champion on the Rhythmic Gymnastics National Team. She went on to co-found the Toronto Independent Dance Enterprise (TIDE)\, where she performed for over a decade. In 1991 she founded Fujiwara Dance Inventions to support her solo performances that toured throughout Canada\, the US\, Europe\, South America\, and Asia. And in 1997 helped found CanAsian Dance\, where she remained involved for twenty-five years. \nSome of her many original performances have been influenced by the avant-garde Japanese dance called Butoh\, which she began studying under Tokyo master artist Natsu Nakajima in the early 1990s. \n“Butoh\,” she writes\, “challenged the very foundations of my understanding of what dance is.” \nHer singular performance known as Eunoia\, a multimedia adaptation of Christian Bök’s award winning book of poetry\, sold out its Toronto debut\, was nominated for several awards\, and continues to tour ten years later. \nDenise has been an active member of the Pacific Zen Institute for nearly fifteen years. On retreat with PZI\, she often leads participants in an exploration of the embodiment of Zen through her lens of contemporary dance. \n\n \nJon Joseph Roshi of San Mateo Zen and PZI created this series to support the hardworking innovators and shining voices of modern Zen: scholars\, writers\, poets\, translators\, activists\, artists\, teachers\, and more. \nAll proceeds for each event\, including teacher dana\, go directly to the guest speaker. Event attendees are encouraged to give as generously as you are able\, so we can offer deep thanks to Luminaries guests.
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/luminaries-denise-fujiwara-26/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/D_Fujiwara_500x375.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251229T115543Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260214T141959Z
UID:10002274-1771869600-1771875000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Monday Zen is ON BREAK for Pacific Zen Luminaries. Join us next week!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260216T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260216T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251229T115627Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260213T182157Z
UID:10002273-1771264800-1771270200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: The Dance of the Dao
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nWhen the wooden man begins to sing\,\nthe stone woman gets up to dance. \n—Dongshan Liangjie’s Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi \nWhat is dance if not the most fundamental celebration of life? \nTraditionally\, the stone woman represents the unborn—emptiness. She arises from the field of no-thing\, bringing life into the world. The stone woman’s dance is the dance of life\, the dance of the universe. She shows us how to dance. \n橆 \nTranslator and poet David Hinton believes Chinese ideograms paint a paleolithic\, shamanistic\, deep relationship of human beings to nature. Central to the Chinese understanding of the world is the Dao\, or Way\, which holds both Presence (form) and Absence (emptiness). Absence (wu\, mu\, no) is “undifferentiated generative source-tissue” with the ancient pictographic origins of “a woman dancing\, her swirling movements enhanced by fox tails streaming out from her hands.” \nLast holiday season I gifted my partner a package of dance lessons for the both of us. A couple months ago we went to a bar out near the coast to listen to a banging country and western band. Getting out on the dance floor\, we were a touch rusty\, but who cares if you’ve got plenty of ginger and spunk? \nIn our dance lessons\, as soon as our teacher\, a high school junior with a full set of braces\, showed us how to get on up and do the Texas Two-Step. I could feel myself stiffen like the wooden man\, self-consciously trying to get the steps just right and on time. \nStarting with my left foot\, the rhythm went “quick-quick-slow-slow.” I felt terrible my partner had not worn her steel-toed boots. Next came the “quick-quick-slow-tap-slow\,” and “quick-quick-slow-tap-slow” foot moves good for any honky-tonk in the country\, they say. Eventually I relaxed a bit. Our instructor was effusive in her praise of our rapid progress. In a couple weeks we return for a second lesson. \nDogen knew something of dancing. In his New Year’s Dharma Hall Discourse\, he writes\, \nThe sky is clear\, and moisture covers the earth. It is said\, Buddhas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges dance to exalted music\, and throughout the entire world the blossoms on the branches facing south immediately open. \nI like that. Buddhas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges dancing to honky tonk. Perhaps we are all working on our quick-quick-slow-slow step. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-2/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/dancing_500.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251229T115704Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260206T193459Z
UID:10002272-1770660000-1770665400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Practice Makes Us Fetchable
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nBy what path did we come to be where we are now? What were the inconceivable karmic twists that brought us to this moment? It is hard\, perhaps impossible\, to know. As the Tang era poet Han Shan\, who often wrote on rocks and trees\, “It has been ten years since I came to Cold Mountain\, and I have forgotten the path by which I came.” \nThough we can’t know the path\, we can be open to path finding. “Practice is about making us fetchable\,” writes Joan Sutherland in Through Forests of Every Color\, ”It helps us to recognize what gets in the way of our being fetched.” \nBy the time I graduated from college I had been sitting for five or six years and wanted to travel to Japan to study Japanese and Zen for a year. I had no contacts there and found it hard to gather information from afar. But I was fetchable\, and Sutherland’s koan dragon murmured and took note. \nThat summer I worked on a salmon fishing boat\, then in a cold storage cleaning salmon\, and finally as a carpenter in Petersburg\, Alaska\, renovating the local doctor’s house. My brother\, a contractor\, was building a house for my parents in Nevada City\, in the Sierra foothills\, so I went down to help him. The second night we went to a bar and by chance met his yoga teacher. I still remember her name: Arlene Cohen. Arlene had studied Zen in Hawai’I with Robert Aitken\, and we decided to meet the following Saturday to sit Zen together. In the interim\, she had gotten a phone call that Aitken was in the area at Gary Snyder’s\, leading a sesshin\, and Arlene was invited on Saturday to listen to a teishō. \nI went along. After the teishō\, Aitken came up to me and noted that it looked like I had practiced before. I said I had\, and asked if I could finish the last three days of the sesshin at Snyder’s Kitkitdizze. He assented\, and we got to know each other a bit. I told him I was going to Japan for a year\, he suggested I visit Koun Yamada\, in Kamakura\, and wrote me a letter of introduction. \nA couple of months later\, on the way to Japan\, I stopped in Maui to stay for a few days at Aitken’s zendo there\, where a practice period was going on. The head of practice was a heavily bearded Australian named John Tarrant. I continued on to Japan\, and on the second night went to sit at the SanUn Zendo in Kamakura\, where Yamada Roshi lived. I stayed for eight years. \nCountless chances brought me to Kamakura. Had my brother not been building a house for my parents in Nevada City\, had I not gone to a bar the second night and met Arlene\, had Aitken’s people not contacted her\, had I not gone to the teishō\, had they not let me stay at Snyder’s\, had Aitken not offered to write a letter\, my life would have been vastly different.  None of this could have been planned. It was inconceivable\, crazy almost. But when I made myself fetchable\, I was fetched. \nIn the koan we are sitting with this week in Open Temple\, Fayan asks a senior student who just arrived\, “Did you come by boat or land?” The student answered\, “I came by boat.” Fayan then asked\, “Where is the boat?” The student said\, “It’s on the river.” \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-3/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/dog-fetch_500.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260202T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260202T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251229T115746Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260128T231831Z
UID:10002271-1770055200-1770060600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Jon Joseph is not teaching today\, but will return on Feb. 9th. Join us then!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-4/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260126T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260126T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251229T115824Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260124T170245Z
UID:10002270-1769450400-1769455800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Gaia Dreams of Rivers
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\n“Whatever the river says\,” wrote William Stafford\, “That’s what I say.” Immersed in the river of being; how can it be otherwise for us? Braiding\, threading\, merging; the many streams of our lives join\, eventually\, in the great sea. \nI dream of rivers. In the fall\, Chinook\, coho and steelhead school in the Pacific just off the mouths of the Northwest rivers\, waiting for the seasonal rains to flood and break through summer sand berms covering many entrances. Instinct tells them to make their way upstream to lay and fertilize eggs\, and\, for the salmon\, to die. \nSomebody once asked Zhaozhou\, “What does a newborn baby think about?”\nZhaozhou said\, “Well\, it’s kind of like tossing a ball into a rushing stream.”\n\nA monk asked of another teacher what that meant\, and they said\,\n“Moment by moment\, nonstop flow.”\n\nI dream of rivers. Some nights ago my father came\, something he had not done for a while since his passing seventeen years ago. There he was across a darkened room\, walking toward me\, holding out a large box of about two dozen fishing flies as an offering\, keeping his gaze downward. I took the box and thanked him. \nLater that night I found myself fly fishing in a large river. The clear\, cool water swirled around my waist as I made long\, arcing casts of the fly liner. Back cast\, forward cast\, back cast\, and a final forward shooting cast with the line snapping tight a couple feet above the water\, then softly drifting to the surface. \nThe wet fly sank down a foot or two. I couldn’t see anything but I could feel a tugging on the line. My fishing partner exclaimed\, “You’ve got one on!” I said I wasn’t sure. It’s a practice\, this catch and release. \nGaia dreams of rivers. We worry about Gaia but I think she mostly worries about us. In Vancouver\, Canada\, a couple of weeks ago I visited the Museum of Anthropology and its magnificent display of First Nations art: towering Haida totem poles\, great Salish sea canoes\, ornate basketry and beadwork. This\, the wealthiest culture north of the Aztec in Mexico\, was known as the “salmon culture” based on the abundance of this rich fish. \nThe story of the Northwest salmon parallels that of the original people: a ninety-five percent collapse of the population\, overfishing\, loss of habitat\, illness. \nYet there is some dream of the return of the “salmon people\,” as the fish were once called. Coho populations on the Oregon coast have recovered to levels not seen in sixty-five years. In 2024\, the first year that four dams were removed from the Klamath River\, nearly 10\,000 fish returned to 420 miles of recovered spawning grounds. Last year\, Chinook were seen in the Russian River and Sonoma Creek watersheds for the first time in decades. We dream of rivers. The salmon\, too\, they dream of rivers. \n—Jon Joseph \nArt: “Spawning Colors\,” Far North Nature Prints \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-5/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Red-Fish_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260119T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260119T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251229T115901Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260109T132107Z
UID:10002269-1768845600-1768851000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Jon Joseph is not teaching today\, but will return next week. We hope you join us then!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-friends-6/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260119T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260119T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251216T151835Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260120T200853Z
UID:10002235-1768845600-1768851000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:PACIFIC ZEN LUMINARIES: Wherever You Go – Jon Joseph & Friends in Conversation with Jon Kabat-Zinn
DESCRIPTION:Jon Kabat-Zinn\, Ph.D. joins host Jon Joseph & Friends to discuss his 60 years of meditation practice\, prolific writing\, and outstanding work as a pioneer in the insight and mindfulness meditation movement. \nJon is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School\, where he founded its world-renown Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic in 1979\, and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine\, Health Care\, and Society (CFM)\, in 1995. Both the MBSR Clinic and the CFM are now part of UMassMemorial Health. \nHis work and that of his colleagues has contributed to a growing movement of mindfulness practice now used in numerous mainstream institutions throughout the world including medicine\, psychology\, education\, social and criminal justice\, sports\, and technology. Over 700 hospitals and medical centers around the world now offer MBSR. \nPlease join us in welcoming Jon\, one of the great contributors to globalization of meditation practice today. \nSource: https://jonkabat-zinn.com \n“deally\, meditation is not something we do\, but something we live. Jon Kabat-Zinn points the way to this living spirit with clarity\, ease\, and poetry. \n—Sharon Salzberg\, author of Lovingkindness and Faith \n[Wherever You Go\, There You Are] shines with an exquisite simplicity and straightforwardness. Jon Kabat-Zinn is one of the best teachers of mindfulness you will ever meet. \n—Jack Kornfield\, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy\, the Laundry \n\n \nJon Joseph Roshi of San Mateo Zen and PZI created this series to support the hardworking innovators and shining voices of modern Zen: scholars\, writers\, poets\, translators\, activists\, artists\, teachers\, and more. \nAll proceeds for each event\, including teacher dana\, go directly to the guest speaker. Event attendees are encouraged to give as generously as you are able\, so we can offer deep thanks to Luminaries guests.
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/luminaries-jon-kabat-zinn-01-19-26/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Jon-Kabat-Zinn_square.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260112T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260112T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251229T114546Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260109T183635Z
UID:10002267-1768240800-1768246200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Attention\, Attention
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nThe purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times\, to be of the present\, nothing-but-the-present\, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.\n\n —Peter Matthiessen\, The Snow Leopard\n\nIn 1979 Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Stress Reduction Clinic and MBSR program (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Wouster. His program and world-renowned book\, Full Catastrophe Living\, originally intended to improve patient health outcomes\, is not only found in over 700 hospitals worldwide\, but has also been applied in psychology\, sports\, business\, and criminal justice\, impacting thousands\, if not millions\, of lives. \nThe wellspring of mindfulness meditation is Buddhist\, but Kabat-Zinn’s approach is decidedly secular. In one of his popular books\, Wherever You Go\, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life\, he writes\, \n“Mindfulness has been called the heart of Buddhist meditation. Its power lies in its practice and its applications. In my vocabulary\, ‘mindfulness’ is synonymous with pure awareness. It is a profound inborn human capacity. You already have it. We all do. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say we are it\, as it is such a fundamental element of our nature as human beings. So there is nothing to get here\, except perhaps out of our own way\, so that easy access to the spaciousness of awareness emerges on its own.” \nSome further excerpts from the book: \n“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel and knowing it in awareness in that moment. It’s not about making the mind empty or still\, although stillness does deepen in meditation and can be cultivated systematically. Above all\, meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment. \n“It is more rightly thought of as a “Way” than as a technique. It is a Way of being\, a Way of living\, a Way of listening\, a Way of walking the path of life and being in harmony\, in wise relationship\, with things as they are rather than as we might idealistically want them to be. This means in part acknowledging that sometimes\, often at very crucial times in life\, you really have no idea where you are going or even where the path lies. \n“The truly interesting question here is “What is my Way?’ with a capital W…We don’t have to come up with answers or think there has to be one particular answer. Better not to think at all. Instead\, only persist in asking the question\, letting any answers that formulate just come of themselves and go of themselves…“What is my Way?” “What is my path?” “Who am I?” \nIn such a day\, in September or October\, Walden is a perfect forest mirror\, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair\, so pure\, and at the same time so large\, as a lake\, perchance\, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack\, whose quicksilver will never wear off\, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms\, no dust\, can dim its surface everfresh…which retains no breath that is breathed on it…\n\n—Henry David Thoreau\, Walden; or Life in the Woods \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-81/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Birch_still-pond_500.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260105T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260105T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251229T114653Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251229T114653Z
UID:10002268-1767636000-1767641400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Jon Joseph is not teaching today\, but will return on January 12th. Join us then!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-on-break-13/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251229T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251229T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251010T172944Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251229T114730Z
UID:10002203-1767029400-1767034800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Jon Joseph is not teaching today\, but will return on January 12th. Join us then!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-on-break-12/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251222T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251222T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251010T173109Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251220T131434Z
UID:10002211-1766424600-1766430000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph & Friends: Happy Buddha\, Fat Buddha
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nThe large\, rotund physique\, a sack full of gifts\, and love of children characterize the archetype of Santa Claus and China’s jolly Budai (Japanese: Hotei)\, a comparison that has invited comment for decades. Well known stories feature each of these two demi-gods\, stories full of magical thinking and wonder-filled spirit. \nThe Laughing Buddha\, the Happy Buddha\, the Fat Buddha: All are names for the pot-bellied Budai (which means “Cloth Bag” 布袋)\, who was an actual Tang-era monk\, a beloved figure of artists and storytellers for a millennium. The Chan poet Kuoan Shiyuan featured Budai’s visage in his depiction of the final stage of awakening in this famous verse from his Ten Oxherding Pictures: \nBehind a brushwood gate\, alone in his hut\, even a thousand sages don’t know.\nBurying his own natural beauty\, he avoids the wagon tracks of past wisemen.\nDangling a gourd\, he enters the town; pounding his staff\, he returns home.\nVisiting wine bars and fish stalls\, these become for him the Buddha.\n\nWith chest bare and bare footed\, he enters the marketplace.\nCovered in the grit of the earth\, painted with ash\, he breaks into a great laugh.\nWithout using the mountain wizard’s secrets\,\nHe teaches the old tree and withered flowers how to bloom.\n\nI was in the third grade when my classmate Rodney came up to a couple of us kids standing around the playground. We were talking about what we wanted from Santa for Christmas and he came right out with it: “Santa Claus is stupid. There is no such thing. Your parents made it up.” Though in the same grade\, he was a little older and tougher than the rest of us. Somebody said he had a brother in jail; one morning in the fifth grade he rode his motorcycle to school. \nI was stunned and angry about his claim – my whole understanding of the holiday world was at risk. Thinking about it now\, I wasn’t afraid of losing “stuff\,” older kids\, who presumably were aware of the ruse\, still got presents. I was afraid of losing the magic and warmth of giving and receiving. \nWhen I got home\, I asked my dad about what Rodney had said\, and he had an idea: “Well\, let’s call the operator and ask her!” He picked up the beige rotary phone hanging on our kitchen wall (our number was Yellowstone 5-4545)\, got the operator on\, and said\, “My young son here heard that there is no Santa Claus. Can you please talk with him?” My father handed me the phone and the kind voice of a young lady assured me there was a Santa and he would be coming soon. I was hugely relieved that the world as I knew it was still intact. \n“Yes\, Virginia\, there is a Santa Claus\,” wrote Francis Pharcellus Church in the fall of 1897\, responding to a letter sent to The New York Sun by eight-year old Virginia O’Hanlon. “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist\, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.” \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-73/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Budai-Hotei_500w.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251215T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251215T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251010T173138Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251212T201236Z
UID:10002210-1765819800-1765825200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: In Disaster Relief\, Every Day Is a Good Day with Special Guests Ewen Arnold & Claudia Gassner with a field report from Sri Lanka
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nTwo weeks ago\, cyclone Ditwah formed in the northern Indian Ocean and rolled up the east coast of Sri Lanka\, slamming that country with its most destructive storm in a century. The storm brought 29.5 inches of rain in just a few days\, in some areas. The result was widespread flooding and mudslides that killed or sent missing over 800 people\, and caused an estimated $6 billion in damage. \nYunmen said\, “I’m not asking you about before the storm.\nCome and say a word or  two about after the storm.”  \nAnd he himself replied\, “Every day is a good day.” \n\nHardest hit was the district of Kandy\, where Pacific Zen members Ewen Arnold and his partner Claudia Gassner live and work for the Training\, Empowerment\,  Awareness (TEA) Project\, which brings aid to children of tea plantation workers\, the poorest of the poor in Sri Lanka. Ewen and Claudia also practice and teach at the nearby Nalambe Buddhist Meditation Center. \nEwen recently sent a field note to PZI Talk\, which I’m sharing here: \nEvery day is a good day. Absolutely shattered. Overwhelmed. Empty. \nFive days of collecting funds\, buying food stuffs\, receiving clothes\, receiving blankets\, sorting\, packing\, arranging transport\, traveling through places where the roads are totally broken and there are landslides every 200 meters. \nEvery day is a good day. Every day is a good day. \nReceiving deliveries in the middle of the night. Sleeping three hours and then getting up and starting again the next day. I’m 73 years old for God’s sake. \nIn the area near where I live\, there are eleven schools which are full of people sheltering who have lost their homes\, lost everything. And the sun is shining. And the birds are singing. And still this countryside is immensely beautiful\, although scarred in places. \nEvery day is a good day. \nPeople are so grateful\, so incredibly grateful\, it makes me cry. And crying is part of the good day. So much suffering alongside so much beauty. Still the kids play amongst the ruins of their house\, and smile and laugh. They ask us our name\, they ask us where we’re from. They’re amazed that I’m 73 years old. Their smiles go right through me and out the other side into the day. \nYesterday afternoon at home someone came to my door\, holding the hand of a small boy\, about five I’d guess. He started telling me a story in the Sinhala language about losing everything. I was so tired and empty I just wanted him to go away. But I did manage to put together a bag of food for him. \nI dream at night of green hills and landslides\, faces smiling and sad\, hands giving and receiving\, and the beautiful heartful people I’m working with. I have met and gotten to better know so many wonderful people in the last week. And it’s beautiful\, doing it with my partner\, even if we get frustrated with each other at times. \nThis too. This too. This too is a good day. \n—Ewen Arnold \n****************** \nFurther notes from Ewen about the TEA Project: \nWe are working through a charity called the TEA Project\, which Claudia\, my partner\, works for.  It is based not far from Kandy\, Sri Lanka\, on the other side of the hill from Nilambe\, the place where I teach meditation. I have been involved with The TEA Project as a sponsor for years too. \nNormally they are concerned with training and educating the children of the workers from the nearby tea estates.  These communities are very poor and are critically in need as a result of the cyclone. These families rely on daily wages\, plucking tea barefoot on steep mountains\, in both rain and scorching sun. Their living conditions were already harsh; now\, many of their line houses and surrounding areas have been severely damaged or completely destroyed. Claudia and I and others on behalf of The TEA Project are currently distributing dry rations and will assess further needs. \nLink to the TEA Project website: https://theteaproject.org/ \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-74/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Tea-project_500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251208T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251208T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251010T173227Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251204T230346Z
UID:10002209-1765215000-1765220400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: Kathmandu
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nHelen Tworkov\, in her recent book\, Lotus Girl\, recounts how she spent some months in Kathmandu and Pokhara\, Nepal in the mid-1960s. She found herself among Tibetan refugees who had made a perilous journey across the Himalayas to escape the Chinese invasion of their homeland. Less than half had survived the journey. What impressed Helen most about the refugees was their ability to experience joy even in the midst of their suffering. They were able to see the light inside the dark. \nYunmen taught\, “Everybody has a light inside. Sometimes it’s dark\, dark\, hidden and hard to see. What is this light?” \n“What is that light?”\, asked Yunmen.\nHe answered himself\, “Kitchen pantry and temple gate.”\n\nTwenty years after Helen’s travels I found myself in Kathmandu\, also experiencing that light\, as a blessing from the Hindu goddess of fortune. \nIn the mid 80s I was hired by a large publisher of books and magazines to return to Japan\, where I had lived for four years as a correspondent covering business news for magazines like International Plastics and BusinessWeek. Expected in Tokyo on the first of November\, I decided to take three weeks beforehand to trek in Nepal. \nKathmandu was a densely packed\, low-rise city built of brick and mud an painted in earth tones. It was also exceedingly poor. I was a little ashamed of my revulsion at the poverty: streets lined with garbage\, town squares littered with human waste and the occasional dead animal. It was a relief for me to escape the misery of the city for a climb into the grand purity of the Himalayas. \nIn the trekking permit office\, I was lucky to join up with a small group from Seattle to hike the backside of the Annapurna range\, a range of imposing peaks five miles high. In the first ten days we made good time\, but after crossing the 5\,000-meter Thorong-La Pass\, I realized that if I were to make my October 28 airplane departure to Tokyo via Bangkok—the beginning of my new career and life—I would have to go ahead alone. \nFearful of losing my job if I were late\, I hiked for the three days from pre-dawn dark to sunset\, covering much of the hundred miles from Muktinath to Pokhara in flip flops to allow my boot-shod feet to heal. \nOn the morning of the fourth day\, I entered the dusty bus station at Pokhara\, ready to jump on a bus for the six-hour ride to Kathmandu. Nothing. No buses. No attendants. Someone said the bus station was closed for an extended holiday. \nExhausted\, discouraged\, and now sure I would be late for my job\, I threw my pack on the front steps of the station and sat down. A few minutes later a young man with a cheap Indian-made camera approached and asked if I would fix it for him. Its shutter was stuck\, which I easily unjammed. Handing it back to him I asked\, “Now\, can you find me a ride to Kathmandu?” A half hour later\, I was favored to be bumping eastward along the Prithvi Highway in a beat-up Toyota Celica\, with three Brahmins squished in the back and me sharing the front with a young driver pining for his girlfriend in Kathmandu. We were mostly silent during the long drive and arrived on the outskirts of Kathmandu in the dark. \nEntering the city\, all electric street and house lights were extinguished\, but every window was glowing with the warm light of oil lamps. It was the first night of the Hindu Festival of Light\, Diwali\, which honors Lakshmi\, the mother of the universe and goddess of good fortune. This festival celebrates the victory of light over dark. The flickering oil lamps helped me find my way back from the third to the first world of schedules\, jobs\, and industry. Yet it’s still important for me to ask: “What is that light?” \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-75/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Diwali-oil-lamps_500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251201T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251201T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251010T173253Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251129T005424Z
UID:10002208-1764610200-1764615600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Jon Joseph is not teaching today\, but will return on December 8th. We hope you join us then!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-76/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251124T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251124T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060208
CREATED:20251010T173504Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251117T163049Z
UID:10002207-1764005400-1764010800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Monday Zen is ON BREAK for Pacific Zen Luminaries\, but will return on December 1st. Join us then!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-77/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251124T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251124T183000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060209
CREATED:20251030T171532Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251030T181832Z
UID:10002229-1764003600-1764009000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:PACIFIC ZEN LUMINARIES: Lotus Girl — Jon Joseph in Conversation with Helen Tworkov\, founding editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nHelen Tworkov joins host Jon Joseph to discuss her editorial work and writing including her most recent book\, Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America. \nTworkov is the founding editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review\, the first independent Buddhist magazine; and the author of Zen in America: Profiles of Five Teachers; and co-author\, with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche\, of In Love with the World: A Monks’s Journey through the Bardos of Living and Dying. \nShe first encountered Buddhism in Japan and Nepal during the 1960s\, and has studied in both the Zen and Tibetan traditions. She began studying with Mingyur Rinpoche in 2006 and currently divides most of her time between New York and Nova Scotia. Her new book\, published in April 2024\, is Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America. \nAn excerpt of her new book is available online at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. \nSource: helentworkov.com \n“My favorite parts of this very American and far-ranging story chart Helen Tworkov’s deeply personal discovery of the vast\, boundless dimensions of mind. As she recognizes mind itself as the source of suffering and the key to liberation\, we are treated to a forthright account of an absorbing journey filled with honesty\, humor\, and wisdom.” \n—Pema Chödrön  \n“With Tricycle magazine\, Helen Tworkov had the vision to create a forum for dialogue about Buddhism in the West. Lotus Girl provides an inside look at how her art world background and the political issues of those days prompted her personal search for wisdom and spiritual development. This rich and unique memoir has value for any reader interested in the possibilities of positive change.” \n—Philip Glass \n\n \nJon Joseph Roshi of San Mateo Zen and PZI created this series to support the hardworking innovators and shining voices of modern Zen: scholars\, writers\, poets\, translators\, activists\, artists\, teachers\, and more. \nAll proceeds for each event\, including teacher dana\, go directly to the guest speaker. Event attendees are encouraged to give as generously as you are able\, so we can offer deep thanks to Luminaries guests. \nOur suggested donation is $10 for PZI Members and $12 for Non-Members\, but the scale slides from zero depending on one’s ability to contribute. We also greatly appreciate Patrons\, who help support the program with larger gifts of $25—$250.
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/luminaries-helen-tworkov-nov25/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Helen-Tworkov_500.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251117T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251117T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060209
CREATED:20251010T173533Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251114T214506Z
UID:10002206-1763400600-1763406000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: “You Can’t Call It a Shoe” and Other Spectacular Fails
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nEarly last week\, in the predawn darkness\, I awoke from deep sleep repeating the fragment of a koan. I don’t know if it was part of a dream or just a memory that fell off the sleep train. But the fragment was so vivid that it made me laugh as I got up. \nYou can’t call it a shoe. \nThat was how the head monk responded. It is considered one of the great bonehead responses to a teacher’s mondo\, or dharma question\, in all of koan literature. \nYou know the story well: \nMaster Baizhang was looking for someone to establish a temple\, so he set up a contest to find his most worthy student. He placed a bottle in front of the assembly and said\, “Don’t call this a water bottle. What will you call it?” The head monk\, who was a bit inflated with self-importance\, answered\, ”You can’t call it a shoe.” \nA truly cringe-worthy response. Yet even that answer had a bit of dull light in it. No\, a bottle is not a shoe. It is just a bottle. \nThen the cook\, Guishan\, came forward and showed the bottle’s bottle-ness by kicking it over and walking out. He won the contest and went on to found\, together with his protégé Yangshan\, the first of the five great schools of Tang era Chan/Zen. \nWho knows what became of the head monk. Maybe he constructed higher walls by blaming his teacher\, his community\, or the teachings. \nOne time in a group gathering I was asked to give a spontaneous five-minute presentation on a koan: Master Ma’s Sun-faced Buddha\, Moon-faced Buddha. My first reaction was shock: I thought I was too senior to be called upon and had been looking forward to giving others a chance to talk. Then I felt relief. I had written about the koan a few weeks ago and thought I could use that. \nIn my presentation I mostly repeated the points I had written in my note but it didn’t seem to be going well. So I asked if I could relate a dream I had had the night before. In that dream I walked into a large forest service cabin deep in an old-growth forest. Turning left from the entry room\, I went through a doorway into a bedroom\, where John Tarrant was in bed. I asked if there was anything I could do for him. He said\, “No\, I’m fine. Thank you.” With that\, I walked out of the house. \nThe dream\, of course\, was the presentation. But I felt embarrassed and ashamed as a senior teacher on how I had started out. I felt I had failed. \nPerhaps that was why I was laughing when I awoke the other morning with that koan fragment in my mind. The bone-headed response was actually funny: You can’t call it a shoe. It was a perfect response in its own way – a true reflection of the head monk’s mind in that moment. A miracle\, really. \nWe feel the way we do\, and then keep going\, climbing the hundred foot pole just so we can jump off again. It’s the climbing\, not the falling that matters. \n”Let’s talk recklessly\,” the poet William Stafford would say\, ”I need to be willingly fallible to deserve a place in realm where miracles happen.” \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-78/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/JonJosephCALENDAR500X375.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251110T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251110T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060209
CREATED:20251010T173558Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251108T150614Z
UID:10002205-1762795800-1762801200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: Just Going Is Enough: The Answers Will Be There
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nElder Ting asks LInji a question. Linji comes off his seat and shoves the old man. Elder stands frozen\, and a monk standing nearby asks\, “Elder Ting\, why don’t you bow?” He bows. \nA traveling nun stopped by Juzhi’s temple. She walked around him three times while he was sitting\, and said\, “If you can say a word that satisfies me\, I will take off my hat and stay.” He could not\, so she left. \nActs of creativity and spontaneity have long been greatly valued by Chan–Zen masters in countless encounters over many many centuries. The universe is too large to say these qualities are required for awakening–afterall\, clouds also drift in the sky with a creative ease and Mocha the dog often barks with noisy spontaneity. But moving before thought in our own floating world somehow makes us more porous to the light that shines through all things. A touch of life less scripted\, before attaching to names like good or evil\, enlightened or deluded\, nice clouds and bad dog\, somehow affirms the freshness we already know surrounds us. \nThe dream world can offer us access to the space where the universe is still fluid. When in the dream world\, as a friend recently suggested\, we aren’t given an option to check ourselves; we experience ourselves just as we are. \nDokusan (J. honorable going alone)\, where we meet a teacher one-on-one\, can be a chance to enter the life of a koan without checking ourselves. A remembrance of dream–dokusans past came to me recently. \nIn a dream from several months ago\, I was sitting with a few others in the dokusan line at the SanUn Zendo\, in Kamakura\, waiting to see Koun Yamada\, something I had done hundreds of times. A woman before me rang the bell and went in. I moved up to the front\, and asked myself\, “What answer should I give?’ As I asked the question\, I opened my arms out wide and felt a deep sense of emptiness and light spread out in front of me. Then I thought\, “No\, don’t give that answer. Go\, and when you get there\, you will know.” \nIn the second dream\, which I remember vividly from a couple of years ago\, a group of about forty of us were sitting in a large dining hall\, kind of like the one in Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School of Witchcraft. We were in sesshin\, silently eating\, and I kind of furtively looked left and right and thought\, “If I told them how very simple it is\, they would never believe me.” Then\, to the left\, Taizan Maezumi\, whose sesshin I joined as a young man\, walked perpendicular to the dining room and went down a short hall to his dokusan room. I was scheduled to go to see him and thought\, “What should I say?” Answering myself\, I realized I didn’t have to say anything. That just the going is the answer. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-79/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Storyville_500.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251103T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251103T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060209
CREATED:20251010T173628Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251031T190119Z
UID:10002204-1762191000-1762196400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: Timmy Falls Into the Well
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nWhat are you trying to say\, Lassie? Timmy fell into the well?\n\n —Mr. Martin\, Timmy’s stepfather in the TV show\, Lassie \n  \nWhat is the way?\nThe clearly enlightened person falls into a well. \n—Second of Baling Haojian’s Three Barriers\, PZI MK Case 74 \n  \nSomething or someone always seems to be falling into a well. \nAnd then there is the koan where Caoshan is talking to Elder De\, coming in from a high altitude and poetic. The Elder is a little more barnyard: \n“The Buddha’s true reality body is like space\, its form is a manifest response to beings\, like the moon in the water. How would you respond?”\nElder De said\, “It’s like a donkey looking in a well.”\nCaoshan said\, “That was really good\, but you said only eighty percent.”\nDe said\, “Well\, what about you teacher?”\n“It’s like the well looking at the donkey.” \nIt has been a tough several months in our household with the decline and finally the passing of both Nonno and Nonni.  A couple of nights after the last memorial\, Lynne and I were brushing our teeth and a strange request came out of me. I’m not even sure why I asked it; perhaps to bring a small bit of levity back into our lives. \nI asked her\, “What was that thing you said about Lassie?” She said\, “What? You mean a long time ago?” I said\, “Ya\, the thing about Lassie; you knew something. Something was said.” I couldn’t even recall the particulars but somewhere in my psyche it was important to me. \nShe said: ”What? You must mean when Lassie goes to the father\, who asks: ’Lassie\, what are you trying to say? Did Timmy fall into the well?’” \nI absolutely lost it\, burst out laughing and couldn’t stop until tears came to my eyes. It felt good to laugh again. \nIn the nineteen seasons the series ran on TV\, in nearly 600 episodes\, and with nine Lassies\, Timmy never once fell into a well. Perhaps he left it for us to do. \nWe fall into the well. Then the well falls into us. The donkey is looking down\, and at the same time the well is looking up. Relationships matter. A friend who was soon moving to Texas once said\, “I am getting ready for San Antonio\,” adding\, “And San Antonio is getting ready for me.” \nIndeed. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-80/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Lassie-Timmy_500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251027T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251027T193000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060209
CREATED:20250930T131323Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251028T222204Z
UID:10002175-1761588000-1761593400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:PACIFIC ZEN LUMINARIES: Tassajara Stories: A Sort of Memoir – Jon Joseph in Conversation with Author David Chadwick
DESCRIPTION:David Chadwick\, author\, activist\, musician\, and Zen priest\, joins host Jon Joseph for remembrances about the early days of San Francisco Zen Center and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. \nDavid began his study of Zen in 1966 under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi who ordained him as a priest in 1971\, shortly before Suzuki’s death. Later\, Chadwick continued to study with Zentatsu Baker Roshi and assisted in the operation of the San Francisco Zen Center for a number of years. Throughout this time\, he helped SFZC develop its centers and businesses\, including Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. \nHe is widely known as the primary archivist and biographer of Shunryu Suzuki\, with his Crooked Cucumber (1999)\, Zen is Right Here (2007)\, and Zen is Right Now (2021). Now\, Chadwick has begun to publish a three part series of anecdotes and recollections of the founding of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center\, called Tassajara Stories: A Sort of Memoir\, of the first Zen monastery in the United States. \nIn addition to writing books\, David created maintains three websites\, Cuke.com (“an archival site on the life and world of Shunryu Suzuki and those who knew him”); ZMBM (a site dedicated to his book Zen Mind\, Beginner’s Mind); and Shunryusuzuki.com (a comprehensive archive of Shunryu Suzuki’s talks\, video\, photos\, and more). All these archives are free to the public. “I like to preserve things\,” he notes. \nSource: Cuke.com\, SFZC.com \n“Tassajara Stories is a marvelous and entertaining book and David Chadwick is a tremendous storyteller. We have here a record of his lifelong passion to record the arrival of Zen in California. I opened the book to check it out\, sat down at the kitchen table and there went my afternoon\, reading and reading. The best thing\, though\, is that these stories touch on the core of practice\, and the reason you might want to turn your heart toward the great matter. David encourages us to Zen practice in a subtle and amusing way. I’m giving it as a gift and reading it again myself.” \n—John Tarrant\, Director of The Pacific Zen Institute and author of Bring Me the Rhinoceros and Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life.  \nFrom the preface to Tassajara Stories:  \n“Shakkei is the outlying mountains and trees and whatever else one can see from a garden. If we look at what happened at Tassajara as being the garden of the book\, then the other content is the shakkei. This borrowed scenery sets Tassajara and our experience in that valley in a broad context that gives background and color to who we were and how we got there\, and includes the mountains\, the woods\, the road\, our neighbors\, the city\, the times\, the war\, the counterculture\, what was happening all around us.” \n—David Chadwick \n\n \nJon Joseph Roshi of San Mateo Zen and PZI created this series to support the hardworking innovators and shining voices of modern Zen: scholars\, writers\, poets\, translators\, activists\, artists\, teachers\, and more. \nAll proceeds for each event\, including teacher dana\, go directly to the guest speaker. Event attendees are encouraged to give as generously as you are able\, so we can offer deep thanks to Luminaries guests. \nOur suggested donation is $10 for PZI Members and $12 for Non-Members\, but the scale slides from zero depending on one’s ability to contribute. We also greatly appreciate Patrons\, who help support the program with larger gifts of $25—$250.
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/luminaries-tassajara-days-david-chadwick/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/David-Chadwick_500.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251027T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251027T190000
DTSTAMP:20260424T060209
CREATED:20250826T130657Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250930T133137Z
UID:10002173-1761586200-1761591600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph: ON BREAK
DESCRIPTION:Jon Joseph is on break for Pacific Zen Luminaries. Join us again on November 3rd!\n\nWe are not alone in the world. We have each other to turn toward. All we need to do is ask. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. Register to participate. All are welcome. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-69/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
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