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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230522T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230522T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230313T202512Z
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SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Infinity Unbound - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJoin us this Monday night\, a week before Ruth Ozeki joins us in our Luminaries Series\, for a review of and conversation about her work. \nIn Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness\, narrated by an omniscient being called “the Book\,” Benny is a troubled 15-year-old boy who begins hearing voices following the tragic death of his father and emotional struggles of his mother. After an act of violence in school\, he is sent for a time to a psychiatric hospital. There he meets another teenager\, Alice\, aka “the Aleph\,” who seditiously writes messages on slips of paper and hands them out to the residents of the ward: \nPut your shoe on the table; ask it what it wants from you.\nFace a blank wall; pretend the wall is a mirror.\nPretend you are very old; move at half speed.\nWalk like you’re happy; change directions.\nBe a pussy\, purr; lick your beautiful fur.\nDo everything backward.\nLie on your back on the floor and listen; feel free to sing along. \nFor passing around these koan-like instructions\, the Aleph is kicked out of the children’s wing and sent up to the high-security adult’s ward. \nBenny fakes a note to skip school for some weeks\, and is befriended by the Aleph’s associate\, the Bottleman\, an aged\, drunken and homeless wanderer\, who rolls around in his wheelchair serving as kind of poet Zen master. The B-man takes Benny to the Book Bindery\, a deserted part of the basement in the public library.  \n“The Bindery contains everything\,” the Bottleman said. “Anything is possible\,” and now Benny understood. The Bindery was primordial\, a place of vast\, boundless silence that contained all sound\, and emptiness that contained all form. Benny had never heard such silence before. Never felt such imminence. He shivered. \nAfter a contentious election and violent demonstration that Benny gets swept up in\, late one night he seeks shelter in the library’s Bindery. Somehow\, that night\, Benny experiences a kind of spiritual awakening\, guided by The Book: \nThe Bindery was our access [the Book narrates]\, the point in space that contains all other points\, and that night you were a boy unbound\, a tiny astronaut\, taking your first leap into an infinite and unknowable universe. For the first time you could hear the voices of the things you’ve been hearing for so long\, all the clamorous matter vying for your attention… \nHow impossible it is to put into words this infinitude of the Unbound! In a single instant\, we witnessed constellations on the brink of constellating\, assemblages in flux… We perceived the dynamic flow of vibrant matter\, materializing as a marble or a baseball bat\, a sneaker of a story\, a jazz riff or a viral contagion\, an ovum or an antique spoon… \nAll these things you saw and felt at once. How is that possible? Because in the Bindery\, where phenomena are still Unbound\, stories have not yet learned to behave in a linear fashion…\n\nThis Monday night\, let’s share the non-linear story of our lives.  \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-23/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/bookbinderyCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230515T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230515T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230313T202357Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230421T174839Z
UID:10001213-1684173600-1684179000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:NO MONDAY ZEN TODAY \nJon Joseph is away this week. He returns to Monday Zen on May 22. \nHope to see you then! \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us for a koan\, meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nAll are welcome. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-22/
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:20230508T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230508T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230313T201355Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230421T175202Z
UID:10001212-1683568800-1683574200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:NO MONDAY ZEN TODAY \nJon Joseph is away this week. He returns to Monday Zen on May 22. \nHope to see you then! \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us for a koan\, meditation\, dharma talk and conversation.\nAll are welcome. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-21/
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:20230501T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230501T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230313T201242Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230421T175303Z
UID:10001211-1682964000-1682969400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:NO MONDAY ZEN TODAY \nJon Joseph is away this week. He returns to Monday Zen on May 22. \nHope to see you then! \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-20/
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:20230424T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230424T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230116T194943Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230421T163307Z
UID:10001079-1682359200-1682364600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: The Five Invitations - Jon Joseph in Conversation with Author & Hospice Pioneer Frank Ostaseski
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nWhat Dying Can Teach Us About Living \nOn Monday night\, Frank Ostaseski will share with us stories and insights from his half century of groundbreaking work in end-of-life care. \nEmpty-handed I entered the world\nBarefoot I leave it.\nMy coming\, my going—\nTwo simple happenings\nThat got entangled. \n—Kozan Ichiyo\, death poem dated 1360 \nSome writings from his book\, The Five Invitations: \n—Suppose we stopped compartmentalizing death\, cutting it off from life. Imagine if we regarded dying as a final stage of growth that held an unprecedented opportunity for transformation. Could we turn toward death like a master teacher and ask\, “How\, then\, shall I live?” \nWalking in\, I followed my natural inclination: I went over to (seven-year old) Jamie’s bed\, leaned down\, and kissed him on the forehead to say hello. The parents broke into tears because\, while they had cared for him with great love and attention\, nobody had touched the boy since he had died. \nI am not romantic about dying. It is hard work. Maybe the hardest work we will ever do in this life. It doesn’t always turn out well. It can be sad\, cruel\, messy\, beautiful\, and mysterious. Most of all it is normal. We all go through it.\nNone of us get out of here alive. \nI learned that the activities of caregiving are themselves quite ordinary. You make soup\, give a back rub\, change soiled sheets\, help with medications\, listen to a lifetime of stories lived and now ending\, show up as a calm and loving presence. Nothing special. Just simple human kindness\, really. Yet I soon discovered that these everyday activities\, when taken as a practice of awareness\, can help awaken us from our fixed views and habits of avoidance. \nWhen I sit at the bedsides of people who are dying\, my primary goal is to keep my heart open. I feel that I have a responsibility to support them wherever they are in their journey. \nThe attachment to the role of helper goes deep for most of us. If we’re not careful\, if we become wedded to this role\, it will imprison us and those we serve. Because let’s face it: if I am going to be a helper\, then somebody has to be helpless. \nGrief is like a stream running through our lives\, and it is important to understand that loss doesn’t go away. It lasts a lifetime. It is our relationship to a particular loss that changes. It won’t always hold the same intensity for us\, or take the same expression. But the grief as a natural human response to loss will remain\, and our resistance to it will only intensify the pain. \nI prefer the word intimacy because it is an invitation to come closer\, to fully embrace and lovingly engage with your life right where you are\, rather than trying to move beyond it. It is a recognition that we already belong. \n—Frank Ostaseski \n\nShort Bio \nAn internationally respected Buddhist teacher\, Frank Ostaseski is the visionary cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco\, and Metta Institute. He has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. He has trained countless clinicians and caregivers in the art of mindful and compassionate care. \nIn The Five Invitations\, he distills lessons gleaned from death and his life of service. This book is an evocative and relevant guide that points to a radical path for transforming the way we live. \nsource:  https://www.mettainstitute.org/about.html \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation with special guest Frank Ostaseski. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-author-hospice-pioneer-frank-ostaseski/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/FrankOstaseski_CALENDAR_500x375.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230417T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230417T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230313T201058Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230417T205545Z
UID:10001210-1681754400-1681759800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: This Is the Lotus Land - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nOn Monday night\, as a prelude to Frank Ostaseski’s Zen Luminaries visit next week\, we’ll explore this koan about life after life: \nWhen you’re free from birth and death\, you know where to go. \nWhen your four elements separate\, where do you go? \n—Gateless Gate\, Case 47: Doshuai’s Three Barriers \nFundamentally\, death is perhaps the greatest unknown. \nAnd our relationship to that unknown is worthy of our attention. \n—Frank Ostaseski\, from his book\, The Five Invitations \nIn recent weeks\, I’ve been engrossed in the many stories of loss and grief in Frank Ostaseski’s book\, The Five Invitations. Frank\, co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project\, sat by the bed of thousands of dying people and their caregivers. Rather than talking about after what happens after death\, he mostly talks about life and love. He writes\, “As people come closer to death\, I have found that only two questions really matter to them: ‘Am I loved?’ and ‘Did I love well?’” Reading his book made me ask those questions of myself\, stirring up memories of various experiences with death in my life. \nWhen we die\, where do we go? \nFather McLaughlin\, our pastor at St. Mary’s parish\, seemed to know. Famous for his fire and brimstone\, in a heavy brogue he frightened us kids and chided the adults about heaven and hell every Sunday at Mass. Most of the Buddhists—Theravada\, Mahayana\, and particularly the Vajrayana—are among the world’s greatest mapmakers of life after this life. \nBut Zen folk do not spend a lot of time on the subject of rising to heaven or falling into hell. Of the hundreds of hours of teisho I have heard over the years\, I can recall only one\, given by Koun Yamada\, briefly mentioning that subject. Why is that? \nHakuin Ekaku’s Song in Praise of Meditation says\, \nThis very place is the Lotus Land (Heaven)\,\nThis very body the Buddha. \nIt was Yamada who often said\, “We have never been born\, so we never die.” In Zen\, there is no time apart from this time\, no place apart from this place. \nThe son of a friend who was running a podcast on death called me up for an interview about what it was like to die\, from a Zen point of view. Trying to get some measure of his podcast\, I listened to several of his guests\, who were from various spiritual backgrounds. One guest\, a follower of Indian Vedic teachings\, used a metaphor of waves: At the time of death\, our own small wave returns to the great ocean of large waves. From a Zen standpoint\, the small wave never left the large wave. They never were\, and never will be separate. Where do you go when you die? \nThis weekend\, Pacific Zen held a leadership retreat and the subject of death entered the room. The next day\, the program included a Slavic folk tale of the maiden Vasilisa and arch-witch Baba Yaga. Each participant found and embodied the part of the story that spoke most to them. \nWhat left the greatest impression on me in this fairytale-koan was the point\, early in the story\, when the mother had just died and Vasilisa went to bed and cried over her loss. I recalled being about five years old\, perhaps Vasilisa’s age\, when I realized for the first time that my parents would die. That night I cried myself to sleep. \nFifty years later\, it was in my own house that my mother would stumble and fall down our stairs\, which in six months would contribute to her demise. I still feel pain and sorrow\, and to some degree\, guilt over her death. \nThe ambulance took her to Stanford Hospital she lay unconscious in the Emergency Room. Later\, my mother told me\, that at the time\, she was seeing a long\, broad path\, with a bright and beautiful light at the end. There were a bunch of white bunnies sitting by the side of the path\, urging her to turn away from the light. She took their advice\, turned around and came back to us. A few months later\, she fell again\, and rapidly declined. Thank you\, bunnies\, for those last six months of her life. \nFour and fifty years\nI’ve hung the sky with stars.\nNow I leap through—\nWhat shattering! \n—Eihei Dogen’s Death Poem \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-19/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/lotuslandCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230410T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230410T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230313T200925Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230410T213318Z
UID:10001209-1681149600-1681155000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: How Are You Feeling? with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nOn Monday night\, in anticipation of Frank Ostaseski’s visit in a few weeks\, we explore this koan from the caregiver’s perspective: \nMaster Ma was unwell. The superintendent of the monastery asked him\, “How have you been feeling lately?”\nThe Master replied\, “Sun-Faced Buddha\, Moon-Faced Buddha.” \n—Blue Cliff Record\, Case 3 \nIn the coming weeks\, we investigate issues of illness and death as a prelude to a visit by Frank Ostaseski\, founder of the Zen Hospice Project and Metta Institute\, to our Zen Luminaries series on Monday\, April 24. The above koan\, which was beautifully read last Sunday\, is one of the great cases of perhaps the greatest of the koan collections\, The Blue Cliff Record. \nMost often we examine this koan from the position of Mazu\, who is nearing the end of his life. But in the past week\, my place in the koan shifted to that of the superintendent\, the well-wisher\, the caregiver. I am the one who asks the question\, “How have you been feeling lately\, Master Ma?” \nA week ago\, a dear friend and teacher was admitted to the hospital with a severe gastro-intestinal ailment while under Covid watch. I was not able to stay with him\, help feed him\, get him to the toilet or read to him. Like the superintendent\, my only act of service was to ask the question\, “How have you been feeling lately?” Somehow\, that seemed to be enough. \nIn his book\, The Four Invitations\, Frank Ostaseski relates a story of begin with his very first herons in hospice\, in what became the Zen Hospice Project. Blaze\, an at times displaced person\, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer\, was given an empty room in the San Francisco Zen Center. Before she died\, her wish was to see her brother—they had been abandoned as kids\, growing up in orphanages and foster homes\, and had been estranged for twenty-five years. He had become a rodeo-circuit rider\, she a street person. Travis showed up at Zen Center in his cowboy hat and silver belt buckle to visit his dying sister. \nAs youngsters\, he had been physically abusive toward her\, and for days he wished to apologize but could not find the words. After pouring his heart out to Frank\, he went to her room. Realizing what was coming\, Blaze stopped him\, saying\, “In this place\, Travis\, I have someone who feeds me. I have someone who bathes me. I am surrounded by love. There is no blame.” \nFrank sees the story as one of forgiveness\, but I see it also as a touching example of just being present with the one who is not well\, with Master Ma. And that\, in and of itself\, is a full and complete gift\, healing to both the one who is ill and to the one who is concerned. \nIn his book\, Frank quotes Rachel Naomi Remen\, M.D.\, who examines the various attitudes and attachments of the caregiver. “Helping\, fixing\, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life\,” she writes\,  \n”When you help\, you see life as weak. When you fix\, you see life as broken. When you serve\, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be work of the ego\, and service is the work of the soul.” \nHow have you been feeling lately\, Master Ma? \nI can’t leave without copying Xuedou’s appreciatory verse to the koan “Master Ma is Unwell.” It is my favorite verse in all the collection of the hundred cases: \nSun-Faced Buddha\, Moon-faced Buddha\nWhat kind of people were the ancient Emperors?\nFor twenty years I have suffered bitterly.\nHow many times have I gone down into the Blue Dragon’s cave for you?\nThis distress is worth recounting.\nClear-eyed patch-robed monks should not take it lightly. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\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-18/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/sunfacemoonfaceCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230403T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230403T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230313T200807Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230403T232016Z
UID:10001208-1680544800-1680550200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Feeling Your Way in the Dark - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJoin us on Monday night to sit together and talk together about feeling our way in the dark. \nDon’t light a lamp—there’s no oil in the house.\nIt’s a shame to want a light.\nI have a way to bless poverty:\nJust feel your way along the wall. \n—Yinyuan Longqi\, PZI Miscellaneous Koans\, Case 71 \nIn taking up koans\, sometimes we find one that perfectly expresses our current condition\, yet may\, on the face of it\, appear unrelated. In some strange way\, these “dog koans for cat problems” are often more intimate and meaningful than they seem. \nDon’t light a lamp—there’s no oil in the house.  \nI recently caught up with a friend who had been away for some weeks. For the past decade or so\, he has suffered from an illness which afflicts the inner ear\, called Meniere’s disease. At times his vertigo was so bad that if he moved even the least bit in bed\, he vomited. His tinnitus sounded like a train running through his head. And his migraines were utterly debilitating\, sending him to bed for days on end. But about two years ago\, Messrs. Meniere\, as he calls the visitors\, largely went away. A couple of weeks ago\, the Messrs. returned. \nLying in bed for hours\, various koans would come to him. It was the above koan\, “Don’t light a lamp—there’s no oil in the house\,” that mysteriously seemed to resonate with his condition. \nIt’s a shame to want a light.  \nMy friend\, a long-time Vipassana teacher\, said\, “I often taught that meditation is about feeling our way in some sense; we feel our way in the dark\, and discover and learn things through that process.” \nI have a way to bless poverty.  \nHe would often use a teaching metaphor: As meditators\, we wake up in a dark hotel room and stumble over the furniture searching for the light switch. “Teaching that\,” he says\, “I thought I needed some kind of control\,” and standing in the way was the furniture and lost light switch—both being obstacles that required a workaround. He no longer sees these kinds of obstacles in his life and practice—like Meniere’s—as barriers. “I now know that avoidance isn’t the way to practice\, it isn’t the way to live.” \nJust feel your way along the wall.  \n“Even when I’m lying in bed with Meniere’s\, not doing well\, I don’t feel separate from everybody else.” He feels a natural sense of support from ancestors\, relatives\, friends and all other things. “It’s the support of the koan No\, the support of ‘What was my face before my parents were born?’ It’s hard to explain\, but I’m feeling my way in the dark with my hands\, and there are no obstacles\, and I’m not doing it alone.” \nI suggested to my friend that ours is a collaborative universe. When a friend or family member becomes ill\, in a way\, we too become sick. And when they become well again\, we too heal.  \n“Yes\,” he agreed\, “We move in the dark\, hand-in-hand.” \nMy Body Effervesces\nby Anna Swir\n(English version by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan\nOriginal Language Polish) \nI am born for the second time.\nI am light\nas the eyelash of the wind.\nI froth\, I am froth. \nI walk dancing\,\nif I wish\, I will soar.\nThe condensed lightness\nof my body\ncondenses most forcibly\nin the lightness of my foot\nand its five toes.\nThe foot skims the earth\nwhich gives way like compressed air.\nAn elastic duo\nof the earth and of the foot. A dance\nof liberation. \nI am born for the second time\,\nhappiness of the world\ncame to me again.\nMy body effervesces\,\nI think with my body which effervesces. \nIf I wish\,\nI will soar. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\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-17/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/intheDarkCALENDAR.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230327T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230327T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221228T184410Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230324T170615Z
UID:10001071-1679940000-1679945400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: Shamanic Bones\, Dark Gates - Jon Joseph in Conversation with Osho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nZenju Earthlyn Manuel visits the Pacific Zen Luminaries series to talk about her practice of invoking the shamanic roots of Zen and walking through the dark gates that call to us. \nFrom Zenju Earthly Manuels’ writing: \n“By participating in Zen rituals and ceremonies\, I have a strong sense in me that something had been suppressed in it’s transmission…This sense brought me closer to the practice\,” she writes\, asking if “the shamanic bones or indigenous roots of Buddhism were unearthed\, would the practice make more sense to practitioners\, especially to black\, indigenous\, and people of color?” \n“When we are turning away from rituals and ceremonies in Zen or Buddhism\, are we turning away from what little is left of what the indigenous people contributed to the practice or used to sustain themselves in the practice?” \nOne evening\, after about seven years of intensive Nichiren practice\, Zenju suffered a headache so severe\, she begged out loud: “Please relieve me of this pain and I will serve in the way that I was born to do. Even if I lose everything\, I will remain a humble servant.” She believes something heard her because that night she had a lucid dream of a Black Angel as an oracle. \nThe next morning\, her headache gone\, Zenju’s mind was filled with messages and images. She drew the images “without knowing how to paint” and transcribed “messages I did not understand\,” eventually making a set of oracle cards\, which were later published. “Whether or not that experience was kensho\, I had a glimpse of the source of all things manifested in the world.” \n“The real magic is not in honoring the historical Buddha as a shamanic ancestor…It is the practice of experiencing Buddha as a reflection of our own magical or enlightened nature. In making offerings to the Buddha\, one is making offerings to one’s own buddha nature\, to one’s own capacity to awaken.” \n“Zazen is a prolonged ritual of seeing and listening. It is a shamanic process and a way of life…How can we go through the portal of zazen and not ever hear the cries of the earth? Do we not dream as Buddha did? Do not the spirits of nature affect our lives? These exploratory questions deepened my curiosity about seeing Zen meditation as shamanic journeying.” \n“Dharma transmission is a private process between teacher and student. I found it to be the most shamanistic of all Zen rituals and ceremonies…” She included in her transmission ceremony altars to black women writers who had transformed her life\, spirits of Vodou that were to her were like Zen\, and the shawls received during six years as a head drummer and singer of a Native American Sun Dance ceremony. “That was my way of becoming a dharma heir as my whole self\,” she writes\,” How do we as communities recognize as Zen practice family of mixed race and heritage?” \n“After engaging in the dharma transmission ritual\, I wanted to disrobe for many reasons. A prominent one was a feeling of having joined a family in which I was comfortable in ritual but uncomfortable in relationship.” Zenju describes how endured an “onslaught of attention” as a teacher of color. She added\, “I wanted to be of no-rank\, as they say in Zen\, and go on about my business\, leaving behind the projects of a Zen teacher.” \n“In the San Francisco area\, there is a place called Goat Rock Beach\, where the Russian River meets the Pacific Ocean. On their way to each other\, it appears as though it is a river meeting the ocean. But it is simply water meeting water. We bring our fire\, earth and breath; we bring our human selves…I am grateful for the journey. We are only passing through to learn\, to grow\, to love\, and then to return home.” \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI have gone through many gateways. But I am neither monk\, nor nun\, nor priest. I am neither Zen or Buddhist. I am neither teacher nor guide\, nor author. I am a dark seed of a lineage that has resisted annihilation for thousands of years. I am a voice from the great darkness of transformation\, grace\, and constant birth and death. I am a collective voice that weeps and protests. I am the ever-abundant blackness and darkness that has given birth to everything. I am life from the first source of life. I am because we are. \n—Osho Zenju Earthly Manuel \n\nOfficial Short Bio \nOsho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel\, poet\, author\, ordained Zen priest\, and medicine woman of the drum\, was born in Los Angeles\, California.  She is a dharma heir of Zenkei Blanche Hartman of the Shunryu Suzuki lineage at San Francisco Zen Center. \nRaised in the Church of Christ\, Zenju’s practice was later influenced by Native American and African indigenous traditions. She holds a Ph.D.\, and for decades worked as a social science researcher and development director for non-profit and other organizations serving women and girls\, cultural arts\, and mental health. \nOsho Zenju has written multiple books on Buddhism\, including The Shamanic Bones of Zen\, and her most recent book\, Opening to Darkness: Eight Ways for Being with the Absence of Light in Unsettling Times.  \nRead more about Zenju on her website here. \n\n\n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation with special guest Osho Zenju Earthyln  Manuel. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-osho-zenju-earthlyn-manuel/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ZenjuEarthlynManuel-JJ_CALENDAR_500X281-1.png
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230320T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230320T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230116T184059Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230323T030859Z
UID:10001189-1679335200-1679340600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Double Radiance! Divining Radiance Above & Below - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJoin us as we examine “Illumination\,” Hexagram 30 in the Book of Changes (Yi Jing)\, to understand the shamanic Chan-Zen roots in this Chinese classic. \nFire is beneficial if correct; then there is success.\nRaising a cow brings good fortune.\nFire has no nature of its own;\nit only appears cleaving to fuel—therefore it is called clinging… \nIn Buddhism\, when demons cause a disturbance\, it is necessary to cleave to correct observation to dissolve obscurity. Therefore\, in each case the benefit is in being correct; therein lies success. A cow is gentle and docile\, yet very strong; it can also give birth to calves. This symbolizes correct concentration being able to produce subtle insight. \n—Book of Changes (Yi Jing)\, Hexagram #30 (Illumination) \nFire below\, fire above. As we investigate the broad shamanic influences on Chan-Zen\, this week we read the Book of Changes (Yi Jing)\, a book of divination. It is the oldest of the ancient Chinese wisdom texts\, predating Confucius and Laozi by a millennium\, and Chan Buddhists by even longer\, and has garnered commentary from all. The Yi Jing hexagrams describe the “inner dynamics of both spiritual life and social life” and is a “basic guide for conscious living\,” writes translator Thomas Cleary. \nSynchronicity. In his forward to the Wilhelm translation of the Book of Changes (1949)\, C.G. Jung suggests that generating a hexagram is a form of synchronicity which “takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance\, namely\, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers.” \nIn other words\, the diviner believes that a hexagram reflects a certain state of mind or natural condition existing both inside a person and in the outside world at any point in time. \nThe major philosophical schools of China embraced the Yi Jing\, adding their own commentary. But the Chan school always identified most closely with the Daoists\, and from early days embraced the elements of the Yi Jing that expressed Chan’s fundamental message of awakening. \nYi Jing of the Five Ranks. Followers of Dongshan have closely linked the Illumination (30th) hexagram to his famous Five Ranks\, a text commonly used even today by Caodong (Soto) and Linji (Rinzai) Zen teachers. The trigrams of the Illumination double-fire hexagram can be reconfigured into a grouping of five linked hexagrams: Gentle\, Penetrating\, Joyous\, Preponderance of the Great\, Inner Truth\, and Illumination. \nThese five are thought to align closely with corresponding lines in Dongshan’s Five Ranks. Lines from these five hexagrams may have inspired elements of the Five Ranks\, according to Leighton (2015)\, including: \nRank One: In the darkest night\, it is perfectly\, truly clear.\nRank Two: You are not it\, but the truth is in you.\nRank Three: In the end it says nothing\, for the words are not yet right\, or true.\nRank Four: Inclined and upright (form and emptiness) interact.\nRank Five: Wondrously embraced within the real\, drumming and singing begin together. \nThe Buddhist Yi Jing. Though some key phrases and symbols were adopted by various Buddhist schools\, it was not until Chan Pure Land monk Zhixu Ouyi (Chih-hsu Ou-i) composed commentaries on the Yi Jing in the 17th century that a comprehensive Buddhist commentary was found. \nInterpretations of this oldest shamanic text shift and change with people\, time and place. Even so\, we may read the hexagrams as showing a progression from the first (bottom) to the sixth (top): from self-discipline\, to tolerance\, energy\, meditation\, and finally wisdom\, writes Cleary. This is the “inexhaustible classic of ancient China.” \nHow are we to read the Yi Jing? \n—Jon Joseph \n\nBelow are lines from the Yi Jing with commentary by the Buddhist monk Zhixu Ouyi in italics. \nHexagram 30: Illumination\, Clinging (Like Fire) \nThe Overall Judgement: Fire is clinging—the sun and moon cling to the sky\, plants cling to the earth. Clinging to what is correct with two-fold illumination transforms and perfects the world. \nThe Image: Illumination doubled makes fire. Great people illuminate the four quarters with continuing light. \nBottom line (yang): The steps are awry; be heedful and their will be no fault. \n—Ouyi: Even with insight\, the practice is not yet purified. \nSecond line (yin): Yellow fires is very auspicious\, attaining the middle way. \n—Ouyi: Subtle concentration in harmony with essence is used to illumine all things. \nThird Line (yang): In the fire of the afternoon sun\, you either drum on a jug and sing\, or lament as in old age. \nFourth Line (yang): Coming forth abruptly\, there is no accommodation. \n—Ouyi: Here\, even though it seems that one has insight and concentration\, in reality one is not balanced and not correct\, unable to harmonize the elements of the path of enlightenment. \nFifth Line (yin): Weeping and lamenting\, there is good fortune. \n—Ouyi: This represents concentration in balance\, which can bring forth genuine insight; therefore progress is certain. \n—Top Line (yang): The king goes on an expedition\, has good luck\, and overcomes the leader\, taking captives\, but not because they are repugnant. No fault. \nOuyi: Strong without excess\, at the peak of illumination\, self-help has already been completed\, so there is a way to transform others. \n\nSources: \nThe I Ching\, or Book of Changes\, Wilhelm (1950)\nClassics of Buddhism and Zen\, The Buddhist I Ching\, Cleary (1983)\nThe Record of Tung-shan\, Powell (1986)\nJust This Is It\, Leighton\, (2015) \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\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-16/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/doubleRadianceCALENDAR.jpg
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230313T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230313T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230116T183848Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230310T185545Z
UID:10001192-1678730400-1678735800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Beauty after the Burn - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nBeauty after the Burn \nAfter the wildland fire burns through our lives\, is our forest still a forest if it has no greenery? On Monday night we will talk about choosing joy over despair. \nOne day\, Manjushri asked Sudhana to pick medicinal herbs\, telling him to bring back anything that wasn’t medicine. Sudhana searched all over but couldn’t find anything\, so he came back and said\, “There is nothing that isn’t medicine.” Manjushri said\, “Then bring me something that is medicine.” Sudhana picked a blade of grass and handed it to Manjushri\, who held it up and said\, “This medicine can kill people and it can also bring people to life.” \n—The Blue Cliff Record\, Commentary on Case 87 \nLast week\, my daughter and friends held a reception at an art gallery in the Haight-Ashbury to celebrate the release of Cambium\, their 40-page self-published “zine” that combines art\, poetry\, and essays on wildland fire and the earth. The first issue\, called Unearthed\, implies change\, curiosity\, action\, and discovery. Disruption. It asks questions. What have we taken from the ground? What has the ground taken from us?” \nBring back something that isn’t medicine\, asked Manjushri. \nOne of the articles\, Beauty After the Burn\, written by Maureen Downing-Kunz\, begins\, “As a child\, I spent afternoons playing in a three-cedar grove next to a drainage ditch in suburban Louisville\, Kentucky.” Now\, as an outdoors person and long-time resident of California\, she has been trying to come to terms with the intense wildland fires. Hiking through blackened landscapes left by the Dixie\, Mosquito\, and Caldor fires\, she has begun to ask\, “Is a forest still a forest without greenery?” \nThere is nothing that isn’t medicine\, said Sudhana. \n“Despite the intense and unprecedented wildfires\, life continues in the aftermath. Whether in the form of charred tree remnants with tender basal shoots\, or technicolor displays of wildflowers amidst bleached shrub skeletons—a heart-stirring beauty persists.” \nShe quotes Robin Wall Kimmerer\, a Native American scientist\, “Even a wounded world holds us\, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand\, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” \nThis medicine can kill people and it can also bring people to life\, finished Manjushri. \nWildfire News \nFor millions\, for hundreds of millions of years\nthere were fires.\nFire after fire.\nFire raging forest or jungle\,\ngiant lizards dashing away\nbig necks from the sea looking out at the land in surprise—\nfire after fire.\nLightning strikes by the thousands\, just like today.\nVolcanoes erupting\, fire flowing over the land.\nHuge Sequoia two foot thick fireproof bark\nfire pines\,\ntheir cones love the heat\nhow long to say\,\nthat’s how they covered the continents\nten lakhs of millennia or more.\nI have to slow down my mind.\nslow down my mind\nRome was built in a day. \n—Gary Snyder\, Wildness: Relations of People and Place (2017) \nArt: “Musical Offering\,” Mayumi Oda www.mayumioda.net. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\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-15/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/beautyBurnCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230306T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230306T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20230116T183454Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230306T183058Z
UID:10001190-1678125600-1678131000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: The Old Ways - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nThe Old Ways \nJoin us on Monday as we begin to explore the deep-ecology roots of Chan-Zen. \nIn our bones is the rock itself;\nin our blood is the river;\nour skin contains the shadow of every living thing we ever came across.\nThis is what we brought with us long ago. \n—Ute tribal song \nI have clearly realized;\nMind is nothing but the mountains\, the rivers\, and the great earth\,\nNothing but the sun\, the moon\, and the stars. \n—Eihei Dogen \nDeepest ecology\, shamanic sources\, mystic roots: Chan-Zen has all of these\, and we will explore a few of them in the coming weeks ahead of a visit by Osho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel (author of The Shamanic Bones of Zen) at the end of the month. \nCalling on Gaia. When the demon Mara attacked Shakyamuni\, as he sat beneath the Bodhi tree\, it was the earth goddess the Buddha called upon to aid him by touching his hand to the ground. Bodhidharma\, a Brahman prince\, is traditionally credited with bringing Chan meditation to China in the late fifth century. His message\, however\, is largely Daoist\, translator David Hinton believes\, developed by nativist Daoist poets and artists in the centuries before the Indian prince’s arrival. And the foundation for those Daoist sages was a vibrant paleolithic wisdom\, reaching thousands\, if not millions\, of years back in time. \nThe Old Ways. That is what poet Gary Snyder calls them. \nWhat does Gaia\, in this great space\, think she’s doing? What she does is not really our concern. Our day-to-day concern is the shimmering network of the gift-exchange\, the ceremonies of life\, energy\, transformation. Our concern is the kids sleeping in the back room\, snow in the far hills\, a coyote howling in the sagebrush moonlight. (Poem: The Old Ways\, 1974.) \n“Sacred” is but a name. Grasping the deepest ecology in Zen is to understand the nature of Gaia\, which was in motion long before our parents were born\, and is our nature. It is not in the world of good or evil\, profane or sacred. It much much more alive that that. Linji says\, “If you love the sacred and hate the secular\, you’ll float and sink in the birth-and-death sea… sacred is no more than the name ‘sacred’…” Gaia has n name; Gaia is our name. \nWe find something deeply satisfying and comforting in knowing that we need not travel back to paleo time or space to simply realize the “shimmering network of the gift-exchange.” Awakening is the mud sticking to our shoes. It is the kids sleeping in the back room. The racoon snooping around the back door. The Old Ways are our ways. And they are not two with all other things. “The roots of all living things are tied together. When a mighty tree is felled\, a star falls from the sky…”\, says Chan K’in Viejo\, a shaman from the Lacandon rainforest in southern Mexico. \nAfter Work\nby Gary Snyder \nThe shack and a few trees\nfloat in the blowing fog \nI pull out your blouse\,\nwarm my cold hands\non your breasts.\nyou laugh and shudder\npeeling garlic by the\nhot iron stove.\nbring in the axe\, the rake\,\nthe wood \nwe’ll lean on the wall\nagainst each other\nstew simmering on the fire\nas it grows dark\ndrinking wine. \nThe Ute tribal song and Chan K’in Viejo’s words are quoted in The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom\, by Joan Halifax (2004) \nPicture credit: Southern Ute Indian Tribe (southernute-nsn.gov) \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\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-14/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/buddha-gaiaCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230227T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230227T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221205T234022Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230225T004002Z
UID:10001057-1677520800-1677526200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Inside Monkey\, Outside Monkey with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJoin us as we visit monkey stories about beginning a journey\, getting lost\, and finding our way. \nYangshan said\, “How do you understand Buddha nature?” \nZhongyi said\, “Well\, let’s say there’s a room with six windows. Inside the room is a monkey. From the east side another monkey screeches through the window\, ‘eeeh\, eeeh!’ The monkey inside then responds\, ‘eeeh\, eeeh!’ The monkey outside screeches into each of the six windows and the monkey inside responds each time.”\n\nYangshan bowed and then said\, “I understand everything in the metaphor you’ve presented\, but there’s one more thing. What if the monkey inside is asleep and the monkey outside wants it to look at him? Then what?”\n\nZhongyi got off the platform\, grabbed Yangshan’s hands\, and did a dance\, exclaiming\, “Monkey! Monkey! Hello monkey!” \n—The Book of Serenity\, Case 72 \nWhen I first heard this koan\, it immediately reminded me of a trip I took long ago with my family to Monkey Park Iwatayama\, in Kyoto\, Japan. On the mountainside across the Oi (Cormorant) River from Tenryu-ji\, one of Kyoto’s most famous Zen temples\, lives a colony of about 120 snow monkeys\, also called Japanese macaques. \nThe monkeys\, the same species that sits in Hokkaido hot springs with snow on their heads\, mostly live off apple slices which tourists buy in shops at the foot of the slope. The monkeys are free-range and aggressive\, and signs warn human visitors not to look them in the eye. \nAt the top of a hill is a concrete hut with wire mesh windows. The shelter is not for the monkeys. It is for the humans\, who must duck in for protection if they wish to feed the animals. People stand inside the hut\, passing apple bits through the wire mesh windows\, while the monkeys swarm and screech around the outside\, jostling each other for treats. \nThe “monkey of the mind” is an ancient Buddhist image of the way the mind moves restlessly. Lewis Hyde\, in his book\, Trickster Makes This World\, uses as one of his many trickster examples the Chinese folk tale of the Monkey King\, who as he ages becomes depressed about his own mortality and starts to make trouble for himself. He becomes an aimless wanderer. “Today he toured the east\, and tomorrow he wandered west… he had no definite itinerary.” \nHearing of the monkey’s troubles\, the Daoist Jade Emperor brings him up to heaven and puts him in charge of guarding the orchard of Peaches of Immortality. The monkey eats all the peaches\, gets drunk on Laozi’s elixir\, and the Buddha is forced to imprison him under a mountain. After half a millennium\, the Monkey King is freed to travel to India and bring back the sacred Buddhist texts. The Monkey King’s dharma name is Wukong (悟空)\, Awakened to Emptiness. \nThe story of the Monkey King\, first told 500 years ago in the Chinese classic\, Journey to the West\, is of course\, our story. Obscured by clouds\, whereabouts unknown\, we set off on a journey to taste immortality—or if not\, to at least better understand our own lives. The Zongyi-Yangshan koan above is also the story of our lives. Monkeys outside screeching\, monkeys inside screeching. Monkey\, monkey\, hello monkey! How close\, how close. \nMonkeys clasping their young\nreturn beyond the purple peaks.\nBirds with flowers in their beaks\nalight in front of the blue cliff.\n\n—Jiashan Shanwui (d. 881) \n(It is said that for a time Yuanwu Keqin lived in Jiashan’s temple\, about 250 years after the master had died. Yuanwu took the last line from one of Jiashan’s poems as the title to his collection of koan commentaries.) \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-11/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/monkeyCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230220T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230220T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20220929T202354Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230221T005228Z
UID:10001136-1676916000-1676921400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES - A Primer for Forgetting: Jon Joseph in Conversation with Essayist Lewis Hyde
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nA Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past\n\nJoin us for a conversation with Lewis Hyde as we investigate “forgetting” as a creative and social force. \nTo study the buddha way is to study the self.\nTo study the self is to forget the self.\nTo forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.\nWhen actualized by myriad things\, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away.\nNo trace of realization remains\, and this no-trace continues endlessly.\n\n—Eihei Dogen\, Genjo Koan \nLewis Hyde\, in his A Primer for Forgetting; Getting Past the Past\, sees the above passage by Dogen as a key point of departure for his book: “Where is your practice? Is it just sitting on the cushion\, or is it your whole life?” Forgetting\, Hyde believes\, is fundamental to healing—of the self\, the culture\, and the nation. \nWhat the soul already knows. Born into this life\, those who seek to recover their lost wisdom need to find a teacher whose task is not to directly teach ideals but rather to remind the student of what the soul already knows. “What we call learning is really just recollection\,” says Socrates to Phaedo. It’s anamnesis\, or unforgetting\, the discovering of things hidden in the mind. \nThe empty studio. Said John Cage to Philip Guston\, “When you start working\, everyone is in your studio—the past\, your friends\, enemies\, the art world\, and above all\, your own ideas—are all there. But as you continue painting\, they start leaving one by one\, and you are left completely alone. Then\, if you are lucky\, even you leave.” \nNot memorizing chess. Emmanuel Lasker was one of the greatest chess players of all time\, holding the world championship for a full twenty-eight years beginning in 1894. His classic Manual of Chess\, published in 1927\, ends with some “final reflections on the education of chess” that include the remark: “Chess must not be memorized…Memory is too valuable to be stocked with trifles. Of my fifty-seven years\, I have applied at least thirty to forgetting most of what I had learned or read\, and since I succeeded in this\, I have acquired a certain ease and cheer which I should never again like to be without.” \nThe Lotus Eaters. My comrades…mingled with the lotus eaters…and whoever of them ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus no longer wished to return home\, but there they wish to remain…feeding on the lotus and forgetting their homecoming. —Odyssey \n“Apologists for the Lotus Eaters always insist that the lotus made them forget about their journey home. It does that\, but we prefer to say that the lotus helped them come into the present moment. They stopped having flashbacks to the war\, they stopped daydreaming about a town they hadn’t seen for years\, and they noticed what was going on right then\, right there.” \nHow does a nation forget? The 1964 murders of the black youths Charles Moore and Henry Dee in Mississippi. The Sand Creek Massacre of 150 mostly Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children by the U.S. Army in 1864. “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting\,” writes Milan Kundera. \nHyde: I say the struggle against power is the struggle against the memory of difference. \nWriting a poem. Myself\, when writing poems\, I practice revision by forgetting. I write a draft of the poem\, and then another and another\, allowing the versions to pile up in a jumble—it all sits there\, in a shapeless pile\, clammy with fatigue. Then I set it aside for at least one day. Then I write the poem from memory. Great chunks will have fallen into oblivion\, while others will have returned clarified from the pool. The double goddess [of remembering and forgetting] attends…dropping the discord to reveal the harmony. \nI am the Handyman. All thoughts and feelings are the seeds of possible actions; when we let them blossom into actual action (physical or mental)\, they bear the fruit of individual self. I scratch an itch and now I am a Person-Who-Scratches. I daydream about fixing a leaky facet or building a walnut bookcase and I am the Handyman. I fret about some stupid remark and I am the Dummy. Following a train of thought or action on an impulse is the elemental form of self-making. Not acting but instead returning to the breath is the elemental form of self-forgetting. \nFor Comfort \nFor comfort when I milk the goat\nI lean my forehead on her side.\nFrom there by the barn I can see down\nThrough the sinking evening air\nTo the pond\nWhere the sunset has brought\nTrails of haze up from the water.\nThat’s a form of love: drops of water floating\nIn breath\, the goat’s or mine\,\nor the steam from her hot milk in the dish.\n\n—Lewis Hyde\, This Error Is the Sign of Love \nA gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation. \n—Lewis Hyde \n\nOfficial Short Bio \nLewis Hyde is a poet\, essayist\, translator\, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. His 1983 book\, The Gift\, illuminates and defends the non-commercial portion of artistic practice. Trickster Makes This World (1998) uses a group of ancient myths to argue for the disruptive intelligence that all cultures need if they are to remain lively and open to change. Common as Air (2010) is a spirited defense of our “cultural commons\,” that vast store of ideas\, inventions\, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present. \nHyde’s most recent book\, A Primer for Forgetting\, explores the many situations in which forgetfulness is more useful than memory—in myth\, personal psychology\, politics\, art & spiritual life. A MacArthur Fellow and former director of undergraduate creative writing at Harvard University\, Hyde taught writing and American literature for many years at Kenyon College. Now retired\, he lives in Cambridge\, Massachusetts with his wife\, the writer Patricia Vigderman. \nSource: https://lewishyde.com \nLewis Hyde is a national treasure\, one of the true superstars of nonfiction. \n—David Foster Wallace \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation with special guest Lewis Hyde. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-a-primer-for-forgetting-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-essayist-lewis-hyde/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/LewisHydeJJ-ZenLuminaries.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230213T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230213T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221205T233548Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230213T171521Z
UID:10001056-1676311200-1676316600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Trickster Stirs Us Up with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nA Visit with Two of Lewis Hyde’s Classics \nJoin us as we review Lewis Hyde’s work in preparation for his February 20th appearance at PZI’s Zen Luminaries evening with Jon Joseph. \nKOAN:\n \nThe storehouse of treasures opens of itself.\nYou may take them and use them any way you wish.\n\n—PZI Miscellaneous Koans (Eihei Dogen’s Fukanzazengi) \nIn his classic work\, The Gift; How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World\, Lewis Hyde asks us to recognize the true value of creative labor—the work of artists\, poets\, and teachers—which is essentially given in a gift exchange. A gift exchange establishes connections and cohesion in society; a modern commodity exchange supports a society of divided strangers. But what is the mysterious source of the “gifted state?” \nHyde: \n“An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made\, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except perhaps by supplication\, by courting\, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn … \n“A gift exchange is an erotic commerce\, joining self and other\, so the gifted state is an erotic state: in it we are sensible of\, and participate in\, the underlying unity of things. \n“Readers are usually struck by [Walt] Whitman’s bolder\, more abstract assertions of unity—’I am not the poet of goodness only/I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also’—but the real substance of the state Whitman has entered lies in the range of his attention and affections.” \nI…do not call the tortoise unworthy because she\nis not something else\,\nAnd the jay in the woods never studied the gamut\, yet\nTrills pretty well to me\,\nAnd the look of the bay mare shames stillness out of me. \n—Walt Whitman \nIn Trickster Makes This World; Mischief\, Myth and Art\, it is the trickster—Hermes\, Coyote\, Raven—who is the change master. \nHyde: \n“The point of the trickster is to get trade going\, to get liveliness and flow going…the coyote loves to steal things\, likes bright things\, but there is a playfulness about it. It is about play…This figure comes out of polytheistic traditions and has sacred functions\, about keeping the cosmos alive and lively … \n“The trickster is a boundary-crosser. Every group has its edge\, its sense of in and out\, and trickster is always there\, at the gates of the city and the gates of life\, making sure there is commerce. He also attends the internal boundaries by which groups articulate their social life. We constantly distinguish—right and wrong\, sacred and profane\, clean and dirty\, male and female\, young and old\, living and dead—and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction.” \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-10/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/trickstersGiftCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230206T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230206T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221205T233356Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230207T014747Z
UID:10001055-1675706400-1675711800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: What Is This Light? with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nPlease join us as we share experiences from our recent winter retreat. Our way out of darkness is through opening the heart-mind. \nYunmen taught\, “Everybody has a light inside. When you’re looking for it\, you can’t see; it’s dark\, dark\, hidden. What is this light that everybody has?”\nHe himself answered\, “The kitchen pantry\, the temple gate.”\nThen he said\, “It’s better to have nothing than something good.”\n\n—The Blue Cliff Record\, Case 86 \nThis morning we completed our winter sesshin\, and it is said that while in retreat\, every possible emotion will show itself in the course of those six or seven days. That the heart-mind naturally comes forth in all its variations is the very basis of our inquiry work. Last night\, before bed\, I took my dog out and was nearly in tears at the beauty of the world illuminated by a full moon after a few days of much-needed rain. I composed a poem as I walked: \nBlue leash and black dog\,\nFeet splash puddles of full snow moon.\nBroken clouds\, adrift.\n\nYunmen’s koan also allows us to dip into the dark\, the shadow. In giving a talk to the retreat group\, I spoke of my first Zen teacher\, Robert “Senor” King\, who spent his early childhood in Manila\, the Philippines\, during the Japanese occupation in World War II. During this cruel occupation\, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos perished. As a child\, he contracted poliomyelitis\, which disabled his legs for life. Senor King lived most of his life alone. But in an unpublished collection of poems that he left me when he died\, he had written a long poem about a brief affair with a young woman twenty years his junior. It reads\, in part: \nOur loving\nflowing\, freely gentle\,\nmelting\, delighting\nour hearts\, bodies\nremembering! …\n\nIt was such a joy for me to read the poem. It may be difficult to always see the light that is inside us. But it is always there\, and it never fails us. It is the light that shines in the most common of places: in the kitchen pantry and at the entrance gate. And it is something very good. \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-9/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/light-sunsetCALENDAR-1.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230130T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230130T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221205T193644Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230127T215918Z
UID:10001170-1675101600-1675107000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: A Flower Twirled - Jon Joseph Hosts Ruben Habito & David Weinstein on the Zen Legacy of Koun Yamada
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nA PZI Zen Online Event with Special Guest Ruben Habito Roshi\n& Pacific Zen Roshi David Weinstein\nin conversation with Jon Joseph Roshi\nOn Monday\, three former students of Yamada’s Kamakura zendo share stories of the Japanese teacher who may have had the most significant impact on Zen in the West. Please join us. \n\nOnce in ancient times\, when the World-Honored One was at Mount Grdhrakūta\, he held up a flower\, twirled it\, and showed it to the assemblage. At this\, they all remained silent. Only the venerable Kashyapa broke into a smile. \nThe World-Honored One said\, “I have the eye treasury of the true Dharma\, the marvelous mind of nirvana\, the true form of no-form\, the subtle gate of the Dharma. It does not depend on letters\, being specially transmitted outside all teachings. Now I entrust Mahakashyapa with this.” \n—The Gateless Gate\, Case 6 \nWhat is the legacy of a teacher? A pebble drops into a pond\, and rings ripple outward through the universe. A flower twirls in the hand\, and a knowing is shared beyond words\, one generation to the next\, infinitely. \nKoun Yamada\, who died in 1989\, and his own teacher\, Hakuun Yasutani\, had immeasurable impact on many of the major Zen lineages in the U.S.\, Europe and South Asia. Fully half of those Yamada sanctioned to teach were Catholic and Protestant clerics; he did not see Zen as being strictly Buddhist. \nThe center pole to Yamada’s “big tent” approach to Zen was his clear awakening\, and for decades he stressed that all his students must at least once in their lives experience the joy of “seeing the nature” (kensho). Later\, he increasingly emphasized the importance of integrating that insight into our lives\, through the vow to save all beings of the world. \nRuben Keiun Habito Roshi\, a Jesuit\, studied with Koun Yamada Roshi for eighteen years\, receiving dharma transmission from him in 1988. Ruben left the priesthood in 1989\, and in 1991 founded the Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas\, Texas. He teaches at the Perkins School of Theology at the Southern Methodist University\, and has authored a number of works on the confluence of Zen and Christianity\, including Healing Breath: Zen for Christians and Buddhists in a Wounded World. \nDavid Onryu-Koun Weinstein Roshi studied with Yamada in Kamakura for nine years. David completed his koan study with John Tarrant\, and is director of the Rockridge Meditation Community\, in Oakland\, Ca. He has worked as a therapist for many years. \nJon Dokanun Joseph Roshi studied with Yamada in Japan for eight years\, before returning to the U.S. and completing his koan study with John Tarrant. Jon teaches at the Portola Camp Zendo\, in San Mateo. He formerly worked as a journalist and financial analyst. \n\nMore about Ruben Habito \nRuben Habito began Zen practice under Koun Yamada in Kamakura\, Japan in 1971 when he was a Jesuit seminarian in Japan. Yamada was a Zen roshi who taught Christian students\, which was unusual for the time. Habito received dharma transmission from Yamada in 1988\, left the Jesuit order\, and went on to found the Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas\, Texas. \nHe is a faculty member at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology where he teaches World Religions and Spirituality\, and directs the Spiritual Formation Program. \nsource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruben_Habito \n\n \nAll are welcome to join in for meditation and conversation. \nRegister to participate—PZI Members always FREE\, or you may donate $10 to help keep these conversations appearing. \nNon-member guests donate $12 or join PZI as a member!
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-hosts-ruben-habito-david-weinstein-on-the-legacy-of-yamada-koun/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/kamakuraSpringCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230123T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230123T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221219T224105Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230123T171210Z
UID:10001064-1674496800-1674502200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: The Mountain Cloud Welcome with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nJoin us for a third (and final) exploration of the legacy of Koun Yamada Roshi\, our ancestral teacher\, in anticipation of our January 30th Zen Luminaries event about Yamada\, with guests Ruben Habito and PZI’s David Weinstein. \n\nMazu said to the assembly\, “If you have a staff\, I will give it to you. If you have no staff\, I will take it away from you.”  —The Gateless Barrier\, Case 44\n\nFor whoever has\, to him more will be given\, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have\, even what he has will be taken away from him.  —Matthew\, 13:12 \nFor the last couple of weeks\, we have been exploring the extraordinary legacy of Koun Yamada\, our ancestral teacher at Pacific Zen and one of the most influential Japanese Zen teachers to Westerners in the last century. Yamada did not see kensho as a strictly Buddhist awakening\, and welcomed the many Christian clerics who came to study with him. \nHa had built a small zendo on his property in Kamakura that comfortably fit about two dozen people\, a number that more than doubled during retreats and sesshin. Many of Yamada’s students came from overseas—the US\, Europe\, and South Asia—to study at SanUn Zendo\, a lay zendo. The greatest in number where Christian clerics who perhaps made up a third of the foreign participants and nearly half of his thirty-six dharma heirs. These were mostly Catholic priests and nuns from many orders: Jesuits\, Benedictines\, Maryknolls\, Marists and others. Some had come to Japan as missionaries and took up meditation while there; others had come to Kamakura just to practice with Yamada. \nWhat they found was a tremendous openness\, acceptance\, and respect for their dedication to the spiritual path. Koun Yamada did not believe Zen was a religion but a practice that could be embraced by those of any faith. He was fond of saying\, “If you are a Buddhist\, Zen will make you a better Buddhist. If a Christian\, Zen will make you a better Christian.” He commented once that Frere Hugo Enomiya-Lasalle\, a Jesuit missionary who came to Japan in the 1930s and was for decades his student\, had “integrated his koan practice into his life far better than I.” \nDespite Yamada’s large Christian following\, he never lectured on the similarities between the teachings of Christ and Zen. His single mention of Christianity was in his commentary in The Gateless Gate\, in reference to the above Mazu koan\, where he quotes one of his students: \n“I was very interested to hear from one of the (Catholic) sisters in the zendo here that Christ uttered words that are almost identical: ‘To him who has\, will more be given; and from him who has not\, even what he has will be taken away.’ I wonder what Christ truly meant when he said that.”\n\nAlways intellectually curious\, Yamada was open to discussion about Christian mysticism. He once asked Ruben Habito\, a Jesuit who had studied with him for eighteen years\, to teach him The Spiritual Exercises\, a famous series of meditations\, contemplations\, and prayers created by Ignatius of Loyola. \nIn his book\, Healing Breath\, Habito recalls a time when some students were chatting over tea in Yamada’s living room after evening sitting. A Christian practitioner mentioned\, \n“‘We Christians believe that the bread offered in the Eucharist is the real body of Christ.’ Whereupon Yamada Roshi\, without the least bit of surprise or doubt replied\, ‘Of course!’” \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\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-13/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230116T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230116T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221213T233022Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230113T234016Z
UID:10001181-1673892000-1673897400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Nourishing for Life with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nPractice Another 30 Years\nAs much as he stressed kensho\, Yamada urged the long practice of integrating awakening into our lives. \nDeshan one day descended to the dining hall\, bowls in hand. \nXuefeng asked him\, “Where are you going with your bowls in hand\, Old Teacher? The bell has not rung\, and the drum has not sounded.” \nDeshan turned and went back to his room. \n—Gateless Gate Case 13 (excerpt) \nWhen Yamada sanctioned a senior student to teach\, he would give them a calligraphy that read\, “Practice Another Thirty Years.” By this\, he meant that the process of bringing awakening experiences into our lives is endless\, even for those with decades of experience. \nLast week\, as we visited Koun Yamada’s life and teachings\, we read about his awakening experience—“The Joy of My Second Kensho”—and how central that experience was for his teaching and his followers at the SanUn (Three Clouds) Zendo in Kamakura. \nYamada became a strong advocate for students to attain kensho (seeing the nature) at least once in their lives. Such that\, in the years following Yamada’s passing in 1989\, some of his students and successors were critical of SanUn Zendo as a “kensho factory\,” stressing enlightenment over all else. “The purpose of sesshin is to gain enlightenment\,” read one set of calligraphy above the zendo door. And for many years\, if a student had passed the first barrier of Zhaozhou’s Dog (the koan Mu\, or No) during sesshin\, in a closing ceremony they were trotted around the zendo as a gesture of thanks to the Roshi\, and as encouragement to others. \nDespite his focus on enlightenment\, Yamada’s writings always stressed that kensho was just the first gate in one’s lifelong practice: \nThe true practice of zazen is very severe. The present koan is a good example of this. To attain kensho is not so difficult; for some people only one sesshin is sufficient. But kensho is only the entrance to our final goal in doing zazen\, namely the accomplishment of our character. This involves a purification which is most difficult and requires a great deal of time. There is really no end to the practice of Zen. You cannot accomplish a perfect character in forty years. \nOther students saw a shift in Yamada’s guidance as his teaching matured over the years. Ruben Habito\, who will be visiting us as part of the Pacific Zen Luminaries series in late January\, wrote this in the forward of Yamada’s Gateless Gate: \nIt was in this later phase of his teaching career that Yamada Roshi came to address not just matters of practice geared toward attaining enlightenment\, but likewise issues of daily life and contemporary society as the context for embodying this enlightenment. These included themes such as world poverty and social injustice\, global peace\, harmony among religions\, and numerous other social and global concerns.  \nThe engagement with these issues was for Yamada Roshi a natural outflow of his life of Zen. His was a perspective grounded in the wisdom of seeing things clearly and a deep compassion for all beings in the universe enlightened by this wisdom. This was what he sought to convey to his Zen students. In short\, the question of how a Zen practitioner is to live in daily life and relate to events of this world was a recurrent theme in his talks and public comments in this later phase. \nI remember when Yamada\, at age eighty\, gave a talk on the above koan\, Deshan Carries His Bowls. He was about the same age as Deshan was in the story. The koan was clearly one of his favorites. Though the story goes on\, at the point when Deshan takes his bowls and returns to his room\, at one telling of the koan Yamada stopped speaking right then. Sitting on a chair in the zendo\, before a small dais with a light and notes\, he raised both hands and shuffled his feet as if Deshan were returning to his room\, merely saying\, “gata\, gata\, gata\,” the sound of sandals on the floor. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\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-12/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/oldmanBowlCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230109T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230109T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221205T230802Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230109T170411Z
UID:10001054-1673287200-1673292600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Remembering Koun Yamada - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nThis Monday night we’ll chat a bit about the legacy of Koun Yamada\, our ancestral teacher. \nThere is a solitary brightness\, without fixed shape or form.\nIt knows how to listen to the teachings\, it knows how to understand the teachings.\nIt knows how to teach.\nThat solitary brightness is you. \n—Linji\, Pacific Zen Miscellaneous Koans \nOn Monday January 30th\, our Zen Luminaries Series will host Ruben Habito Roshi together with PZI’s David Weinstein. Ruben leads the Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas\, and is the most senior disciple of our ancestral teacher Koun Yamada\, outside of Japan. \nOur conversation will center on the legacy of Koun Yamada. Yamada\, and his own teacher\, Hakuun Yasutani\, had a tremendous impact on major Zen Centers in the U.S. and Europe\, including Rochester (Kapleau)\, Honolulu (Aitken)\, Los Angeles (Maezumi)\, and Germany (Jaeger)\, among many others\, including Pacific Zen. \nI hope to also touch upon Ruben’s own Zen legacy. A Jesuit priest\, he left his native Philippines to serve in Japan as a Catholic missionary\, where he also took up Zen practice at the SanUn\, or Three Clouds Zendo while studying Japanese in Kamakura.(Three Clouds Zendo = Great Cloud Harada\, White Cloud Yasutani\, and Cultivating Cloud Yamada) He succeeded Yamada the year before Yamada died in 1988. He then left the Jesuit ministry and moved to Dallas to take a professorship at Southern Methodist University. \nIn preparing for our talk\, I pulled In Memoriam: Yamada Koun Roshi from my bookshelf\, a booklet of about thirty notes of remembrance from his non-Japanese disciples. It also includes the chapter\, “The Great Joy of My Second Kensho.” An account of this kensho was first published in The Three Pillars of Zen\, in a chapter entitled\, “Mr. Y.K.\, a Japanese Executive\, Age 47.” \nFor those of us who practiced in the Three Clouds line\, Yamada’s enlightenment experience was central to our motivation to practice and for our respect towards Yamada as a teacher. It is not that he wore his experience on his yukata sleeve. In all his lectures\, I never once heard him mention it. But his bearing and great confidence themselves seemed proof. On the other hand\, I doubt there was a single student of his who had not read his enlightenment story over and over again in The Three Pillars.  \nHere it is\, from In Memorium: \nIn the middle of the night\, I suddenly woke up. At first\, I was not sure of myself. Then suddenly (a quote from Dogen’s Shobogenzo): \nI have clearly realized\,\nMind is nothing but the mountains\, the rivers\, and the great earth\,\nNothing but the sun\, the moon\, and the stars. \nThe phrase ran through my mind. Repeated it once\, then—something like an electric shock ran through my body\, and heaven and earth collapsed. Immediately\, billows of great joy surged up. Like enormous tidal waves\, storms of joy swelled up and exploded over and over again. I could only laugh loudly\, with my mouth wide open\, as wildly as possible. Endless explosions of laughter: \nHa\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha!\nHa\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha! \n“Noooo philosophy at all! Noooo philosophy at all!” Thus I cried out a couple of times. \nHa\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha!\nHa\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha! \nThe empty sky\, split asunder and with its huge mouth open\, was laughing with its whole belly: Ha\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha! Ha\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha\, ha!” Later (concerned for me)\, my family told me it was not like human laughter… \nYamada was a social elite in Japan: descended from a samurai family\, he graduated from top schools\, owned and ran a small hospital in Tokyo. But he treated his students—retired admirals\, Catholic nuns\, poor English teachers—with an equal respect in the zendo. Deeply comfortable in his own skin\, Yamada wanted for his students what he himself had experienced: just a bit of solitary brightness and joy. \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-8/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/yamada-kounCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230102T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20230102T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221205T224945Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221230T210054Z
UID:10001172-1672682400-1672687800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: The Source of Song with Jon Joseph and Jordan McConnell
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nYandou shouted and said\, “Haven’t you heard it said that what comes in through the front gate is not the family jewels?” \nXuefeng said\, “Then what should I do?” \nYandou said\, “In the future\, allow the great teaching to flow point by point from your own breast\, to come out and cover heaven and earth.” \nAt these words\, Xuefeng was greatly awakened\, exclaiming over and over\, “Today on Tortoise Mountain I have achieved the Way!” \n—From the commentary on Blue Cliff Record Case 22 \nJordan sees the creative process of developing a song—finding words and melody—as very much like working with a koan. Where do songs come from? “We can’t know the answer to that\,” says Jordan\, “but we know there is music inside each of us.” Somehow\, we allow it to flow from our own breast and cover heaven and earth. Koans are like that. \nJoin us on Monday while we explore the song that lives in our own hearts. Together\, we will put that song to words and music. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us  for koan meditation\, dharma talk\, music\, and conversation. All are welcome.\nI hope to see you then. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/on-break-monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-3/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/jordanCALENDAR.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221226T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221226T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221205T224513Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221223T224807Z
UID:10001171-1672077600-1672083000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:No Monday Zen today. Jon Joseph is on a winter break next week. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nCome join us January 2nd with Jordan McConnell hosting on Monday night. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/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
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221219T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221219T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221115T192922Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221217T014934Z
UID:10001168-1671472800-1671478200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Just Me & the Ancients with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJoin us this Monday night to talk about the wisdom of the ancients and review David Hinton’s visit from last Monday. \nThose who have passed the barrier can not only meet Zhaozhou face to face\, but also walk hand in hand with the whole descending line of ancients. Eyebrows entangled with theirs\, you will see with the same eyes and hear with the same ears. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful joy?\n\n—Gateless Gate\, Case 1\, Wumen’s commentary \nWhen I recently asked author and translator David Hinton where he formally practiced meditation\, he responded: “It’s just me and the ancients.” I often feel that way. \nWe held a small retreat at a center in the Point Reyes National Seashore several weeks ago. Perched on the sandstone cliffs above the Pacific\, Commonweal’s cornerstone project\, since its founding\, has been the Cancer Help Program: a week-long residential retreat for those with cancer and their partners. I could feel the ancients’ abiding presence there on the edge of the vast ocean. \nGoing on a walk above the seashore\, several of us visited what is known as the “Chapel\,” a shed-like building on the south side of the property. Opposite the door and on the floor\, someone had placed a fresh bouquet of irises. To the left was a pile of small stones with names or short messages painted on them\, apparently in memoriam. One of the people visiting the Chapel said of Commonweal\, “This is the place where people come to die.” \nThe next morning\, people were shuffling in and out the front door just before pre-dawn meditation in the main house. At at the edge of my vision was one person who remained standing just inside the door\, as if waiting or in meditation. When the half hour passed\, I glanced up at the person and saw a tall coat rack\, draped with garments. An ancient had joined us for a time. \nTwenty-five years ago\, I checked out Commonweal to learn about their cancer program. My father Buck\, at 79\, had just been diagnosed with stage-four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I felt a need to become one of his caregivers\, and called the director\, Michael Lerner\, whose own father had contracted non-Hodgkin’s\, but who eventually died of other causes. \nAt the time\, a competitor company was recruiting me to take a big new job; I told them I might have to turn down the offer to care of my father. I suggested to Buck that we go to Commonweal together for a week-long retreat\, and his gruff response was: ”I have lived a long time\, and want to live longer.” Indeed\, that difficult bastard did live longer\, finally passing at age 90 of congestive heart failure. \nNow I am an ancient. It can seem daunting to be in the front row\, to be the inheritor of a vast and powerful wisdom tradition; not just the wisdom of Zen\, but the wisdom of all humanity. But that is really none of my business. It is none of our business. It is the business of the universe. Our job is to take the hands of the ancients\, and realize that when we do\, we mysteriously find that our eyebrows are intertwined with theirs\, that we see with the same eyes\, and hear with the same ears. How wonderful. How wonderful. \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-7/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221212T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221212T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20220622T232028Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221212T182456Z
UID:10001088-1670868000-1670873400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: Wild Mind\, Wild Earth - The Sixth Extinction As Our Teacher: Jon Joseph in Conversation with Poet & Translator David Hinton
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\n\nJoin us Monday night visit with translator and essayist David Hinton on our relationship with the Earth in this time of ecological crisis. \nEgrets \nRobes of snow\, crests of snow\, and beaks of azure jade\,\nthey fish in shadowy streams. Then startling away into\nflight\, they leave emerald mountains for lit distances.\nPear blossoms\, a tree-full\, tumble in the evening wind. \n—Tu Mu\, 9th century Chinese poet (trans. David Hinton) \n“We love this world\, this living planet: We feel joy when life thrives\, grief when it suffers and dies. It is a mystery. \n“We are much more than what we think we are\, and that is liberation of astounding proportions. Even simple perception: A gaze into star-strewn night skies\, what is that gaze but the very Cosmos looking out at itself? What is thinking but the Cosmos contemplating itself? And our inexplicable love for this world\, our delight and grief—what is that but the Cosmos loving itself\, delighting in itself\, grieving for itself? \n“We are wild through and through: wild mind\, wild earth\, wild Cosmos. This is how Paleolithic and ancient Chinese people understood it. And it seems clear enough\, even self-evident\, once we step outside the cultural assumptions we have inherited. \n“Perhaps the Great Vanishing is itself our next teacher. With the suffering and death of mass extinction already unimaginably vast\, perhaps it is these grievous forces that will complete a similar transformation here—returning wild mind to wild earth. \n“We are unborn through and through\, wild mind wholly integral to the generative existence-tissue of wild earth—and accepting this engenders a new understanding of our unfolding eco-catastrophe.” \n—David Hinton\, from his book\, Wild Mind\, Wild Earth \nThe ten thousand things are all there in me. \nAnd there is no joy greater than looking within and finding myself faithful to them. \n—Mencius\, 3rd century BCE\, (trans. David Hinton) \n\nDavid Hinton’s work explores how the wisdom\, poetry and practice of Chinese Buddhism invite us to recognize the kinship of mind and nature—a relationship that must be re-animated if we are to address the intersecting ecological crises of our time. \nHow Chan/Zen and contemporary environmental thought flow together\, at this critical juncture in human history\, is at the heart of Hinton’s new book\, Wild Mind\, Wild Earth: Our Place in the Sixth Extinction. \nHinton has published many books of original poetry\, nonfiction\, and translations of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy. All are informed by his abiding interest in deep ecological thinking\, and in exploring the weave of consciousness and landscape. Hinton’s work has earned wide acclaim and many awards. \nLearn more at davidhinton.net. \n\n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation about Chan\, Zen\, poetry\, and more with special guest David Hinton. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-poet-chan-poetry-translator-david-hinton-2/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/DavidHinton_CALENDAR_500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221205T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221205T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221115T192658Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221202T210343Z
UID:10001167-1670263200-1670268600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: A Visit From Isis with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJoin us Monday night to talk about moving across the frontier between dreaming to waking \nDaowu and Jianyuan went to a house to offer condolences. Jianyuan struck the coffin with his hand and asked\, “Alive or dead?”\nDaowu said\, “I’m not saying alive\, I’m not saying dead.”\nJianyuan asked\, “Why won’t you say?”\nDaowu said\, “I’m not saying! I’m not saying!” \nOn the way home\, Jianyuan stopped in the middle of the road and demanded\, “Tell me right now\, Teacher. If you don’t say\, I’m going to hit you and leave.”\nDaowu said\, “You can hit me\, but even if you do\, I still won’t say.”\nJianyuan hit him. \n—Blue Cliff Record Case 55 \nIt’s only been a few years since I began following my dreams as part of my meditation practice. I naturally dream a lot. I love to sleep\, I love to dream. And in inviting my dream world into my practice world\, I’ve been looking to them less for self-knowledge than for affirmation of the deep undercurrents of my psyche\, which flows (for all of us) within the vast river we call the Way. \nA few weeks ago I joined a small group of zendo leaders\, where we opened the meeting by going around the room sharing experiences. One person\, across the room from me\, shared a dream-story about seeing animal tracks in the mud. \nThat night she appeared in my dream\, selling funeral packages. Two were on offer: One was plain and simple\, a casket with no adornment. The other was complex\, difficult\, and beautiful. The two packages were as different as common linen is to gold-threaded brocade. As part of the expensive package\, the woman held up a finely crafted box made of dark-grained wood\, with a deep lacquer finish and tight-fitting lid. \nI shared the dream with a group of friends\, and their questions helped me unpack it some. What was in the box? Without hesitation\, I answered: “My guts\, my internal organs.” My heart\, intestines\, liver. Strangely\, I said\, “But that is normal in preparing a body for burial.” “No\,” they pointed out\, “it is not normal in these times.” \nHowever\, ritual removal of human organs after death was part of the mummification process commonly used in ancient Egypt\, particularly for pharaohs. \nCan you speak from the woman’s point of view? What did the box have to say? It was a fascinating inquiry\, but afterward\, I didn’t really feel I had learned anything new about my life. \nLying in bed that night\, I went over the dream again and again in my mind. Half asleep\, the dream continued to evolve\, and I could now see the woman clothed in ancient Egyptian dress. My thought was\, “Oh\, this is my Egyptian wife\,” and then she morphed into what I took to be an Egyptian goddess. The name that came to me was “Isis.” \nSeveral days previously\, I had seen a reference to the cult of Isis\, existing around the time of Jesus\, that may have influenced early Christianity. Not knowing if Isis was a man or woman\, I looked her up in Wikipedia. Along with her brother and husband\, Osiris\, Isis was the most widely worshiped Egyptian god in the first millennium BC. She was believed to guide and heal the dead in the afterlife\, just as she had revived her slain husband\, Osiris. She also brought healing spells to help ordinary people. Isis was the goddess of pharaohs\, and her revival of Osiris in the afterworld was considered the motivating source for Egyptian mummification. \nTapping through dreams into the cosmos of the Egyptian afterlife feels brocade-like to me: at once distant and ancient\, richly intimate and immediate. Moving across the frontier\, from the country of dreams to waking and back again\, I don’t think we have to choose either “alive” or “dead.” That is asking too much. \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-4/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/visitFromIsisCALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221128T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221128T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20220822T181646Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221128T220454Z
UID:10001095-1669658400-1669663800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: Silent Illumination - Jon Joseph in Conversation with Chan Teacher Master GuoGu
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJoin us this Monday night for conversation with Master Guo Gu\, Chan (Zen) scholar\, leader of the Tallahassee Chan Center\, and founder of the Dharma Relief Project. Guo Gu\, also known as Jimmy Yu\, is one of the most fascinating Zen Buddhist teachers active today\, having himself plunged deeply into two cultures: ancient Chan and contemporary America. \nOn Hongzhi’s silent illumination: \nHongzhi Zhenguje\, a 12th century poet and meditation master\, is one of the leading figures in the history of Chan (Zen)\, having revived the Caodong (Soto) school following its demise in Song China. Some Western scholars link him to a meditation technique know as “silent illumination\,” a cool\, if not cold\, reductionist form of sitting: no thoughts\, feelings\, or sensations are permitted. \nMaster Guo\, a teacher in both the Caodong and Linji (Rinzai) Zen schools\, believes Hongzhi is deeply misunderstood by modern scholars. “Silent illumination” was not a method of meditation at all\, argues Guo Gu in his book\, Silent Illumination: A Chan Buddhist Path to Natural Awakening (2020)\, but is Buddha nature itself: \nHongzhi’s masterful command of the Chinese language\, and his fondness for poetry in particular\, is evident in the imagery he used to describe silent illumination\, whose qualities are freedom\, openness and clarity. In other words\, for him\, silent illumination was awakening. He never presented it as a ‘method’ or ‘technique’ for meditation practice. \n—excerpt from Silent Illumination\n\nFar from advocating a retreat from the world\, Guo Gu believes Hongzhi’s rich prose urges us to plunge deeper into life: \nMultitasking amid chaos\, manifesting in places of encounter—none of these are realms outside yourself. Heaven and earth share the same root; the myriad forms are of a single body. Adapting to changes and transforming freely without being manipulated by those who curry favor—this is to actualize great freedom. Traveling like the wind; illuminating like the moon; encountering things without obstructions. . . entering the currents to be one with the dusty world\, you transcend everything and shine in brilliance. \n—Hongzhi \n\nJimmy Yu (born 1968)\, also known as Guo Gu (果谷)\, is a Chan teacher and a scholar of Buddhism. At fourteen\, Guo Gu took up study in Taiwan with Chan Master Shen Yen. He then moved to the US\, where he was the bassist for American 1980s hardcore bands Death Before Dishonor and Judge. After his youthful days in hardcore\, he returned to Buddhism and ordained as a monk under Chan Master Sheng Yen (193–2009)\, and for many years served as Shen Yen’s assistant\, translator\, and finally\, successor. \nIn 2000\, he left monasticism to pursue academia. He received an MA degree in Chinese Buddhist studies from University of Kansas in 2002 and a PhD from Princeton University’s Department of Religion in 2008. \nGuo Gu is currently an Associate Professor of Religion at Florida State University\, teaching courses in East Asian religious traditions\, especially Chinese Buddhism and late imperial Chinese cultural history. His research interests include the cultural history of the body\, Buddhist monasticism\, Chan/Zen Buddhism\, and popular religions within the broader context of fifteenth- to seventeenth-centuries China. \nIn recent years\, he founded of the Dharma Relief Project\, which raised over $100\,000 to buy surgical masks in the early days of the Covid pandemic. \nLearn more about him at https://guogulaoshi.org \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation about Honghzhi\, Chan/Zen\, and more with special guest Master GuoGu. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-chan-teacher-master-guogu/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Guo-Gu1-corrected.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221121T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221121T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221014T183051Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221107T235544Z
UID:10001150-1669053600-1669059000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:No Monday Zen today. Jon Joseph returns to his regular Mondays on December 5th. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us next Monday the 28th when Jon hosts a Luminaries conversation with Master Guo Gu. 
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-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:20221114T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221114T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221014T182857Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221114T193351Z
UID:10001149-1668448800-1668454200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: A Flute with No Holes with Jon Joseph & Special Guest Michael Wilding
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nPlay the iron flute with no holes. \n—Pacific Zen Miscellaneous Koans Case 55 \nMichael worked for some years as a professional musician\, touring clubs in London\, Los Angeles\, and all points in-between. For the last six years\, Michael’s gift of his gorgeous saxophone and flute have been a mainstay to our retreats and meditations. \n“When I first played at retreat five years ago\, it was a kind of experiment for me. People were in the zendo meditating\, and I felt as if I were meditating with them. One note followed another. I would find a sequence of notes. It was very much like I was watching them arise. It was a lovely experience. \n“How do I play a flute with no holes? It is an impossible question that doesn’t need to be answered… \n“In the beginning\, I thought I needed to know what I wanted to achieve. Then\, with Zen practice\, I gave up the idea of knowing where I wanted to go. It became a big adventure. Exciting. Uncharted territory. Each step along the way was delightful because I didn’t know what I was going to find there. \n“If in a dream\, I’m going somewhere\, I may not know how to get there. But it’s not a problem. Not knowing the route is not a problem. We’re on a road to not knowing where.” \n—Michael Wilding \nJoin us Monday night as we talk with and listen to Michael Wilding\, who plays flute and saxophone with no holes. \nMONDAY ZEN UPDATE: Jon Joseph is away November 21st\, and returns on the 28th for a Luminaries Series conversation with Master Guo Gu. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJoin us for a koan\, meditation\, dharma talk\, & conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph-2/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/michaelWilding-HeadshotBW-cropped.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221107T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221107T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20221014T182353Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221104T231346Z
UID:10001148-1667844000-1667849400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Dances with Diablo with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nHow do we move the unmovable? How do we make a mountain take three steps\, or allow it to dance? “Mountains are mountains\,” says Yunmen. \nMake the mountain dance. Make Mount Diablo take three steps. \n—Pacific Zen Miscellaneous Koans \nThree years after California became a state\, in 1851\, the US government sent surveyors to establish an “initial point” in Contra Costa County atop Mount Diablo. The east-west baseline and north-south meridian running through that initial point remains the reference point for all property corners in most of northern California and all of Nevada. \nA year after the first survey was made\, a second party put in a survey marker 3-1/2 feet to the southwest. By mistake\, the true initial point was forgotten\, until my brother-in-law John pulled some historical records and recovered it nearly a century-and-a-half later. He made surveyors move the mountain by a step. \nFrom a Zen point of view\, the mountain\, of course\, never moved. It was always in the right place. “Mountains\, rivers and the great earth\, where are they to be found?” asks Yunmen. Closer than we think\, I suspect. \nWhen I first worked on it\, the koan was “Make Mount Fuji take three steps.” At about that time\, I had climbed Fuji on a dark summer night with hundreds of other pilgrims. We sat on the edge of its barren cinder-cone\, watching the sun come up in the East. There is even a word for it in Japanese: goraiko (御来光)\, the “honorable coming of the light.” \nWhen the koan moved to Hawaii\, it became: “Make Haleakala (on Maui) take three steps.” And then to Sonoma-Marin: “Make Mount Tamalpais take three steps.” \nI grew up about six crow-flying miles from Mount Diablo (3\,849 feet\,) and like its initial point\, there was nothing in our local landscape that was not somehow reflected by the mountain. Riding bikes down Warren Road\, we felt we were riding right into it. If it was cold out and rained\, there might be a slight dusting of snow on the peak—a most glorious sight. \nWhen I first began sitting Zen with high school friends\, we rode in Dana’s old Dodge pickup truck\, double-clutching our way up the steep hill in the early morning dark to gather at our Spanish teacher’s house. Dawn Wind Zendo\, said the wooden sign outside his front door. The small house sat atop a high knoll overlooking the Diablo Valley and the vast mountain to the east. Even now\, I can hear the wind coming off the mountain\, rattling the shutters\, katta\, katta\, katta. \nThe birds have all vanished into deep\nskies. The last cloud drifts away\, aimless.\nInexhaustible\, the mountain and I\ngaze at each other\, it alone remaining. \nThe above is a favorite Li Po poem\, Jing Ting Mountain\, Sitting Alone (trans. David Hinton.) But to explain how it perfectly captures the intimacy my young friends and I felt with Mount Diablo in the goraiko\, the coming of the light\, at the Dawn Wind Zendo\, is to say too much. Explanation makes the mountain smaller; it makes us smaller. It is better to say nothing and just allow the mountain to dance. \n—Jon Joseph \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nJoin us for a koan\, meditation\, dharma talk\, & conversation.\nAll are welcome. Register to participate. \nThis Monday night we sit and dance with mountains.
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/monday-zen-with-jon-joseph/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/diablo-JJ-CALENDAR.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221031T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221031T193000
DTSTAMP:20260428T094822
CREATED:20220830T184854Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221029T054304Z
UID:10001107-1667239200-1667244600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Finding Ghosts with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nLiving In The Ghost Cave \nJoin us Monday night as we share our stories from living in the ghost cave. \nWater poured on cannot wet\,\nWind blowing cannot enter.\nThe tiger prowls\, the dragon walks;\nGhosts howl\, spirits wail.\nHis head is three feet long—I wonder who it is?\nStanding on one foot\, he answers back without speaking.\n~ The Blue Cliff Record\, Case 59\, Xuedou’s appreciatory verse \nGhosts howl and spirits wail. The ghost I met some years ago was completely silent. We were traveling in Switzerland\, and it was getting later in the day as we approached Lake Lucerne\, one of the many large alpine lakes scattered across the Alps. We inquired at a hotel\, and found they had nothing in the main hotel\, but had a room available in an old mansion\, atop a hill a couple hundred meters detached. We took a room on the second floor\, and as it turned out\, were the only guests that night in the six-room building. Just before dark\, a huge thunderstorm\, with memorably violent lightning\, wind\, and rain swept over the lake. After the storm passed\, there was a deep calm and quiet in the mountains. \nWe went to bed\, and sometime after midnight I woke\, glanced up at the head of our bed\, and saw what looked like the apparition of an Eskimo man standing atop the headboard. I took my right arm\, back-handed the figure\, and shouted\, “Hey\, get out of here!” My wife startled awake\, and I told her about what I had seen. We went back to sleep. The next morning\, I asked the desk clerk if there were ever reports of spirits in the mansion\, and he said\, “Yes\, I myself once saw the ghost of a man on the stairway outside your bedroom.” \nUnlike in The Gateless Gate\, there are dozens of references to ghosts in The Blue Cliff Record. A favorite phrase for Yuanwu\, who added commentary to Xuedou’s appreciatory verse on the hundred koans\, was: “Don’t live in a ghost cave.” At times\, Yuanwu seems to warn against getting stuck in the quietude of samadhi\, as when Elder Ting stood motionless between Linji’s slap and Ting’s own bow\, in case thirty-two. In other places\, Yuanwu points to our human-ghost nature\, when we can’t seem to shake patterns of hurtful behavior. In case one\, Bodhidharma walks out on Emperor Wu following a short exchange (“What is the first principal of the holy teaching?” asks Wu. “Vast emptiness\, nothing holy\,” replies Bodhidharma. “Who is this standing before me?” again Wu asks. “I don’t know”\, responds his guest. Later\, Wu was remorseful their visit was so short). Xuedou\, in his appreciatory verse to the koan writes\, “Wu yearns after Bodhidharma’s return in vain for a thousand and ten thousand ages/Give up the yearning!” Yuanwu’s comment: “What is Wu saying? He is living in a ghost cave!” \nWe have a koan in Pacific Zen’s Miscellaneous collection: “Save a ghost.” It is a simple one. The point of the koan\, for me\, is that we not separate ourselves from the ghost we are hoping to save. We\, not someone else\, are the ones who howl and wail as we make a living in ghost caves. Sometimes we bother clueless tourists. More often we yearn\, over and over again\, for life circumstances to be different. When we embody the ghost\, we somehow come to understand that there is nothing wrong with our own ghost-like qualities. And the cave becomes a less scary place. \nSnow \nLittle soul\,\nfor you too\ndeath is coming. \nWas there something\nyou thought\nyou needed to do? \nSnow\ndoes not walk into a room\nand wonder\nwhy. \n~ Jane HIrshfield\, Ledger \n  \nJoin us for a koan\, meditation\, dharma talk\, & conversation. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/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/2022/08/ghostUnderbedCALENDAR.jpg
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