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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221107T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221107T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
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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:20260430T035546
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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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221024T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221024T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220622T232048Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221004T182802Z
UID:10001089-1666634400-1666639800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ZEN LUMINARIES: Jon Joseph in Conversation with Poet & Essayist Jane Hirshfield
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJane Hirshfield is an American poet\, essayist\, and translator. Hirshfield is also a Buddhist who received precepts at San Francisco Zen Center in 1979. Hirshfield’s poetry reflects immersion in a range of poetic traditions. Polish\, Scandinavian\, and Eastern European poets have been particularly important to her\, along with the poetry of Japan and China. \nIn many interviews\, Hirshfield expresses frustration at being labeled a Buddhist poet: “I always feel a slight dismay if I’m called a ‘Zen’ poet. I am not. I am a human poet\, that’s all.” \nAmerican poet Lisa Russ Spaar has said of Hirshfield: \nIt is arguable that the riddle\, the existential joke of being\, of meaning\, of Dickinson’s ‘prank of the Heart at play on the Heart\,’ is as powerful a source as song for the lyric poem. Central to Hirshfield’s vision is a kind of holy delight that is at the heart of riddles and koans. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nJoin us on October 24th for a lively conversation about poetry and more with special guest Jane Hirshfield. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-poet-essayist-jane-hirshfield/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/JaneHirshfield_CALENDAR500x333.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221017T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221017T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220830T184707Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221015T005158Z
UID:10001106-1666029600-1666035000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: The Did-Not-Go Buddha with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nThis Monday night\, let’s talk about the beauty of being non-attained. \nA monk once asked the priest\, “The Buddha of Unsurpassed Wisdom sat on the Bodhi seat for ten kalpas\, but did not attain Buddhahood. Why was that?”\n“An excellent question\,” the priest replied.\n“Yes\, but why did he not attain Buddhahood?”\n“Because he was a non-attained Buddha\,” the priest responded. \n—The Gateless Gate\, Case 9 \nPacific Zen teachers met about a month ago\, and the subject chosen was dokusan\, or one-on-one work with a teacher. In Japanese\, doku 独 means “individually” or “alone\,” and san 参 means “to go\,” in honorific language. In the Rinzai (Linji) tradition\, sanzen 参禅 means “going Zen\,” implying going to see the teacher for koan work. We often call dokusan “interviews” for convenience\, but one translation we have used in the past\, and which I like\, is “work in the room.” \nAt our teacher’s meeting\, we took turns reflecting on our experiences with dokusan both as teachers and as students. Several recalled their very first encounters with their teachers\, from which they remembered a simple exchange\, or the feeling afterward that they had found their true\, life-long teacher. “Dokusan is a perennial and deep question for me\,” said one participant. “Direct encounter with a teacher is at the center of touching the heart-mind in sesshin.” \nThe memory coming up for me was not of a dokusan I had gone to\, but one I did not go to. I spoke about this story at sesshin about five years ago\, but in the intervening time\, I must say that the way I view this non-encounter has evolved. \nI was a member of the SanUn Zendo in Kamakura\, where I studied with Yamada Koun. I sat daily in the zendo\, attending bi-weekly zenkai—all-day meditation meetings—and about five long and short sesshin a year. I had not yet passed through Wumen’s Barrier Set Up by the Ancient Teachers\, Zhaozhou’s Dog\, or the koan Mu—or No\, as we now work with it. \nSoon after a retreat\, I was scheduled to return to the U.S. to attend graduate school\, and was uncertain whether I could come back to Japan. If I wanted to pass the koan No before returning\, time was short. \n“Sit as much as you can\,” advised Yamada\, and I did. In the mornings that summer\, I rode my bicycle to extra sittings with the Benedictine priest Willigis Jager\, who was working closely with Yamada. I also went up to the mountains outside Tokyo to a kind of Zen temple called Shimeikutsu\, built by the Jesuit Enomiya LaSalle\, another Yamada student\, where I would spend some days meditating by myself. \nOur week-long summer sesshin rolled around\, and I jumped into it with great passion. The daily schedule called for about eight hours of meditation\, a sutra service\, work practice\, teacher talks and dokusan. Though against the rules\, I also got up at night when everyone was asleep to do extra sitting at my place in the zendo. The sesshin went quickly and the last day arrived. I still had not passed the koan No. By about noon\, all of the fifty participants had completed their final meetings with Yamada\, and we were all silently sitting in the small zendo. The head of practice yelled out: “If for any reason whatsoever\, anyone wishes to go see the Roshi one last time\, you may go now!” \nI so wanted to go to dokusan. But I could not move off my cushion. I was frozen. Everyone would know it was me who went: What would they think? What if I failed? I had nothing to bring the Roshi. What would he say? Would he be angry? Was my enlightenment waiting for me in that room\, and was I afraid of it? A couple of seconds went by. Then another few\, and a minute. Finally\, the bell rang for the end of the period\, and the sesshin was over. The opportunity had passed. \nAfter the retreat\, I was absolutely devastated. I had taken it for granted that by the end of summer\, with all my extra work\, I would pass the koan No. Instead\, a shocking nothing met me. Everyone gathered around in the zendo to share tea and snacks\, but I went off for a time\, tearfully trying (as a non-smoker) to drag on a cigarette\, which I held in my shaking hands. I was so thoroughly disappointed. Maybe I did not have what it takes to pass the koan No. Perhaps I never would pass. \nFive years ago\, when I last spoke about this experience\, I still saw “not-going” that day as a bit of a lost opportunity. Even now\, I can play out heroic fantasies about what I would have said and done in that dokusan. But my view has changed about the “failure\,” as I saw it at the time. \nHow wonderful it is to “not-go!” Though I may not have appreciated it at the time\, the not-going was whole and perfect in itself. As is all of the “not-going” in our lives. “Coming or going we are never astray\,” says Hakuin Zenji. There is not one thing out of place\, even our perceived lack of enlightenment. After all\, from the very beginning we were unattained Buddhas. \nSo what was waiting for me in that room? Perhaps a kindly but exhausted 80-year old man\, looking forward to some rest after sesshin. I think he did attain that. \nIn love and memory of William Ordinary-Music Zoller\, a long-time zendo friend and trumpet player who passed last Monday. May he have joy on the roads. \nAnd join us in two weeks: Poet Jane Hirshfield is visiting on Monday\, October 24. \n—Jon Joseph \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-the-did-not-go-buddha-with-jon-joseph/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/buddha-kamakura-japanCALENDAR.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221010T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221010T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220830T184344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221010T180700Z
UID:10001105-1665424800-1665430200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Shall We Dance? with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nThis Monday night we will share experiences from Fall sesshin and share in this dance of life. All are welcome whether or not you attended sesshin.  \nThe teacher said\, \n“If you are awakened on hearing it the first time\, you can teach buddhas and ancestors. \n”If you are awakened on hearing it the second time\, you can teach humans and gods.\n”If you are awakened on hearing it the third time\, you won’t even be able to save yourself.”\nA student asked\, “When were you awakened\, teacher?”\nThe teacher said\, “The moon sets at midnight; I walk alone through the marketplace.” \n—Book of Serenity\, Shoushan’s Three Phrases\, Case 76 \nIt is not often that a story comes to me that demands to be told. Going into sesshin recently\, I was asked to give a talk\, and I developed a story\, coupled with a koan. But the another story kept coming up\, again and again\, and it was mysteriously linked to another koan\, which at the time I could not see how it fit. So I threw out the first story\, and went with the one below\, even though it was only partly formed. \nAbout a month ago\, my high school class held its 50th reunion. It was at a small yacht club on an industrial slough in Alameda. The club needed a fresh coat of paint\, the appetizers of meatballs and cheese squares stuck with toothpicks ran out quickly\, though the dry chicken and rock-hard salmon\, with a side of over-boiled mixed veggies\, moved slowly. Perfect food for a high school reunion. \nAfter a couple of drinks on the deck out back\, people lit up and seemed to enjoy themselves. Some gathered in old cliques\, while others chatted with near strangers. I found that if I entered a conversation without expectations\, it was invariably interesting: people’s stories of careers\, marriage\, children\, and perhaps more marriage\, were all rich. Greg successfully founded a bicycle company; Mike became a school teacher and piano tuner; and Jerry a hairstylist. \nOnly 35 of the original 200 came; 40 had already passed away. One of them was Brett\, who had been a Varsity football player. I asked his friend how Brett died\, and he said\, “In the end\, it was the drugs and booze.” \nDawna\, who I had known a bit as a Freshman\, also attended. She had asked me to the Sadie Hawkins Day dance\, where the girl asks the boy. I was a strange choice. She was a cheerleader\, budding into a beautiful young woman. I was a third-string football player\, and young even for a 14-year old. My sister\, a Senior at the time\, said I should go\, and offered us a ride with she and her date. We picked up Dawna at her house and drove to the dance. We danced a little bit\, hung out with friends\, and toward the end\, she went off to go talk with a few other people. When the dance was over\, I couldn’t find her to take her home. I walked into the night outside\, around the corner of the now empty gym\, and there she was with Brett\, the football player\, kissing passionately. I said to Dawna\, “Do you need a ride?” She came with me\, and we said nothing in the back seat on the way to her house. \nThough laughable now for this sixty-something\, as a young teenager on my first date\, I was deeply ashamed and hurt. I had been trying to construct a young self that was low-profile and low-risk. I felt I had been lured out of my shell and stung. We never spoke again. Dawna went on to become a Varsity cheerleader and class officer\, while Brett became a star athlete. Meanwhile\, I began to buy grunge clothes at the Goodwill and became a wilderness hiker and Zen Buddhist. I never went to another high school dance. \nFor 50 years\, whenever I got a notice of a high school reunion\, I was reminded of the incident. And in trying to repair my own self\, I had created a self for Dawna\, as well: she was a manipulator\, or perhaps easily manipulated; cold\, and frankly\, uninteresting. I said hello to her at a couple of reunions over the decades\, but we never once talked. \nBefore the 50th reunion\, I read her bio and found it far more fascinating than I imagined: she had raised her children in the wilderness\, and they had gone on to interesting jobs in environmental science and the arts. \nAs the reunion was winding down\, I saw Dawna sitting alone\, finishing a piece of cake. I sat next to her\, asked her about one of the other folks attending\, and then said\, “Dawna\, I read your bio\, and realized I never really knew you.” She nodded quietly and looked down at her cake. Someone came up to the table\, and I left the party. \nWe walk through the marketplace\, and we must do it alone. But fortunately\, we have each other to walk with. \n—Jon Joseph \nThose Who Do Not Dance\, by Gabriela Mistral\n(transl. Maria Giachetti\, found in “Women in Praise of the Sacred\,” Jane Hirshfield\, editor) \nAn invalid girl asked\, \n“How do I dance?”\nWe told her:\nlet your heart dance. \nThe crippled girl asked\,\n”How do I sing?”\nWe told her:\nlet your heart sing. \nA poor dead thistle asked\,\n”How do I dance?”\nWe told it:\nlet your heart fly in the wind \nGod asked from on high\, \n”How do I come down from the blueness?”\nWe told Him:\ncome dance with us in the light \nThe entire valley is dancing\nin a chorus under the sun.\nThe hearts of those absent\nreturn to ashes. \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-shall-we-dance-with-jon-joseph/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/letsDance-jjCALENDAR.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221003T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20221003T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220830T185221Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220830T185221Z
UID:10001108-1664820000-1664825400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:No Monday Meditation & Talk today. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJon Joseph is away on October 3rd in preparation for PZI’s Fall Sesshin. He returns next week\, on the 10th. \nCome join us then!
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/on-break-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/2021/06/wooden-bucketCALENDAR500x350.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220926T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220926T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220830T184037Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220925T200006Z
UID:10001104-1664215200-1664220600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Water\, Water Everywhere - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nExplain water. \n—Pacific Zen Miscellaneous Koans \nOver theses last weeks\, we have been working with the image of water—moment by moment\, non-stop flow. A coin lost in the river is found in the river. “What is that sound outside the gate?” asked the teacher. The monk replied\, “The sound of raindrops.” And last week\, in this drought-prone\, wildland-fire-plagued part of the country\, we heard the sound of raindrops. It was wonderful. \nThe above koan\, “Explain water\,” seems utterly plain\, but when I recently visited it with a friend\, what touched me was its reservoir of richness within its simplicity. Wet and dry seem to need each other. \nTaking a gulp of water from a mason jar\, (which made me laugh\,) my friend said\, “I cried twice recently.” In several years of talking together\, I don’t recall him having openly offered up his emotions that way. He said\, “I was surprised at how I cried when I heard the Queen had died.” His first memory of Queen Elizabeth\, when he was a very young child\, was of seeing her picture on Canadian currency. Her reign had been ancient and august\, pre-dating even his father’s birth. “I cried again\, when I heard a certain song being played this past September 11th.” The Whole World had been released by the hip-hop band Outkast just after the World Trade Center attack. On hearing it\, he wept for the dead\, and for the survivors. \nAfter speaking with my friend\, I thought of a quote from Joan Sutherland Roshi’s new book\, Through Forests of Every Color. Joan writes about a young woman\, Mujaku\, who lived in medieval Japan\, and became a nun at age thirty-two following the death of her samurai husband. While in dokusan with her Zen teacher Bukko\, she heard the cry of a deer\, down at a nearby creek. The master shouted\, “Where is that deer? Who is hearing?” Shaken\, Mujaku later went to the creek to fetch water\, saw the moon’s reflection in her bucket\, and spontaneously created a poem: \nThe bucket catches the stream\nThe pure moon through the pines\nAppears in the water. \nAnd then the tears came. Joan writes: \nShe sees the moon’s reflection in the water: her grief\, radiant. Later still\, she says\, the bottom falls out of her bucket: water and light soaking into the earth. All that wet: the stream\, the watery moon in a bucket\, the deer’s moist eye\, the woman weeping. \nHer tears become a solvent for what is unyielding within\, the defenses we erect to keep from feeling the pain of life all the way through—which also keeps us from feeling its beauty all the way through. The tears soften\, unstick\, breach\, topple\, and fill. They run like water under the ice\, and suddenly the frozen is flowing again. \n—Through Forests of Every Color\, Joan Sutherland\, p. 44 \nWhat is the cause of water? Maybe it is something that doesn’t need explaining. Perhaps it is self-evident; perhaps we are self-evident. It is possible we are more simple than we think\, our lives more clean\, direct and refreshing than we can imagine. And far more satisfying. \nNothing in all beneath heaven is so soft and weak as water. And yet\, for conquering the hard and strong\, nothing succeeds like water. And nothing can change it: weak overcoming strong\, soft overcoming hard. Everything throughout all beneath heaven knows this\, and yet nothing puts it into practice. \n—Tao Te Ching\, David Hinton\, p. 117 \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-water-water-everywhere-with-jon-joseph/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/waterJJ-CALENDAR.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220919T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220919T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220622T232107Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220919T155550Z
UID:10001090-1663610400-1663615800@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN LUMINARIES: Through Forests of Every Color with Special Guest Joan Sutherland - in Conversation with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nJoin us on Monday night when we visit with Joan Sutherland Roshi for a conversations on koans\, her new book\, and the nature of endarkenment. \nHere is a tree\, older than the forest it stands in.\nIf you guess its age\, it’s twice as old.\nIts roots met the changes of hills and ravines\,\nits leaves were altered by wind and frost.\nEveryone laughs at its outer decay\,\nfailing to appreciate the colorful patterns within.\nIts bark may have peeled away\,\nbut there is only truth inside. \n—Cold Mountain (Hanshan) \nJoan Sutherland Roshi is a teacher in the koan tradition\, co-founder of the Pacific Zen School\, and founder of The Open Source\, a network of Zen communities. A translator of classical Chinese\, she is the author of Vimalakirti and the Awakened Heart. Her collected writings and teachings are online at Cloud Dragon: The Joan Sutherland Dharma Works. \nHere are some excerpts from her most recent book\, Through Forests of Every Color; Awakening with Koans: \nKoan Tradition \nHow\, actually\, do koans work? What are they for? \nIf practitioners are having experiences both profound and outside the received tradition\, do the practitioners have to adapt\, or does the tradition? How deep\, really\, is our understanding of the ancestors? And underneath everything else\, what do the koans themselves want? \nI’ve come to see that the koan tradition isn’t static\, but supple and curious. Also\, not yet complete. Zen is the unfinished koan. \nPractice \nChan practice wasn’t about getting free of the world\, it was about being free in the world. \nHow do we fall willingly into the frightened\, blasted\, beautiful\, tender world? \nThroughout the koans there’s a focus on serving\, meaning caring for a world as wondrous and devastating as we are. Koan meditation’s inward turn serves an outward orientation; the aim of koan practice is to open a path into the world\, a path that recognizes the luminous nature of things and also the complicated poignancy of embodied life. \nIt’s not enough to see what buddha nature is; you have to realize what buddha nature does. \nEndarkenment \nIf you think of the Chinese and Japanese sense of a unified heart-mind\, enlightenment is roughly related to the illumination of the mind\, endarkenment to the liberation of the heart. \nThe distinction between them isn’t hard and fast; there are lots of boundary crossings. Enlightenment is\, again roughly\, what we come to know\, while endarkenment is what we come to realize that we can’t know. \nInsight and mystery\, each with its radiance. \n\nMore about Joan Sutherland Roshi: \nAfter practicing in the Soto Zen and Tibetan traditions\, Joan Sutherland returned to her early love—koan study. She studied with John Tarrant and was made Roshi in his lineage in 1998. Together they co-founded the Pacific Zen School. \nOver the decades\, Joan Sutherland’s teaching and writing has explored how koans enliven\, subvert\, and sanctify us. Her books include: Through Forests of Every Color\, Vimalakirti & The Awakened Heart\, and Acequias & Gates: Miscellaneous Koans and Miscellaneous Writings on Koans. Her work is the subject of a short film\, The Radiance of the Dark\, evoking her vision of an awakening that embraces “endarkenment” as well as enlightenment. \nSutherland is currently working on a long-term project to translate the major koan collections from the classical Chinese. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nJoin us on Monday for a lively conversation about Chan\, Zen\, and more with special guest Joan Sutherland Roshi. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n—Jon Joseph
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-roshi-joan-sutherland/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/roshiJoanSuntherlandCALENDAR500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220912T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220912T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220829T205423Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220909T230100Z
UID:10001102-1663005600-1663011000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Call Me by My Name - with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nWhat is it like when the universe calls directly to us? It is intimate\, warm\, and deeply supportive. And it can’t be explained. Which is why we grow tomatoes. \nPablo Neruda gives us some hint in the opening to his “Ode to Tomatoes”: \nThe street filled with tomatoes\,\nmidday\, summer\,\nlight is halved like a tomato\,\nits juice runs\nthrough the streets. . . \nWeeding and watering in my garden last week\, and finding again the Neruda poem\, I knew it was time to revisit tomatoes as koans. So I re-read some of my past tomato blog posts\, and was a bit surprised at how much complaining I had done about growing tomatoes: \nSome seasons ago\, I wrote a sarcastic note called “One-Ton Tomato\,” which whined that my whole tomato patch had produced only a single cherry tomato by early September. I accused the garden of lacking in passion\, of not following the red thread. \nA couple seasons later\, I sprayed my young and promising tomato plants from a can upon which I had marked “Organic Fertilizer” in large letters. The next day\, they began to wilt pitifully\, and then die. I smelled an oily poison inside the can; apparently a departed gardener had used it to mix the weed killer Roundup. \nAnd then there were notes on slugs and snails\, dozens of which I ushered onto the “stairway to heaven.” \nThis year\, I don’t really have any complaints at all. In a strange and beautiful way\, I have been feeling more intimate with the garden. It has been calling my name\, and I have been going to it in response. That itself is enough. The great Master Dharma Eye (Fayan) had an exchange with a monk about this: \nA monk (named Wisdom Surpassed) asked Master Dharma Eye\,\n“Wisdom Surpassed asks the Teacher\, what is Buddha?”\nDharma Eye said\, “You are Wisdom Surpassed.” \nThat is not to say the garden is without challenges. My dog dug up the zucchini plant\, so I let the lemon squash go\, and it ran wild\, flowing into the lettuces and beets. The heat wave stunted the brassic—broccoli and cauliflower are not forming good heads. And for some reason\, my garden peas and beans are too tough to eat. But they are problems only if I name them as such. When they call me\, they are somehow familiar and welcoming. \nRecently\, sitting in the afternoon garden\, the wind was gently blowing\, making a juniper tree\, which rubs up against a wooden pergola\, produce a woody groan. In a deep sonorous voice\, it was calling my name: Jon\, Jon. I looked across the yard at the redwood tree and rhododendrons\, and as they too swayed in the wind\, in their own voices they called: Jon\, Jon. I was surprised\, but also felt supported and held by the community of the many beings in the garden\, and beyond. \nA monk once asked Master Visitation Land (Zhaozhou)\, \n“What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?”\nLand answered\, “The juniper tree in front of the garden.”\nThe monk replied\, “Master\, don’t teach me using external objects.” \nLand said\, “I’m not teaching you using external objects.” \nThe nature of Zen is so much simpler and more intimate than we can imagine. It is our ideas and words which separate us from that fact. But that is not a problem\, either. Which is why we have koans\, the stories of our lives\, the gates\, that allow us to open into and enter the garden. \nBefore dinner\, I went into the twilight vegetable patch to pick a few tomatoes. The yellow-red Brandywines and large Romas were still warm from the low sun as I cradled them in my palm. Without speaking\, they were teaching me. Not as external objects\, saying internal and external uses too many words. Just call them by their name: tomatoes. \n—Jon Joseph \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-call-me-by-my-name-with-jon-joseph/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/tomato-giant-JJ-CALENDAR500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220905T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220905T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220829T205701Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230307T012924Z
UID:10001103-1662400800-1662406200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:ON BREAK: Monday Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:No Monday Meditation & Talk today. \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\n  \nJon Joseph is away on September 5th. He returns next week\, on the 12th. \nCome join us then!
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/on-break-monday-zen-with-jon-joseph/
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:20220829T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220829T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220622T234932Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230307T012937Z
UID:10001092-1661796000-1661801400@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Family Treasure with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\n\nSomeone asked: “What does ‘Sitting correctly and contemplating true reality’ mean?”\nThe Master said\, “A coin lost in the river is found in the river.” —Record of Yunmen\, 15 \nIf we look at the river from a high level\, we might call it the Dao\, or the Way. And by retrieving the coins that have been lost in the river\, we are recovering the treasures of our lives. But that is just a metaphor. Our lives\, I think\, are much more intimate\, more wet\, and far richer than that which can be explained. \nI have two items on my desk\, left to me by my father. One is an old pipe\, which he took up for a time\, after giving up a long habit of smoking cigarettes. He started smoking at ten years old\, working with the family’s ranch hands\, and by the time he was coughing blood in his sixties\, he knew it was time to stop. He lived to be ninety. \nThe other is a small manila envelope which contains the only piece of his writing that I have: “$210.00 if you buy\, $180 if you sell. Gold 1887 2-1/2D.” That was the price of gold in 1973. \nBuck had inherited an old coin and a tremendous gold nugget from his mother several years before. Both the coin and the nugget were stolen from his trailer home a decade after he noted the price of gold. A coin found in the river is lost in the river. \nI held the gnarled old nugget once\, when we cleared out my grandmother’s house in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It was hard to say how much it weighed\, but it had heft in my small palm. Just recently\, I found a letter written by my grandmother about the discovery of this nugget. It had been found by her great uncle in the 1850s\, soon after the Gold Rush began\, in a creek outside of Angels Camp\, the small mining town made famous by Mark Twain’s story about jumping frogs. The uncle passed it on to his daughter\, who then gave it to my Grandma Rose. \nDreams of my father over the years have improved—we say that relations with the deceased often mend with time. He had been a difficult person his whole life\, and as he grew older\, macular degeneration blinded him\, and arthritis began to cripple him. \nA year after he passed\, some thirteen years ago\, I had a vivid dream of him wandering about a park as a homeless person\, completely lost. A few years after that\, while I was on a trip visiting colleges\, I dreamed that he and my mother (who divorced him after a long period of marriage) were together\, smiling broadly. I took that to mean our girls would be fine when they left home\, and they have been. \nRecently\, I had a dream where he and I were working on a project together\, building something out of wood\, and our interaction was good and easy. A coin lost in the river is found in the river. \nContemplating Yunmen’s true reality\, for me\, is not just about swimming in the river\, clear and cool. Look closer\, down into the water—there are sparkles of gold on the sandy bottom. These are the bits of our bright lives. They are a treasure. And they have never been lost. \nThe mandarin silence of windows before their view\,\nLike gods who nod to every visitor\,\n“Pass.”\n“Come\, thief\,”\nthe path to the doorway agrees.\nA fire requires its own conflagration.\nAs birth does. As love does.\nSaying to time to the end\, “Dear one\, enter.” \n—Jane Hirshfield \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nOn Monday night\, bring and share some remembrance of ones passed. \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-family-treasure-with-jon-joseph/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/nuggetCALENDAR500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220822T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220822T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220622T234827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230307T012947Z
UID:10001091-1661191200-1661196600@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: A Stream of Regrets with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nWho is this facing me?\,” asked Emperor Wu.\n“I don’t know\,” responded Bodhidharma. The Emperor did not understand.\nBodhidharma then departed and crossed the Yangtse River into the Kingdom of Wei.\nLater\, the Emperor brought this up with Master Chih\, who asked\,\n“Does your majesty know who that man was?”\nThe Emperor said\, ”I don’t know.”\nChih said\, “He is the Mahasattva Avalokitesvara\, transmitting the Buddha Mind Seal.”\nThe Emperor was deeply regretful\, and wanted to send an emissary to invite Bodhidharma back.\nChih said\, “Your majesty\, don’t send someone to fetch him back. Even if everyone in the whole country were to go after him\, he still would not return.” \n—The Blue Cliff Record\, Case 1 \nI broke my favorite coffee mug yesterday. My daughter\, in her second-grade ceramics class\, had splashed on mottled glaze of white\, gray-blues and green\, and I had used it hundreds\, perhaps a thousand times. Each time was a pleasure\, seeing its form and knowing its provenance. I had set the empty cup on a cabinet in my office\, it fell on the carpet\, and when I moved my chair to pick it up\, the chair crushed it. I felt like the dopey Emperor Wu\, who his whole life regretted not having known that Bodhidharma was a great sage. \nBreaking the mug opened a stream of remembered regrets for me. I probably should not have invited my girlfriend to live with me in Japan. I should have taken the subway rather than the taxi\, which made me 30 minutes late for a meeting with my boss’s boss. Why did I buy that stupid technology stock (asked many times)? The clueless Emperor Wu says\, “I don’t know.” \nYuanwu\, the commentator of The Blue Cliff Record\, asks a wonderful checking question for this koan: \nTell me\, is the Emperor’s ‘I don’t know’ the same as Bodhidharma’s\, or is it different? \nThe Emperor’s not-knowing is in a world of conditions that are ever-changing. We all make assumptions about the red-bearded barbarian: he is just one more hitchhiker bearing worthless tchotchkes from India. When we discover we made a mistake\, this Emperor has regrets. \nAnd then we hear of Bodhidharma’s brilliant “I don’t know\,” a response that is unconditional and awakened. We slip into a kind of reasoning that Bodhidharma is living in the Dao\, and how great it would be if I could just live his life. A shattered coffee mug? Bodhidharma is ok with it\, there is other favorites in the cupboard. The girlfriend quits Japan? Well\, the great sage points out\, she later married\, had a child\, and now lives with two darling grandchildren. So what if I left my job through a “mutual understanding”? A couple of years later\, the company went utterly bankrupt before being saved by a huge government bailout. \nBut this reasoning veers dangerously toward finding a silver lining in our life story\, as one of our teachers put it. Bodhidharma is unsure that the answer is “all is well that ends well.” \nIn the koan\, Ordinary Mind Is the Way\, Nanchuan says: \nThe Dao is not subject to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine Dao\, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation? \nMaybe it is not about the answer; perhaps merely asking the question is sufficient. \nSometimes “not-knowing” can just be just another Imperial road block. I have a friend whose elderly mother\, for years\, has asked him questions like “Why are there young men sitting around the square all day? Why did the nurses cancel my appointment? Why did they tear down all the beautiful buildings in town?” In the past\, he has simply replied\, “I don’t know\, Mom.” But recently\, a koan came to him\, nuzzling against him like his large black dog\, and he realized his “I don’t know” was just a habitual way of closing his mother off. “The koan showed me I had been missing something\,” he said. \nThat night\, when his mother asked again why they had torn down all the beautiful buildings\, he looked inside before answering\, and he could physically feel her perplexity about her life. “She finds a lot of changes in the world difficult to handle\,” he said. “She didn’t want an answer\, she just wanted to express her puzzlement.” The Indian prince learns to listen. \nBodhidharma did not know\, nor did Emperor Wu. Were their answers the same\, or were they different? Hmm\, excellent question. \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-a-stream-of-regrets-with-jon-joseph/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TeaTathagataCALENDAR_500x375.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220627T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220627T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220224T032323Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230307T013024Z
UID:10001087-1656352800-1656358200@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:Zen Luminaries - Finding Refuge in Poetry: Monday with Co-hosts Jon Joseph & Allison Atwill and Special Guest Naomi Shihab Nye
DESCRIPTION:REGISTER\nOn Monday night\, Naomi\, one of the great American poets of our time and an old friend\, will join us in conversation on her abiding faith in poetry as a shelter and source of solace in difficult and dark times. \nShe will read for us from several of her most recent collections\, including Everything Comes Next; Collected and New Poems\, and Dear Vaccine; Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic. \nPlease join us. —Jon Joseph \nOur voices poured out through\na hole in the floor.\nSome days the woman with a bucket\ncame swaggering up the block\nsinging our names\, the song that goes\nold old very old\nand we rode in her wake\, echoing\nthe thrum of her lowest note… \n—The House Made of Rain\, from Everything Comes Next \n\nNaomi Shihab Nye is one of the few poets whose work can stand up to being read aloud during a Zen retreat. Her writing has a special and generous quality\, a feel for our joys and troubles. \nGreat poetry has always been part of the Dharma path\, and to be immersed in Naomi’s work is a spiritual event—refuge and sanctuary in the times we have. \nOn Monday night\, Naomi will be with Jon Joseph and Naomi’s friend Allison Atwill. The idea is that Naomi will read her poetry and tell the stories behind the poems. Her poems and stories are magical. \nSee you then.  —John Tarrant \n\nNaomi Shihab Nye is an American poet\, editor\, songwriter\, and novelist\, born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. Nye has been affiliated with the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas and poetry editor for the Texas Observer for over 20 years. She is a professor of creative writing at Texas State University. Her works include poetry\, novels\, young adult fiction\, and illustrated books. She has published or contributed to over 30 volumes of poetry. \nI have always loved the gaps\, the spaces between things\, as much as the things. I love staring\, pondering\, mulling\, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late—there’s that rich possibility of noticing more\, in the meantime… Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook\, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer\, on its own. —Naomi Shihab Nye \n\nJon Joseph Roshi\nCOME JOIN US on June 27th for a lively conversation about poetry and more with special guest “wandering poet” Naomi Shihab Nye. All are welcome. Register to participate. \n—Jon Joseph & Guest Co-host Allison Atwill \n\nAllison Atwill Roshi
URL:https://www.pacificzen.org/event/zen-luminaries-jon-joseph-in-conversation-with-writer-poet-naomi-shihab-nye/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/JJ-AA-Nye-CALENDAR.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220214T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220214T193000
DTSTAMP:20260430T035546
CREATED:20220117T204846Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230307T013106Z
UID:10001086-1644861600-1644867000@www.pacificzen.org
SUMMARY:MONDAY ZEN: Very Near to Zen with Jon Joseph
DESCRIPTION:Register here for Jon’s Monday Meditation \nWuzu said\, “When you were very young\, did you read a story which went something like\,\n \n‘She calls to her maid\, “Little Jade!”\nnot because she wants something\nbut just so her children will hear her voice.’” \nThe official said\, “Yes\, my father read it to me.” Wuzu said\, “That is very near to Zen.” \n—PZI Miscellaneous Koans\, Entangling Vines Case 98 (amended) \nSome years ago\, at the end of each evening at sesshin\, the timekeeper would strike the large temple bell\, beat the wooden-board han\, and the liaison would call out: \nI beg to urge you everyone:\nlife and death is a grave matter;\nall things pass quickly away.\nEach of you must be completely alert;\nnever neglectful\, never indulgent. \nThe honorable custom of reciting this passage has evolved for us in recent years. At the end of sesshin night\, teachers and heads of practice now offer a few bedtime closing words of their own\, or perhaps a poem. \nBefore the pandemic\, we would gather together in a remote location and form a cloister away from our daily lives. With our Covid-era virtual retreats\, however\, the borders of the cloister have been redrawn and now wrap around and include our everyday lives. In our screen community we see cats and couches\, pajamas and coffee cups. For some reason\, in this past retreat\, one landscape feature that caught my eye was the number of children running through the community: toddlers being held\, kids getting ready for school\, and grandkids peeking into office doors to see what grandma was up to. It was a wonderful reminder of when my own children were small. \nSo\, on the very last night of retreat\, to celebrate the nighttime stories I would read to my girls two decades ago\, I chose Margaret Wise Brown’s Good Night Moon for the closing words. For me\, it has always been a book that was “very near to Zen.” \nIn the great green room\nThere was a telephone\nAnd a red balloon\nAnd a picture of– \nThe cow jumping over the moon\nAnd there were three little bears\, sitting on chairs\nAnd two little kittens and a pair of mittens\nAnd a little toy house and a young mouse\nAnd a comb and a brush and bowl full of mush\nAnd a quiet old lady who was whispering “hush” \nGoodnight room\nGoodnight moon\nGoodnight cow jumping over the moon\nGoodnight light and the red balloon\nGoodnight bears goodnight chairs\nGoodnight kittens goodnight mittens\nGoodnight clocks and goodnight socks\nGoodnight little house and goodnight mouse\nGoodnight comb and goodnight brush\nGoodnight nobody\, goodnight mush\nand goodnight to the old lady whispering “hush” \nGoodnight stars\, goodnight air\nGoodnight noises everywhere. \nAfter sesshin\, I opened the latest New Yorker\, and was pleasantly surprised to find an article on Brown\, celebrating the 75th anniversary of Goodnight Moon. A leading example of a new kind of child’s book in the 1940s\, called the “Here and Now” movement\, Good Night Moon recognized that small children need stories of the familiar before they can grasp ones of fantasy. \n“It is only the blind eye of the adult that finds the familiar uninteresting\,” wrote Lucy Sprague Mitchell\, Brown’s mentor. \nBut not all were fans: Anne Carroll Moore\, who ran the children’s division at the New York Public Library\, banned the book from her influential library system for 25 years because she found it “overly sentimental.” The standoff was called “The Fairy-Tale War.” Sentimental\, for me\, can be very near to Zen. \nGood night Zhao’s dog\nGood night snow in a silver bowl\nGood night distant temple bell\nGood night stone drenched in rain\nGood night stars\, good night air\nGood night noises everywhere. \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-meditation-with-jon-joseph-5/
LOCATION:PZI Online Temple
CATEGORIES:PZI Zen Online
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.pacificzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/childrenZenCALENDAR-1.jpg
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