PZI Leadership Classes: Series 1-4
The koan tradition arose as a creative response to uncertain times; a path through when there is no path. The famous Zen not knowing is not so much ignorance as a willingness to walk in the dark, before anything is explained.
Despair is oozing out of the walls and the mind tries to explain it all. And then there’s hope, and things being chopped up, and compressed, and dissolved, and there is fire, and death too, and hope again. The disturbance and chaos of our time is in our hearts as well as in the outside world and actually this is the way we keep in touch with the world. In the Bodhisattva path we accompany people wherever they are, even in disorderly karmic consciousness
We are in the time we have long thought would arrive, subject to great forces.
When we work with koans, images and feelings arrive, offered by the inner life; we take them as gates, opening into our situation. This is a way to trust our lives, and trust that what rises to meet us belongs to us too. We can have confidence in our own moves and in the light that is always at work in us. Unlooked for gifts will certainly appear, but we will not know what they are until they arrive.
Because times are uncertain, we’re beginning the first course with a four part exploration of the types of koans.
This curriculum is itself an example of the gifts of the underworld. I’ve been thinking of this material for years, but there was always something else that needed to be done first. Now there is nothing in the way. We’re interested in creating a vessel that can hold a deep immersion in life, transformative processes, and how to trust our own creative moves in the dark.—John Tarrant
The full curriculum contains other teachings about leadership in the context of koans, dreams, myths, ritual, and community.
As PZI Leaders you may choose to enroll in one or all 4 sections of 4 classes each @ $200. Each section includes John Tarrant’s rich koan curriculum in 4, 2-hour Dharma talk overviews for each class offered: files are video, audio and transcript, plus any questions, comments from leaders or homework required for study. Classes contain links to all the koans John mentions in the KALPA library and tags for further study. This is core curriculum and not to be shared. You will have password access.
SERIES 1: Walking In Deep Places
Koan Types 1, Classes 1-4
Because times are uncertain, we’re beginning the first course with a four part exploration of the types of koans. The koan tradition arose as a creative response to uncertain times; a path through when there is no path. The famous Zen not knowing is not so much ignorance as a willingness to walk in the dark, before anything is explained.
Class 1: Predicament Koans
Class 2: Mysterious Tasks & Impossible Problems Koans
Class 3: Dream Body Koans
Class 4: Inquiry Koans & Fundamental Question
SERIES 3: Valley Spirit
Finding Your Own Practice As a Leader, Classes 9-12
The fundamental task of a teacher is to find your own dharma. Everyone thinks that there is a dharma or an enlightenment outside of themselves, but to think this is only putting off enlightenment and entry into reality. In Chan we come together to find our own practice, to find our name, our gift, our true path, in which we are carried by the vastness. We are in the territory known as the Valley Spirit.
Class 9: Tracking the Light & Finding Your Own Dharma
Class 10: Passing Through a Doorway – Where Do You Go
When You Die?
Class 11: Refuge
Class 12: Transmission,You Can’t Get Outside of It
SERIES 2: Moving in the Dark
Koan Types 2, Classes 5-8
Because times are uncertain, we’re beginning the first course with a four part exploration of the types of koans. This curriculum is itself an example of the gifts of the underworld. I’ve been thinking of this material for years, but there was always something else that needed to be done first. Now there is nothing in the way.
Class 5: Bright Gate Koans
Class 6: Vast Emptiness – Call & Response Koans
Class 7: At Home Among the Peach Blossoms –
Awakening Koans
Class 8: Walking In the World With Open Hands –
Intimacy & Immersion Koans
SERIES 4: Koans, Dreams & the Dao,
Classes 13-16
Dreams and koans are related—they are worlds in themselves, and gates to those worlds. We move about these worlds in unfamiliar ways, they sweep us into depths we did not know about. The day mind has various strategies of defending against this movement, which is to say keeping its
idea of itself intact.
Class 13: Out of the Depths—Buddhas, Monsters
& Beautiful Life
Class 14: Dreams of Practice & the Journey
Class 15: Dreams of Teachers & Lineage
Class 16: Dreams of Awakening