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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240221T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240221T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230810T232714Z
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SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: The Zen of Therapy – Jon Joseph in Conversation with Author & Psychiatrist Mark Epstein
DESCRIPTION:To work something through means to change one’s view; if we try instead to change the emotion\, we may achieve some short-term success\, but we remain bound by forces of attachment and aversion to the very feelings from which we are struggling to be free. \n—Mark Epstein \n\nOfficial Short Bio \nDr. Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist in private practice and the author of numerous books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy\, including Thoughts without a Thinker\, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart\, Going on Being\, Open to Desire\, Psychotherapy without the Self\, The Trauma of Everyday Life\, and Advice Not Given.  \nHis recent book\, The Zen of Therapy\, reflects on one year of sessions with his patients\, observing how the therapy relationship is a spiritual friendship where a therapist can help patients realize that there is something magical\, something wonderful\, and something to trust running through their lives\, no matter how fraught. \nFor years\, Dr. Epstein kept his beliefs as a Buddhist separate from his work as a psychiatrist. Content to use his training in mindfulness as a private resource\, he trusted that the Buddhist influence could\, and should\, remain invisible. But as he became more forthcoming with his patients about his personal spiritual leanings\, he was surprised to learn how many were eager to learn more. \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 range is $10 for PZI Members and $12 for Non-Members\, but the scale is sliding depending on one’s ability to contribute. We also greatly appreciate Patrons\, who help support the program with larger gifts of $50—$250. \n\nJoin us on Wednesday for a lively conversation with special guest Mark Epstein. All are welcome to join in for meditation and conversation. Register to participate.
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-author-psychiatrist-mark-epstein/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/zen-of-therapy_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240219T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240219T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20240126T043950Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240307T224749Z
UID:10001650-1708365600-1708371000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY NOTE: The Zen of Therapy and a Hidden Kindness – Monday Note from Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:From The Zen of Therapy: \nBuddhist contemplation is a kind of therapy\, after all; its whole orientation is toward relieving people of needless and self-inflicted psychological suffering. And psychotherapy\, like meditation\, is at base an inquiry into the nature of the self. The more you examine your experience\, the more mysterious and elusive the self becomes …  \nFreud famously proclaimed that the best he could do for people was to take them from a state of neurotic misery and return them to one of common unhappiness\, while the Buddha promised freedom from both. But when it came right down to it\, both sensed salvation in a clear-eyed and realistic appraisal of the human condition\, enhanced by a healthy dose of uncertainty. \nI realized that a spa treatment is often what people want from meditation—and that it was often being sold as such—but I could tell from my own meditations that relaxation\, while an occasional benefit\, was not always accessible on demand. For me\, meditation had come to mean being with my own mind no matter what state it was in. In this way\, it was closer to psychotherapy than I had initially thought. \nIf it is going to be of any help\, we have to actively engage with [meditation] as an art rather than subjecting ourselves to it solely as a science. A goal-oriented approach\, whether it is to calm the mind\, relax the body\, or achieve some kind of transcendental experience\, is antithetical to meditation’s greater purpose. For me\, the trust and intimacy of the psychotherapeutic relationship was to become instrumental in helping to bring this greater purpose into focus. \nThere is much to be learned from the lords of the underworld\, the uncrowned and exiled kings of the unconscious. \nAt certain points I sound like a traditional psychodynamic therapist\, unpacking the childhood origins of a patient’s persistent negativity. At other times\, I continue to offer explicit meditation instruction\, hoping to guide someone away from their mind object with its recurrent loops of shame and blame. In still others I am reaching for something else\, something my years of meditative practice have inched into my consciousness\, the sense that there is an accessible vitality\, present from birth\, underlying our accrued personalities. In these more unconventional sessions\, I use whatever I can to break through a patient’s defenses or to shine a light on a patient’s unexplored natural intelligence. \nAbout Mark Epstein \nMark Epstein\, MD\, a clinical psychiatrist based in New York City\, is a leading author on the subject of interweaving modern psychotherapy and ancient Buddhist meditation. His bestselling books include Thoughts without a Thinker\, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart\, Going on Being\, and most recently\, The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering A Hidden Kindness in Life. Mark received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and is currently Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University. He has been a practicing Buddhist\, primarily in the Vipassana tradition\, for fifty years. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US for on Wednesday for our Zen Luminaures evening with Mark Epstein. Register to participate. All are welcome. Donations gratefully received to support our wonderful guests. \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/on-break-monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-9/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Mark-Epstein_500x375.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240212T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240212T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20240202T185101Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240307T224512Z
UID:10001648-1707760800-1707766200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY NOTE: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective – Monday Note from Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:Psychiatrist Mark Epstein\, M.D.\, Author of The Zen of Therapy joins us next week to discuss psychotherapy from a Buddhist perspective:\nMark Epstein\, M.D.\, is a clinical psychiatrist practicing in New York City and is perhaps the leading scholar on the joining of modern psychotherapy and ancient Buddhist meditation. He is the author of numerous books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy: Thoughts without a Thinker\, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart\, Going on Being\, and most recently\, The Zen of Therapy; Uncovering A Hidden Kindness in Life.  \nMark received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and is currently Clinical Assistant Professor in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University. He has been a practicing Buddhist\, primarily in the Vipassana tradition\, for fifty years. \nThe Zen of Therapy\, a warm\, profound and clear-eyed memoir of a year in his consulting room prior to the pandemic\, the psychiatrist and author—and practicing Buddhist—Mark Epstein aims at something meatier. He seeks to uncover the fundamental wisdom both (psychotherapy and Buddhist) worldviews share\, and to show\, as a practical matter\, how it might help us wriggle free from the places we get stuck on the road to fulfillment. \n—Oliver Burkeman\, The New York Times Book Review \nA psychiatrist with forty years of practice in psychotherapy and meditation shows how both can achieve the same goal: to reclaim the kindness that’s at the core of all of us. Epstein draws on a lifetime of personal and professional experience to deliver a profound and optimistic examination of the links between psychotherapy and meditation. Drawing on influences as diverse as psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott\, the Dalai Lama\, and composer John Cage\, Epstein offers a warm and accessible explanation of topics that defy easy explanation. \n—Kirkus Reviews on The Zen of Therapy\n \nEpstein\, a New York City psychiatrist trained in classical Freudian methods\, has studied Buddhist meditation in India and Southeast Asia. In a highly personal\, thoughtful\, illuminating synthesis\, he draws on his own experience as therapist\, meditator and patient in an unusual attempt to integrate Western psychotherapy and Buddha’s teachings on suffering\, delusion\, wisdom and nonattachment. \n—Publishers Weekly on Thoughts Without A Thinker \n***** \nCome join us on the 21st. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate. \nJon Joseph Roshi\,\nDirector of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-31-3/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Mark-Epstein_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240205T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240205T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20240126T044644Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240311T185123Z
UID:10001647-1707156000-1707161400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN:  Isn't This the Sound? A Night of Celtic Pub Music in the Zendo
DESCRIPTION:With Harpist Delphine Moss\, Guitarist Jordan McConnell and Rose Joseph \nAt the words\, “Cypress tree in the garden\,” Yuanwu was suddenly enlightened.\nHe went outside and saw a rooster fly to the top of a railing\, beat its wings and crow loudly.\nHe said to himself\, “Isn’t this the sound?”  \n—Pacific Zen Miscellaneous Koan \nListen to the Audio \nSeveral weeks ago I attended a multi-media performance given by harpist Delphine Griffith\, who with my daughter Rose recorded their version of the Pacific Zen Four Vows. Delphine had just returned from three months studying and playing harp in southern Ireland and Scotland. For me\, the video\, music and lyrics from the show resonated with the very heart of Zen: sunshine through rain\, loves found and lost\, cattle trails and seashore\, scones\, Guinness and whiskey … \nIt is a grand tradition in Irish and Scottish pubs for musicians to join jam sessions which often break up only when the sun begins to peek over the hayfields. Guitarist Jordan McConnell has engaged in such Celtic pub tours more than a dozen times. Here are a few of Jordan’s thoughts on that kind of amazing musical collaboration\, which involves hundreds of songs over dozens of hours: \n“We would be in the middle of a piece of music and I’m thinking to myself\, ‘Something’s about to change\, but I’ve no idea what’s coming up.’ There is this funny thing where people will be looking around for a key that will unlock a tune. Usually all that’s needed are a couple of notes at the beginning and the gate opens. Then my hand goes to where it needs to be and my mind just follows along. All of a sudden\, the whole melody is accessible; it was in my body somewhere. How cool!” \nFrom the introduction to Delphine’s SoundCloud account: \n“I have no idea what I’m doing—but maybe somewhere along the way I’ll find something … and maybe it’ll resonate with you … and maybe you’ll come along for the journey.” \nSome lyrics from one of Delphine’s Moss Collective songs\, Pocket Hearts: \nKaleidoscopic patterns of seaweed\, rocks and sand\nThe end of the Great Auk on the Kerragh Island\nA cottage made of shells/fuchsia flower bells\nSand in our hair\, clouds in our eyes\nAnd the soft waves of the rising tide/the soft waves of the rising tide\nWe’re flying in by the seat of our pants/blown in by the wind\nFueled by chips\, scones\, butter\, Guinness\, whiskey and gin\nDancing on the tables\nStomping on the ground\nIn the pubs till 4 am that’s where we’ll be found\nWith our hearts on our pockets/with our hearts sewn on our pockets\nWith our hearts sewn on our back pockets \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate. \nJon Joseph Roshi\,\nDirector of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-31-2/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Rose-Harpist_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240129T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240129T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20240124T184309Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240124T184607Z
UID:10001628-1706551200-1706556600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:NO MONDAY ZEN MEETING TODAY \nJon Joseph is in Winter Sesshin. Join us next on February 5! \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/on-break-monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-7-2/
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:20240122T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240122T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231120T212622Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240123T231140Z
UID:10001614-1705946400-1705951800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:Zen Luminaries: A Fire Runs Through All Things – Jon Joseph in Conversation with Filmmaker\, Writer & Zen Teacher Susan Murphy
DESCRIPTION:Susan Murphy Roshi is the founding teacher of Zen Open Circle in Sydney and has served as guiding teacher for two decades. She also guides Melbourne Zen Group and Mountains and Rivers Zen\, Hobart\, in Australia. Susan has been affiliated with Pacific Zen and its associates since the mid-1980s. She received transmission from John Tarrant in 2001. She works as a writer\, freelance radio producer and film director\, and previously served as a university lecturer in film studies. \nIn addition to several books on film\, Susan’s books include Upside-Down Zen\, A Direct Path into Reality; Minding the Earth\, Mending the World: Zen and the Art of Planetary Crisis; and Red Thread Zen: Humanly Tangled in Emptiness. \nHer most recent book is A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis. \nAs in a fairy tale\, we have the impossible task of saving the earth. We know that there are sensible things that are good to do but we must also do what we haven’t thought of—seeing our lives and the earth with fresh eyes. \nSusan Murphy is steeped in Zen and the indigenous understanding of the Australian bush. She is an artist who can turn toward the dark forces and find a golden path. This alchemical skill makes her the right guide for the impossible tasks and inconceivable problems we face. She’s a true and terrific guide. The Red Queen said to Alice\, “It’s jam yesterday and jam tomorrow\, but never jam today.” Susan’s book is jam today. May you read it with joy. \n—John Tarrant \n\nMore about Susan Murphy \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 range is $10 for PZI Members and $12 for Non-Members\, but the scale is sliding depending on one’s ability to contribute. We also greatly appreciate Patrons\, who help support the program with larger gifts of $50—500. \n\nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation with special guest Susan Murphy. All are welcome to join in for meditation and conversation. Register to participate.
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-a-fire-runs-through-all-things-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-filmmaker-writer-zen-teacher-susan-murphy/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Susan-Murphy_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240115T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240115T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20240109T224340Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240116T170951Z
UID:10001630-1705341600-1705347000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Congruent with the Earth – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:Join us on Monday to discuss deep ecology and Susan Murphy’s new book\, A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis\, in preparation for her visit in our Luminaries Series on January 22nd. \nExcerpts from Susan Murphy’s book: \nKoans offer no solace to the mind that would divide the world in order to manage the pain of experience. Nor do they direct a course of action. They merely lay before us the true breadth and open nature of every moment—the “formless field of benefaction.” After that it’s up to you and me. The privilege and weight of this responsibility is great. \nI once heard Aunty Beryl Carmichael\, a Ngiyampaa elder in Darling River country in New South Wales\, Australia\, put it simply: “Reality is connectedness. If you’re not in connectedness\, you’re not in reality.” \nCaller on a podcast: “What do you mean by interconnected?” Pause\, then the podcast guest\, an ecologist\, responds: “There is a species of moth in Madagascar that drinks the tears of sleeping birds.” \nThere is no way to “save the Earth\,” which is already complete in every moment. To save the Earth\, just risk at last belonging to it\, being complete with it. \nThe indigenous term “Country” is a richly unfolding koan that unfolds us. It is a matter resolved only in its embodiment. I take it as a koan posed to our fragile time. \nCountry says to just bring reality—the obdurate\, irreplaceable rhinoceros itself—back whole and alive. In Country\, as in Zen practice\, there is a willingness to be unmade\, fit to meet the task of congruence with a planet in perilous crisis. \nAs Tyson Yunkaporta\, the cheeky Aboriginal philosopher\, notes\, “If you’re not laughing\, you’re not learning.” \nThe extraordinary David Banggal Mowaljarlai\, painter\, teacher\, storyteller\, and linguist\, was a senior Law-holder of the Ngarinyin people in West Kimberley. He called the joy of the awake\, skin-to-skin recognition of “Country” yorro yorro\, translating this as “everything standing up alive\, brand-new.” \n—Susan Murphy \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nRegister 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-30-3/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DreamTurtle_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240108T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240108T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231227T181800Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240116T170431Z
UID:10001629-1704736800-1704742200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Where Do We Go When We Dream? with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:When you’re free from birth and death\, you know where to go.\nWhen your four elements separate into sleep and dreams\, where do you go? \n—Doushuai’s Three Barriers (amended)\, Gateless Gate Case 47 \nEssential in older traditions\, including the “primitive” ones\, is the idea that the soul separates from the body during sleep. It wanders then\, a wandering which means … its attention is not fixed on the aims of the day. \n—James Hillman\, The Dream and the Underworld \nLast week I visited Corey Hitchcock\, a PZI friend who is gravely ill. She has not taken food or water for some time and was markedly diminished since my last visit. Yet she still shone with a kind of light. \nCorey gestured for me to pull up a chair. I sat close and took her hand\, which was soft and warm. Her daughter was there\, saying Corey was a bit loopy from the morphine. Corey began our conversation talking about the “crazy cancer” she had\, and something about monkeys in a tree. I looked at her daughter to interpret. We all chuckled together. \nSoon she closed her eyes and fell asleep. As I sat holding Corey’s hand\, it would occasionally twitch\, like the hands of sleeping infants and puppies. My friend was dreaming\, leaning on the gate that separates life and death. \nWhere do we go when we enter dreamland? Talking with her teacher a week ago\, Corey mentioned how for some months leading up to her diagnosis she felt as though her ‘self’ was dissolving into the environment around her. Sitting with her\, I felt the continuity of things\, the community of things\, the intimacy of things. \nMy friend was still asleep a half hour later when I put down her hand\, kissed two fingers and touched her forehead and left. \n—Jon Joseph \nimage credit: original artwork by Corey Hitchcock \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nRegister 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-30-2/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Coreydreaming_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240101T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240101T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231129T182319Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231227T181927Z
UID:10001618-1704132000-1704137400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:NO MONDAY ZEN MEETING TODAY \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/on-break-monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-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:20231225T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231225T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231117T201029Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231117T201029Z
UID:10001600-1703527200-1703532600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: MONDAY ZEN with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:NO MONDAY ZEN MEETING TODAY \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nRegister 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-29-2/
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:20231218T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231218T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231212T181635Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231215T182630Z
UID:10001599-1702922400-1702927800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Three Vipassani Find Koans! A Panel Discussion on Vipassana & Koan Zen Hosted by Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nMonday Zen with Jon Joseph\n—Three Vipassani Find Koans!\nA Panel Discussion on Vipassana and Koan Zen\nwith Special Guests Teachers Susan Pollak\, Doug Phillips and Ewen Arnold\nHosted by Jon Joseph Roshi\nMonday Eve\, 6–7:30 pm PST \nIn recent years\, Pacific Zen’s creative koan sangha has been blessed with a number of distinguished Vipassana\, or “insight\,” meditation teachers. The two schools have fundamentally different Buddhist roots: Vipassana stems from the Sri Lankan and Southeast Asian Theravada (School of the Elders) while Chan-Zen comes from the Northeast Asian Mahayana (Great Vehicle) tradition. Some argue that Chan-Zen is not even Mahayana but Chinese Daoist in origin. \nI have many questions for our friends who will be joining us in a panel this coming Monday: \nAs a Vipassana teacher\, what attracted you to koan work?\nHow have you found koan work to be similar to or different from Vipassana?\nIs the “insight” in Koan Zen the same as “insight” in Vipassana?\nAre there any koan teachings that you integrate into your Vipassana practice?\nWhat Vipassana techniques do you bring into your Zen teaching? \n \nSusan Pollak is the author of six books on mindfulness meditation. She co-founded the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at Harvard Medical School-Cambridge Health Alliance\, and for ten years served as president of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. Susan has a private psychotherapy practice in Cambridge and writes the Psychology Today blog\, “The Art of Now—Essential Skills for Mindfulness\,” and is currently studying koans primarily in the White Plum Asanga tradition. \nDoug Phillips is a koan teacher in the broader Pacific Zen school. In the late 1970s he began meditation with Maurine Stewart\, a student of Soen Nakagawa. On her death in 1990\, he began to study both Korean Seon (Zen) and Vipassana with Larry Rosenberg\, who gave Doug transmission in 2003. He then returned to koan practice with James Ford in the Tarrant-Aitken line of Zen\, and received Inka Shomei in 2017. Doug has long worked as a therapist and co-leads the Empty Sky Sangha in Lexington\, Massachusetts and West Cornwall\, Connecticut. \nEwen Arnold worked for some decades as an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher in England\, Ethiopia\, Sri Lanka\, and Oman\, where he was also a master dive instructor.  In 1997 he traveled to the Nilambe Buddhist Meditation Centre in Kandy\, Sri Lanka\, where he became a student of Godwin Samararatne. When Godwin passed away in 2000\, Ewen visited other Indian Buddhist centers and later returned to Nilambe Centre. Since 2015 Ewen has served as a Vipassana teacher for foreign students. He first joined Pacific Zen as a koan student in 2020 after reading John Tarrant’s Bring Me the Rhinoceros.    \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate. \nJon Joseph Roshi\,\nDirector of San Mateo Zen Community \n\n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-29-5/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Theravada_500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231211T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231211T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231205T172746Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231212T174212Z
UID:10001612-1702317600-1702323000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Regrets\, I've Had a Few – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:After Bodhidharma left\, Duke Zhi asked the Emperor\, “Your Majesty\, do you know who that was?”\n“I don’t know\,” said the Emperor.\n“That was the great bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara\, bringing to you the mind seal of the Buddha.”\nThe Emperor was filled with regret and wanted to send a messenger to ask Bodhidharma to come back.\nThe Duke said\, “There’s no point\, Your Majesty. Even if everyone in the country went after him\, he wouldn’t return.” \n—The Blue Cliff Record\, Case 1 (translation Sutherland and Tarrant) \nThough I have read this koan hundreds of times over the years\, recently I found that it was Emperor Wu’s deep regret\, an abiding feeling that he had failed in his encounter with Bodhidharma (and wanted a do-over)\, that I found most moving. \nEmperor Wu’s “not getting it\,” may not have been a fail at all; perhaps it was his most generous gift to the world. \nThis first case of the Blue Cliff is one of the greatest koans of the major Song collections\, including The Gateless Barrier and The Book of Serenity. The koan addresses merit: Seeking recognition for his good deeds\, the Emperor tells Bodhidharma about the many monks he has supported and temples he has built. Bodhidharma responds that Wu has generated “No merit whatsoever.” \nIt expounds the boundless. Challenging the red-bearded barbarian\, the Emperor then asks\, “What is the first principal of the holy teaching?” Bodhidharma responds\, “Vast emptiness; nothing holy.” \nIt offers an openness of being. Angered at Bodhidharma’s first two answers\, the Emperor demands: “Who is this standing before me?” Bodhidharma replies\, “I don’t know\,” and leaves. \nLater\, when the Emperor realizes whom he has just met\, he is deeply sorry. When Bodhidharma died\, the Emperor wrote the following inscription for his memorial monument: “What a shame! I saw him without seeing him\, I met him without meeting him; I still regret this deeply.” \n“Regrets\, I have had a few\,” sings Frank Sinatra. I have felt that countless times. And not just a bit. Not supporting my mother enough in her later years. Not taking the risk to go to that last dokusan. Buying\, and then not selling\, crappy investments (far too many times). \nBut “not getting it” is as important as “getting it.” When in college\, I lived for a time in a kind of spiritual commune called The Internal School\, in Arcata\, California. It was a four-story\, century-old building constructed of massive old growth redwood beams. Every Asian martial art and new age meditation method seemed to go through there: Kung Fu\, Aikido\, Transcendental Meditation\, The Sufi Choir\, Swami Muktananda (his bathtub water was later sold)\, and Zen. \nI had a friend from the Internal School who took a week-long training sponsored by the Arica Institute\, a human potential movement group. She came back from the training sobbing\, breaking down in tears: “I was the only one by the end of the training who did not ‘get it.’” My heart felt so heavy for her. I wanted her to “get it”—I want all of us to get it. I guess that’s why I teach. \nBut is there anything missing here? Is there anything to get? In Baizhang’s Fox\, an old priest gives an answer to a monk’s question\, and because it was wrong\, finds himself reborn as a fox for five hundred lives. Huangbo\, Baizhang’s student\, asks the teacher\, “What  would happen if every time the priest answered\, he made no mistakes?” Baizhang told Huangbo to come closer; Huangbo came up and gave him a slap. \nThe master clapped his hands\, laughing aloud. “I thought the barbarian’s  beard was red\, but here is the red-bearded barbarian!” We can only do it our way. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate. \nJon Joseph Roshi\,\nDirector of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-29-4/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/emperorWU_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231204T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231204T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231128T172252Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231211T203626Z
UID:10001598-1701712800-1701718200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Universe at Play with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:The path to Cold Mountain is laughable.\nA path\, but no sign of cart or horse …\nAnd now I’ve lost the shortcut home.\nBody asking shadow\, \nHow do you keep up? \n—Cold Mountain Poems \nA friend of mine was an English teacher in Sri Lanka for a while\, running an elementary school class sponsored by the British Consulate. The class stayed together for about three years\, and through their long familiarity developed a classroom culture of play\, of silliness. The students would get up on their desks and dance\, and sometimes he would come in to find the furniture completely shuffled around. When the class finally split up\, the kids gave him a card: “To the silliest teacher in the world\, from the silliest class in the world.” \nHe recalls\,“It really made me free. I could be just who I was and they could be just who they were. We could not do life wrong.” Such a simple but profound realization is still fresh for him decades afterward\, the result of play. \nThese last weeks\, we have been visiting with Pang family koans in the PZI Open Temple. This ninth-century family of four was a pretty playful Chan-Zen tribe. One day while crossing a bridge\, Layman Pang fell down along with all the baskets he had been carrying. His daughter Lingzhao immediately fell down next to him\, saying\, “I’m helping.” “Luckily\, no one was looking\,” said Pang. \nIn sesshin\, I must confess that I found the most playful leadership role to be Head of Practice. Sitting for long\, quiet hours in the zendo with everyone\, the HOP may occasionally make comments called “encouraging words” that are intended to help people move across the frontier from stillness to activity. Pretty quickly I found that shouting words like\, “Hang in there!” or “Life and death are a serious matter!” were not all that fun. \nInstead\, I began to say whatever came to mind\, like\, “If you won’t do it for yourself\, do it for the baby seals!” Or at noon\, with everyone in the zendo quietly waiting for the lunchtime gong to sound\, I crawled across the floor\, exiting the zendo barking like a dog. One time in the deeply quiet zendo I shouted\, “Marsupial!” The zendo became even more quiet and then erupted in outrageous laughter. I went to my room and laughed and cried for several hours. The world was at play; not one thing was out of place. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-29-3/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/playing-in-the-rain._500x375.jpeg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231127T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231127T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231121T184550Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231126T173343Z
UID:10001589-1701108000-1701113400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: A Wild River of Music with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nThis past week\, Pacific Zen’s Jordan McConnell has been playing his amazing guitar in a Manitoba Opera called Li Keur\, Reil’s Heart of the North. Billed as “a celebration of Métis (mixed Indigenous and Euro-American) women\, language\, and culture\,” it is the first full-scale Indigenous-led opera presented on a Canadian mainstage. Jordan accompanied the lead fiddler\, together with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. \nThe storyline is narrated by a Métis grandmother\, a descendant of French fur trappers (called Voyageurs) and First Nations women\, telling the rich tale of family to her granddaughter. More broadly\, it is the story of the Métis peoples of Canada. The grandmother\, who was sold to an English settler by her father\, killed the settler and escaped to join the resistance movement organized by Louis Riel (d. 1885). Riel was later deemed an insurrectionist and executed by the British colonists. \nAt one point the granddaughter stops and says she can’t go on\, the story is too painful. “It’s pretty harrowing stuff\,” says Jordan. “I’ve never done a performance like this before. It’s not just the opera\, but the feeling I had of being part of the Indigenous cast as one of their community.” \nThe anthem of the Métis nation is the Red River Jig\, a fiddle tune and dance number with Indigenous origins back to the early 19th century. This music figures centrally in the Li Keur opera. Says Jordan\, “By playing that music\, by being accepted by the that community\, I’ve come a bit to know what it means to be Métis.” \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nRegister 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-28-5/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/metis-river.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231120T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231120T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231113T201611Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231118T025027Z
UID:10001588-1700503200-1700508600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Crazy Joy with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nBest-selling science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson has his whole adult life trekked the Sierra Nevada in California. He has taken well over one hundred trips into those mountains and he writes in The High Sierra\, A Love Story: \nAt the start of a trip\, I sometimes laugh out loud. That feeling is one of the things I want to write about … crazy love. Some kind of joy. \nWhat is it to feel the gift of joy? Where does it come from? Dare we share in another’s joy? \nThe great master Yuanwu\, who provided commentary for a collection of koans called The Blue Cliff Record\, was living at Wuzu’s temple when he had a sudden understanding of the light that shines in all things. Full of gratitude to his teacher\, Yuanwu took a stick of incense to Wuzu and gave him the following poem: \nThe golden duck vanishes into the golden brocade\,\nWith a country song the drunk comes home from the woods\,\nOnly the young beauty knows about her love affair. \nWuzu responded\, “I share your joy.” \nI think we feel the deepest joy when we cross over unknown and unknowable frontiers\, when we meet the inconceivable. \nFor some years\, I saw sesshin retreats as a kind of struggle. It was a grim battle to beat down my ego and realize my Buddha nature. I remember one time\, as I was headed off to a retreat\, my young daughter said to me gayly\, “Daddy\, have a good time!” I snorted to myself\, “Honey\, you don’t understand\, I am headed into war.” But things have since changed. \nOne time during sesshin I was in the dokusan line\, watching the wavering light of a candle on the altar. The dokusan schedule was running late\, and folks in the zendo set off for dinner. I could hear people standing in line\, taking up plates and beginning to serve themselves. I realized that it was me—my most intimate self—that they were eating. Tears welled up in my eyes. It was a joyful sharing. \nThis week in our PZI Open Temple\, we heard this verse by Polish poet Anna Swir: \nPriceless Gifts \n(translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan) \nAn empty day without events.\nAnd that is why\nit grew immense\nas space. And suddenly\nhappiness of being\nentered me.\nI heard\nin my heartbeat\nthe birth of time\nand each instant of life\none after the other\ncame rushing in\nlike priceless gifts. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nRegister 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-28-4/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/crazyJoyCALENDAR.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231115T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231115T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230810T223153Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231130T221559Z
UID:10001464-1700071200-1700076600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: Jon Joseph in Conversation with Author Kim Stanley Robinson
DESCRIPTION:A PZI Zen Online Event hosted by Jon Joseph Roshi\nNovember 15th\, 2023\nWednesday Evening\, 6–7:30 pm PST\nOur mind is nothing other than mountains\, rivers\, and the great earth\, the sun\, the moon and the stars. \n—Eihei Dogen\, Shobogenzo \nWith the release of The Ministry for the Future\, best-selling author Kim Stanley Robinson has become the most closely followed voice in science and climate fiction today. Called by The New York Times\, “the last great utopian\,” Stan’s vision of the future is fearsome yet ultimately optimistic in its belief that the human race will learn to cooperatively address its growing existential challenges. \nThough not formally religious\, Stan’s spiritual guiding light for decades has been Zen Buddhism\, and Buddhist themes of consciousness\, non-duality and attention illuminate his writing and life. The work of deep-ecology poet Gary Snyder inspired him to become a writer\, and he was later heavily influenced by mystical leanings of Ursula K. LeGuin and Philip K. Dick. \n“What has persisted out of my interest in Zen\,” Stan says\, “is its devotion to treating the world as sacred in daily life.” He adds\, “Chop wood\, carry water” could just as easily be “run five miles\, write five pages.” Gardening\, washing dishes\, looking after little children\, “this puts a spark into things\, a glow around them.” \n—Jon Joseph \n\nAnd because we are alive\, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns\, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe—its culmination\, like the color of the flower at first bloom on a wet morning. \n―Kim Stanley Robinson\, from his book\, Green Mars \n\nOfficial Short Bio \nKim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. He is the author of more than twenty books\, including the international bestselling Mars trilogy\, and more recently\, New York 2140\, Aurora\, Shaman\, Green Earth\, and 2312\, a NYT bestseller nominated for all seven of the major science fiction awards. \nRobinson works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute\, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop\, and UC San Diego’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. His writing has been translated into twenty-five languages and has won a dozen awards\, including the Hugo\, Nebula\, Locus\, and World Fantasy awards. In 2008\, he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine. \nHis novel\, The Ministry for the Future\, was selected as one of Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2020” and one of Bill Gates’ “Five Great Books for the Summer” in 2022. His most recent book\, The High Sierra: A Love Story\, is a non-fiction exploration of Robinson’s years spent hiking and camping in the Sierra Nevada mountains\, one of the most compelling places on Earth. \n\nJon Joseph (rt)\, Kim Stanley Robinson\n  \nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation with special guest Kim Stanley Robinson. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-author-kim-stanley-robinson/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/highSierra-CALENDAR.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231113T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231113T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231108T164447Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231108T181350Z
UID:10001587-1699898400-1699903800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:NO MONDAY ZEN TODAY \nJon Joseph is hosting a Zen Luminaries event on Wednesday\, November 15th\, with Special Guest Kim Stanley Robinson.\n \nYou may register here for Zen Luminaries. \nHope to see you soon! \n(Jon will be back November 20th for his regular Monday Zen meeting.) \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \n  \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-28-3/
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:20231106T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231106T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231031T230156Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231111T001811Z
UID:10001586-1699293600-1699299000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Living by Starlight with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:Join us this Monday as we discuss Stan’s work in advance of his visit in our Pacific Zen Luminaries Series on Wednesday\, November 15\, 2023. \n(You may register here for his Luminaries visit on November 15th.) \nWith the release of The Ministry for the Future (2020)\, best-selling author Kim Stanley Robinson has become the most closely followed voice in science and climate fiction today. Called by The New York Times “the last great utopian\,” Stan’s vision of the future is fearsome yet ultimately optimistic in its belief that the human race will learn how to come together to address our growing existential challenges. \nThough not formally religious\, for decades Stan’s spiritual guiding light has been Zen Buddhism. “What has persisted out of my interest in Zen\,” Stan says\, “is it’s devotion to treating the world as sacred in daily life. ‘Chop wood\, carry water’ could just as easily be ‘run five miles\, write five pages.’ This puts a spark into things\, a glow around them.” \nThe work of deep-ecology poet Gary Snyder inspired him to become a writer\, and he was later heavily influenced by mystical leanings of Ursula LeGuin and Philip K. Dick. The themes of consciousness\, non-duality\, and attention illuminate his writing and life. Stan’s devotion to Gaia\, Mother Earth\, has allowed his mind and imagination to explore the far reaches of space and time. \n—Jon Joseph \nPublished in The High Sierra; A Love Story (2022): \nNight Poem\, Kim Stanley Robinson (1988) \nWriting by starlight\nCan’t see the words\nFill a page\nNothing there\nWaterfall distant sound\nTree against stars Milky Way\nJuniper Jupiter white rock\nWind dying my heart\nAt peace a Friday night\nBig Dipper sits on the mountain\nFriends lie in their tents\nI sit against rock\nStar bowl spinning overhead\nFeel the movement\nAnd soar away \nWho knows how many stars there are\nAll those dim ones filling the black\nUntil it seems no black is there\nAnd then you see the Milky Way\nThe sky should be pure white with stars\nThat’s black dust up there\nBlocking the view\nCarbon and hydrogen\nAll of us flung together\nIn just this way\nA blank white page\nI write and then\nA blank white page\nStory of my life! \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate. \nJon Joseph Roshi\,\nDirector of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-28-2/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/livingByStarlight-CALENDAR.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231030T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231030T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230131T181216Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240916T181604Z
UID:10001080-1698688800-1698694200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: The Half-Known Life – Jon Joseph in Conversation with Essayist & Novelist Pico Iyer
DESCRIPTION:Pico joins us on for a wide-ranging discussion of creativity\, meditation\, Leonard Cohen and the Dalai Lama.   \nWe lead our lives in the outer world\, we understand them through the inner. So here are a set of journeys through inner and outer and the places in between . . . \nFrom his writing: \n“Creativity comes from a place I can’t name\, let alone control or anticipate. It is unanswerable; a vast darkness you can’t penetrate. I was talking to a friend in Santa Barbara a couple of years ago and said\, ‘My writing comes from out of the blue.’ He asked\, ‘What is the blue?’ \n“What I’ve learned in transitioning from journalistic writing is to never to use my notes at all. When my house burned down in 1990\, I lost everything in the world because I write everything by hand. I lost my next three books; eight years of writing. My editor commiserated\, and then said\, ‘You know Pico\, losing your notes was probably the best thing that could happen to you as a writer because now you’re going to have to write from memory\, imagination and heart.’ \n“I’ve never formally meditated in my life … but for me\, that’s what writing is. And what comes out of my writing is really immaterial. The process of sitting eight hours a day in absolute quiet without anything there is the best way for me to find clarity and freedom from clutter in my life. It’s baby steps toward mindfulness. \n“My most important entry point into Zen\, as a neutral observer\, was through spending 20 years in close friendship with Leonard Cohen. It was very moving to see the effects of Zen practice on somebody who\, metaphorically\, had all the riches in the world\, yet was prepared to give them up because he felt Zen practice a richer\, deeper adventure than anything he’d ever done. Leonard was without\, doubt\, the kindest\, deepest\, wisest person I’ve ever met. Except for the Dalai Lama\, who is a special case. \n“I have been with His Holiness for nearly a half century\, and accompanied him on ten trips through Japan\, the only Mahayana country to welcome him. He comes here to Japan\, and has deep faith in the Japanese to help carry on the Vajrayana tradition\, yet it is such a radically different tradition. \n“Spending time in the Benedictine monastery in Santa Barbara—over a hundred retreats in the last thirty-two years—has been a center of my life for a very long time\, even though I will never be a Catholic. That is my next book.” \n—Pico Iyer \n\n\nPico Iyer was born in Oxford\, England in 1957. In 1980\, he became a Teaching Fellow at Harvard\, where he received a second Master’s degree\, and in subsequent years received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters. Since 1982\, he has been a full-time writer\, publishing fifteen books translated into twenty-three languages\, on subjects ranging from the Dalai Lama to globalism\, from the Cuban Revolution to Islamic mysticism. \nHis books include such long-running sellers as Video Night in Kathmandu\, The Lady and the Monk\, The Global Soul\, The Open Road and The Art of Stillness. He has been a constant contributor for more than thirty years to Time\, The New York Times\, Harper’s Magazine\, the Los Angeles Times\, and more than 250 periodicals worldwide. His four recent talks for TED have received more than eleven million views. \nSince 1992\, Iyer has spent much of his time at a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur\, California\, and most of the rest in suburban Japan. \n\nSource: www.picoiyerjourneys.com \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation with special guest Pico Iyer. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-essayist-novelist-pico-iyer/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/picoJonJ_500x375-1.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231023T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231023T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231005T214934Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231005T220148Z
UID:10001580-1698084000-1698089400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:NO MONDAY ZEN TODAY \nJon Joseph is in sesshin this week. He returns to Monday Zen on November 6th. \nALSO\, join Jon Joseph on Monday\, October 30th for a Luminaries Series event with special guest Pico Iyer. \nHope to see you then! \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 \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/on-break-monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-5/
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:20231016T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231016T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231011T164357Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231013T214610Z
UID:10001542-1697479200-1697484600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Best Sauce: Mayo or Shoyu? with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nMazu’s former teacher dispatched a monk to Mazu’s place\, instructing him\, “Wait until he enters the hall to speak\, and then ask him\, ‘What’s going on?’ Take note of his answer and then bring it back and tell it to me.” The monk carried out the teacher’s instructions\, returned and said\, “Master Ma said\, ‘In the thirty years since the barbarian uprising\, I’ve never lacked for salt or mayonnaise.’” The teacher approved the answer. \n—adapted from Andy Ferguson\, Zen’s Chinese Heritage (Compendium of the Five Lamps) \nWe have been sitting with this koan all week in the morning Open Temple\, and I must admit\, it is too delicious to pass up without comment. \nWhen most people read Mazu’s response of “I’ve never lacked for salt or sauce\,” they reasonably think he was speaking of soy sauce\, or something like it. They would be right: the character used in the Chinese text 醤 (sho in Japanese) is the root for shoyu\, soy sauce. But for me\, another beloved condiment was the first that came to mind\, the best sauce of all: mayonnaise. \nOutside of Mazu\, the spread of mayonnaise into Chan-Zen literature seems\, well\, kind of thin. There is a Zen Mayo Facebook page\, but it only has a couple of strange manga illustrations and a single friend. I recalled reading a reference that Richard Baker Roshi\, a founding teacher at San Francisco Zen Center\, once made mayo as a Zen practice in a teisho\, and upon searching\, found a 1976 talk by him on the Sixth Ancestor Huineng’s poetry contest. The head monk at the temple wrote that we need to constantly polish the mirror-mind\, while Huineng answered there was no need to polish because there is no mirror for dust alight upon. Baker compared mayonnaise separating into its elements to what happens in our lives if we stop polishing our personal mirror with meditation practice. \nIt is obvious that if you do not polish your mirror\, if you stop washing your face and picking up after yourself\, things get very bad quickly. Our state of mind and life can deteriorate rapidly. The mayonnaise-like suspension of our life and culture can degenerate rapidly back into yolk and oil when personal or cultural credibility is gone. We feel the power of the outside world\, the power of the illusion-of the mayonnaise-and the necessity and need to take care of and maintain things at least minimally. But the concept of a mirror is not adequate for these subtleties. The mirror still poses an “outside” and a “who” that wipes it. \nFair enough\, keep sitting and polishing. Chan-Zen itself means “meditation\,”and the practice helps us create a solid vessel in which to place our lives. That is why I find sitting in the Open Temple every morning so valuable. But Mazu was famous for taking the practice off the cushion and into ordinary life. When asked “What is Buddha?” Mazu responded\, “This very heart-mind is the Buddha.” Awakening is not an experience outside of our lives; it is deeply our own. I think that is what Baker was alluding to in his last sentence. \nThere is something wonderful and intimate about feeling in our lives that we are not lacking. Not lacking salt\, soy sauce\, mayonnaise\, grocery stores\, Studebaker station wagons\, mothers\, brothers and sisters. A couple of days ago\, I sliced up the last large Brandywine tomato of the season\, toasted a piece of whole wheat bread\, spread Mazu’s best sauce on it\, and then dusted the sliced tomato with gomasio. As I tucked into the tomato half-sandwich\, not one thing was lacking. It had been thus for thirty\, and more\, years. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate. \nJon Joseph Roshi\,\nDirector of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-27-4/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/mayo-shoyuCALENDAR.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231009T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231009T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20231003T041304Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231007T022436Z
UID:10001541-1696874400-1696879800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: This Elk Is for You – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nOne day\, when Dongshan and a monk were washing their bowls\, they saw two crows fighting over a frog.\nThe monk asked\, “Why does it always have to be like that?”\nDongshan replied\, “It’s only for your benefit\, honored one.” \n—Record of Dongshan \nJordan and I were talking the other day\, and he asked\, “Did I ever tell you the story of my friend in British Columbia?” \nJordan’s Story \nScotty is an elk-hunting guide who built a cabin on the shore of Kootenay Lake below the eight-thousand-foot Kootenay Mountain in the northern Rockies. “He’s living as part of the mountain\,” said Jordan of his hunter friend. \nOne day\, an elk came off the mountain into his yard. It suffered from “winter sickness\,” a condition brought on by near-starvation during the long and harsh Canadian winter. Scotty left out food and water\, but the elk soon died. When he went over to look at it\, the dead elk was covered in a thick blanket of ticks. Scotty had never seen anything like it. \nHis deep sorrow for the elk opened Scotty’s heart. “It was like a gate opening wide\,” said Jordan. “I was working on the crows-and-frog koan at the time\, and thought I’d tell him about it but then realized he’d already gotten it.” Somehow\, Scotty knew the elk had come for him and he buried it by himself. \nThat night\, Scotty’s brother called from jail and they started to argue and fall into their old ways. But something had changed for Scotty after he’d buried the elk\, and he turned the conversation around. When they finished talking\, for the first time in his life\, Scotty’s brother said that he loved him. That very night\, the brother died in his sleep of a brain aneurism. \nJordan went on\, “Earlier this year\, my own brother\, Steve\, was diagnosed with a serious cancer. In his late thirties\, Steve had built a good business as a master tattoo artist\, and just last fall celebrated the birth of a baby girl. Right after his diagnosis\, he began twelve weeks of punishing chemotherapy. He lost all the hedge-like hair on his head and his big thick beard. He could no longer work and was going in and out of a deep depression.” \n“Steve and I are close\,” Jordan said\, “but we weren’t great communicators growing up. The language of emotion was just not part of our vocabulary.” A couple of months ago\, they were in a texting exchange over something. “I thought the exchange was over. And then Steve tacked something on the end: ‘I love you.’ It was the first time he had ever told me that.” \n“When I think about my brother’s cancer\, I say to myself\, ‘Why does it have to be like this?’ I can feel it with my whole body. And then I step into it; my brother tells me he loves me\, and I tell him I love him. That is the storehouse of treasures —maybe there is just a frog inside\, but it’s already wide open.” \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nRegister 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-27-3/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ElkInYardCALENDAR.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231002T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20231002T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230926T155502Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20231002T181358Z
UID:10001540-1696269600-1696275000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Treasures of Sesshin – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nThe storehouse of treasures opens of itself.\nYou may take them and use them any way you wish. \n—Dogen’s Extensive Record\, Fukanzazengi \nIn our recent three-day PZI sesshin\, we rapidly entered deep waters; koans speaking with other koans.  \nSixteen bodhisattvas enter the bath. \nWe are searching\, searching for the coin lost in the river. \nWe come and go by daylight\, but suddenly it’s midnight and there’s no sun\, no moon\, no lamp. \nHow will we get hold of something?  \nSome notes follow: \n—We are fortunate. Fortunate. Fortunate to breathe this air. Fortunate for this day. This is your day. \n—Just as you enter the bath\, the bath enters you. Where I live\, we have had plenty of rain lately\, and the frogs are out\, singing. The  clouds cleared for a time\, the full moon rose\, and the coyotes yipped. The frogs are drinking in the coyotes\, who are drinking in the moon\, and the moon is drinking in the sun. \n—One description of awakening is water poured onto water. What was your way of entering the bath with the sixteen bodhisattvas? \n—The coin lost in the river—what are we seeking in the coin? Practice is about making ourselves findable. If we stay around in the river long enough\, we may be surprised. We may find something we had that was never lost. \nAnd did you find what you wanted from this life\,\neven so?\nI did.\nAnd what did you find?\nThat I could call myself beloved\,\nand find myself beloved on this earth. \n—Raymond Carter\, Late Fragment (amended) \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCOME JOIN US on Mondays for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nRegister 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-27-2/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/belovedBuddhaTouchesEarhtCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230925T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230925T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230912T175557Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230927T183816Z
UID:10001530-1695664800-1695670200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: The Greatest Wa – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:Zhaozhou taught\, “The greatest way is not difficult if you don’t pick and choose. As soon as I speak\, you’ll think\, ‘That’s picking and choosing\,’ or ‘That’s clear.’ But I don’t identify with clarity. Can you live this way?”\nA student asked\, “If you don’t identify with clarity\, what do you live by?”\n“Again\, I don’t know.”\n“If you don’t know\, why do you say that you don’t identify with clarity?”\n“When you ask the question you already have it. Make your bow and step back.” \n—The Blue Cliff Record Case 2 \nLast week we investigated the Daoist notion of Ma 間: sunlight streaming through a gate\, “the space between.” Lately\, I have been thinking about Wa 和\, or “harmony.” In the practice of Zen\, realizing Ma—“space”—brings a measure of Wa: “harmony.” So how do we get from Ma to Wa? \nWa has a broad cultural meaning in Japanese society. The left element on the ideogram\, ine: 禾\,  means rice plant. The character on the right is kuchi: 口—mouth. As a verb\, the ideogram is read  和む\, nagomu\, meaning “to soften.” So\, it is not hard to see why rice + mouth represents a softening into harmony\, peace\, and unity. \nThe Wa character also stands for Japan. The story goes that in the 8th century\, as trade picked up with China\, the Japanese got tired of the Chinese calling them a certain Wa  倭\, which means “submissive\, distant\, dwarf.” So they changed the character to another Wa 和: harmony. “Great Harmony\,” daiwa or yamato\, is one of the ancient words that Japan calls itself. \nThe Japanese see promoting social harmony\, Wa\, as fundamental to the nation’s stability: crime is low\, lifetimes long\, and the gap between rich and poor is relatively narrow. But there is a dark side to seeking that Wa: severe bullying in schools\, high youth suicide rates\, difficulties with integrating outsiders. The greatest harmony\, in society and in our lives\, comes from not excluding the shadow. \nMany years ago\, when I was getting my start as a freelance reporter in Japan\, I was invited to be an extra in a Tora-san (“Mr. Tiger”) movie\, in a series called Otoko wa Tsurai Yo (It is Hard Being a Man)\, directed by Yoji Yamada. For two decades it was the most popular movie series in Japan; Yamada shot fifty episodes. I was in episode thirty\, and my (uncredited) claim to fame was bumping into the child star in a restaurant and saying “Excuse me\,” in English. So yes\, IMDb\, if you’re checking\, I spoke lines. \nOn the face of it\, Tora-san was anything but Wa: he is a bumbling traveling salesman who meets the female star of the day\, and just as they are to consummate their relationship\, he packs his one small suitcase and skips town. Tora-san was a ne’er do well in a society striving for perfection. By embracing Tora-san\, ordinary Japanese were finding a greater harmony by laughing\, for a moment\, at the darker side of social Wa.  \nIn our own lives\, inclusion of all the bits is the greatest way\, the greatest Wa. For me\, that’s what Zhaozhou is pointing at. The greatest Wa is not difficult at all\, if we just don’t pick and choose. We need not dwell in some notion of clarity\, purity\, or even harmony. Perhaps just asking the question is enough. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJon Joseph Roshi\, Director of San Mateo Zen Community
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-25-3/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/greatestWA-CALENDAR500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230918T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230918T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230912T183815Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230922T184340Z
UID:10001529-1695060000-1695065400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: The Space Between – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:Someone asked Hongzhi\, “What about the ones who’ve gone?”\nHongzhi said\, “White clouds rise to the top of the valleys\, blue peaks lean into the empty sky.” \n—Hongzhi Zhenjue\, PZI Miscellaneous Koans \nSometimes\, when speaking about Chan-Zen\, I feel that talking in double negatives is more expressive than a declarative statement: “Not two” rather than “one”; “not wrong” rather than “right”; “not one thing” instead of “all things.” Maybe a double negative has a softer edge against the universe. Yet even a softer double-negative does not quite touch the space that is between. \nThere is a word for “space between” in Japanese—Ma 間. This kanji character suggests sunlight 日 shining through a gateway 門. But Ma is different from ideograms most often associated with shunyata\, or emptiness\, like Ku 空: the vast openness of the sky\, and one of its common usages is\, indeed\, “sky.” The less commonly used character Ko 虚 connotes a void\, or lack of anything at all.  \nMa\, improperly labeled “negative space” by some writers\, is defined by what comes before and what comes after. It is not negative at all—it creates the before and after.  The violinist Isaac Stern once said\,  \nMusic is the thousandth of a millisecond between one note and another; how you get from one to the other—that’s where the music is. \nThat is Ma. \nDavid Hinton\, in his book Existence: A Story\, investigates that space between\, in both Chinese landscape painting and poetry. He calls it “Absence.” \nMountains are where Presence burgeons from Absence in its most majestic forms\, a cosmology rendered in countless landscape paintings\, where Absence appears as vast empty spaces from which Presence emerges in the form of landscape. \nI have a friend whose younger brother is going through a series of tough chemotherapy treatments\, and they both are searching for that space between. “I really want to get a solid grip on things to make them better\,” my friend said\, squeezing his hands together. “But somehow that’s like trying to steal my brother’s life from him.” Struggling to express his feeling in words\, he says\, “I can’t make things better\, and trying to do it anyway is not helpful.” What he finds helpful is to “not make his illness wrong\,” he says. “That’s where the freedom is.” \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nJoin us for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nAll are welcome. \n—Jon Joseph \n  \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-25-4/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/spaceBetweenCALENDAR.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230911T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230911T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230328T174245Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230908T193400Z
UID:10001225-1694455200-1694460600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: Jon Joseph in Conversation with Poet & Author Ocean Vuong
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nA PZI Zen Online Event hosted by Jon Joseph Roshi\nSeptember 11th\, 2023\nMonday Evening\, 6–7:30 pm PDT\nThis Monday\, we visit with Ocean Vuong on his poetry\, prose and life.\n\nFrom his writing: \nAs an artist\, there has to be an allegiance to wonder and awe and mystery\, and a willingness to quest beyond truth … What is the meaning of rain? Rain doesn’t have a secret. It just exists. It’s the same with music. You experience music. Why do we cry listening to Bach? There’s no meaning inherent in the notes. \nWith [grandma] Lan\, one of my tasks was to take a pair of tweezers\, and pluck\, one by one\, the grey hairs from her head …  \nFor this work\, I was paid in stories: ”Help me\, Little Dog.” She pressed my hands to her chest. “Help me stay young\, get this snow off of my life—get it all off of my life.” I came to know\, in those afternoons\, that madness can sometimes lead to discovery\, that the mind\, fractured and short-wired\, is not entirely wrong. \nThey say if you want something bad enough you’ll end up making a god out of it. But what if all I ever wanted was my life\, Ma? \nI am thinking of beauty again\, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If an individual life is so short\, then to be gorgeous\, even from the day you’re born to the day you die\, is to be gorgeous only briefly …  \nI think of the time Trevor and I sat on the toolshed roof\, watching the sun sink. I wasn’t so much surprised by its effect\, but that it was ever mine to see. Because the sunset\, like survival\, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous\, you must first be seen\, but to be seen allows you to be hunted. \n—Ocean Vuong \n\n\n\n \n\n\nOfficial Short Bio \nOcean Vuong is author of the poetry collection\, Time is a Mother\, and best-selling novel\, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous\, which has been translated into thirty-seven languages. A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Genius Grant\, he is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection\, Night Sky with Exit Wounds\, and has received numerous accolades and awards. \nVuong’s writings have been featured in The Atlantic\, Granta\, Harpers\, The Nation\, New Republic\, The New Yorker\, The New York Times\, The Paris Review\, The Village Voice\, and American Poetry Review\, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. \nBorn in Saigon\, Vietnam\, and raised in Hartford\, Connecticut in a working class family of nail salon and factory laborers\, he was educated at nearby Manchester Community College before transferring to Pace University to study International Marketing. He soon left business school to enroll in Brooklyn College\, where he graduated with a BA in nineteenth-century American literature. He subsequently received his MFA in poetry from NYU. \nVuong currently lives in Northampton\, Massachusetts and serves as a tenured professor in the Creative Writing MFA program at NYU. \nsource: https://www.oceanvuong.com/about \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 range is $10 for PZI Members and $12 for Non-Members\, but the scale is sliding depending on one’s ability to contribute. We also greatly appreciate Patrons\, who help support the program with larger gifts of $50—500. \n\nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation with special guest Ocean Vuong. All are welcome to join in for meditation and conversation. Register to participate. \nREGISTER
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-poet-author-ocean-vuong/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/oceanvuongCALENDAR_500X375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230904T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230904T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230829T171213Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230904T020411Z
UID:10001527-1693850400-1693855800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Preview of Ocean Vuong - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nThis Monday night we will share Ocean Vuong’s poetry and prose\, reading from his three primary works. \nFrom Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous: \nNight Sky With Exit Wounds (excerpt) \nLet me begin again. \nDear Ma\, \nI am writing to reach you—even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are. I am writing to go back to the time\, at the rest stop in Virginia\, when you stared\, horror-struck\, at the taxidermy buck hung over the soda machine by the restrooms\, its antlers shadowing your face. In the car\, you kept shaking your head. “I don’t understand why they would do that. Can’t they see it’s a corpse? A corpse should go away\, not get stuck forever like that.” \nI think now of that buck\, how you stared into its black glass eyes and saw your reflection\, your whole body\, warped in that lifeless mirror. How it was not the grotesque mounting of a decapitated animal that shook you—but that the taxidermy embodied a death that won’t finish\, a death that keeps dying as we walk past it to relieve ourselves. \nSo begins the first novel by Zen Buddhist Ocean Vuong\, one of the leading young voices in American letters today. The New Yorker calls his Night Sky With Exit Wound\, a “soaring\, sober consideration of his family’s absorption into the American fold;” On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous “a beautifully meditative novel borrowed from his life growing up queer and surrounded by despair and addiction” in post-industrial New England; and Time Is A Mother “full of concentrated\, kaleidoscopic riffs on the feelings and sounds\, the delirious highs and darkest lows\, that make up contemporary life.” \nTell me it was for hunger\n& nothing more. For hunger is to give\nthe body what it knows\nit cannot keep. That this amber light\nwhittled down to another war\nis all that pins my hand to your chest. \nYou drowning between my arms—\nstay.\nyou pushing your body\ninto the river\nonly to be left\nwith yourself—\n \nstay… \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nJoin us for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nAll are welcome. \n—Jon Joseph \n  \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-25-2/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/OceanVuong_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230828T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230828T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230825T182158Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230827T025328Z
UID:10001341-1693245600-1693251000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Unreliable Witness – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nSitting on an airplane\, apparently going on vacation\, Marge Simpson says to Homer\, who sits next to her\, Come on Homer. Japan will be fun. You liked Rashomon.” Says Homer\, “That’s not how I remember it.”  \nMy daughter recently texted me the above joke\, and I had a great laugh. But it also got me thinking about how unreliable a witness I can sometimes be in my own life. In my own movie\, called “Crafting My Self\,” are a few lines like this: “That was wrong for him to criticize me.” “I deserved to be treated better.” “Boy\, what was her motive behind that?” It is a big project\, Self\, and takes a lot of ongoing work. \nRashomon\, released in 1950\, launched both Akira Kurosawa as a leading director and Toshiro Mifune as Japan’s most famous actor. In the film\, there are four witnesses to an assault and murder\, and each testify to a different story. \nOn the same day I got the text\, I was talking with a friend about the first of the Three Pure Vows\, “I vow to do no harm.” We got to chatting about the Rashomon-quality of Dongshan’s koan about two crows fighting over a frog: \nOne day when Dongshan and a monk were washing their bowls\, they saw two crows fighting over a frog. The monk asked\, “Why does it always have to be like that?” Dongshan replied\, “It’s only for your benefit\, honored one.” \nWere the crows doing harm\, trying to feed their young? Perhaps the monk was doing harm\, caught in his own delusive melancholy. Maybe the frog had died\, having laid four thousand eggs\, before the crows even arrived. Or maybe none of these stories are true. \nI sometimes seem to have trouble seeing myself as others see me. In our kitchen is a counter often buried in bags\, purses\, mail\, dog leashes\, and other stuff. A couple of weeks ago\, frustrated\, I asked my partner in what I thought was a measured\, neutral tone\, “Could we please not put all this stuff on the counter?” My wife shot back\, “Don’t you yell at me!” A bit shocked\, I turned to my daughter\, who was standing nearby\, and asked\, “Was I yelling?” She replied\, “Dad\, you were being an asshole.” \nMaybe Dongshan is not suggesting we figure out who done it\, and attach blame. I think it is something deeper than that. Perhaps he is just suggesting that we deeply appreciate the picture show. It is\, after all\, our movie\, and a wonderful one at that. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nJoin us for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nAll are welcome. \n—Jon Joseph \n  \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-26-3-5/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/samauraiCrowCALENDAR.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230821T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230821T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230818T181955Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230818T192247Z
UID:10001340-1692640800-1692646200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Barbie Seeks True Nature – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nPeople poke through the weeds and explore the dark\, all in an attempt to see their true nature.\nRight now\, honored one\, where is your true nature?\n \n—Doushuai’s Three Barriers \n\nBefore going to see Greta Gerwig’s latest film\, I asked my wife and daughter about it. “It’s about feminism. There’s no Zen in it\,” they agreed. Jokingly\, I asked\, “Well\, how was the popcorn?” And they both laughed. \nWhat attracted me about the subject—the life of an iconic children’s doll—was its common-ness\, its culture of the colloquial. Early Chan masters often used popular songs or poems to illustrate their teaching. In one koan\, Wuzu asks an official if he had heard the song\, “She calls to her maid\, ‘Little Jade!’ not because she wants something\, but just so her lover will hear her voice.” He adds\, “That is very close to Zen.” \nThough Barbie was getting good reviews\, I expected it to be kitschy in the extreme. I braced for disappointment. Instead\, I was surprised how touched I was by the storyline and acting. By the time the final credits rolled\, I had tears in my eyes\, for criminy’s sake! \nYes\, the movie has a feminist message. Sometimes that message felt uncomfortably familiar as my “patriarchal” genes vibrated a bit. But the full message\, for me\, was greater than a discussion of male and female roles in society: it was about a person seeking freedom to realize their own being. Barbie was searching through her weeds and darkness for her own true nature. And\, in his own blockhead way\, Ken was doing that\, too. \nIn Zen\, of course\, we need not wait around for others to get out of the way so we can find our true nature. We find our true self in the midst of our current lives\, even if self or other seem encumbered. But Barbie’s impulse for seeking true nature is similar to our own—her search is very close to Zen. \nAfter the movie\, I bought a small bag of popcorn (no extra butter) and a Sprite\, and went outside\, finding a park bench in the shade. The first time Barbie went out into the real world\, she sat on a similar bench outside\, taking in the ordinary beauty of an old woman next to her\, the light in the trees\, the children playing. I sat on my bench\, enjoying the summer sunlight and warm afternoon\, the people moving about—a Barbie moment in the real world. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us for a koan\, meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nRegister to participate. All are welcome. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-26-3-4/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230814T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230814T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T051504
CREATED:20230810T182226Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230814T144441Z
UID:10001339-1692036000-1692041400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Learning Dark Enigma – with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nLearning Dark Enigma \nLast week\, author David Hinton talked with us about The Way of Ch’an. Let’s revisit this topic together on Monday.    \nFrom David Hinton’s book\, The Way of Ch’an: \nDARK-ENIGMA 玄 is perhaps the most foundational concept in this Daoist/Chan cosmology/ontology. Dark-enigma is Way before it is named\, before Absence and Presence give birth to one another—that region beyond name and ideation where consciousness and the empirical Cosmos share their source. \nDark-enigma came to have a particular historic significance\, for it became the name of a neo-Daoist school of philosophy in the third and fourth centuries C.E.: Dark-Enigma Learning is the school that gave Chinese thought a decidedly ontological turn and became central to the synthesis of Daoism and Dhyana Buddhism into Chan Buddhism. \nIndeed\, it is the concept is at the very heart of Chan practice and enlightenment. It is there at the very beginning\, concluding the first chapter of the Daodejing: “Dark-enigma deep within dark-enigma / gateway of all mystery.” \nAnd it recurs often at key moments throughout the Chan tradition. Among the countless examples is Fathom Mountain (Dongshan\, 807–869; founder of Soto Zen) saying that the most profound dimension of Chan’s wordless teaching is dark-enigma within dark-enigma\, which he evocatively describes as the “tongue of a corpse.” \nAnd the very influential Stone-Head (Shitou\, 700–790) ends his still influential poem  Amalgam-Alike Compact declaring dark-enigma to be the essential object of Chan inquiry: \nPlease\, you who try to fathom dark-enigma clear through\,\ndon’t pass your days and nights in vain. \n—David Hinton \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nJoin us for koan meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nAll are welcome. \n—Jon Joseph \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-26-3-3/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/WayofChanCALENDAR500x375.jpg
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