News

Support Zen in These Times

Dear Friends,

Solstice and solar eclipse came and went — summer’s brightness, and then late summer fire, have thickened the air.

The koan goes:

Take a step from the top of a 100 foot pole
and the world in all directions will be your complete body.

This is a hard time for the life we expected to have, and a good time for understanding the deepest things. It’s as if our country is Wile E. Coyote; we’ve walked off a cliff and haven’t really taken into account that we’ll fall.

Meanwhile at PZI we’re supporting the institutions that support democracy. We work with everyone, to point out the nature of mind and the nature of delusion. That’s what koan meditation is for: we look directly at what is real.

What is inside and what is outside are essentially the same territory. If you see the connections in all things you see that you can’t just win against the earth or the universe—our job is to encourage that clear seeing.

Thanks for being part of this project.

– John Tarrant

Donate Now

We at PZI are sending you this letter to let you know what we’ve been doing this year and to ask for your support and participation.

We’re doing really well, actually, and your support continues to make that possible. At year’s end we contacted you to say that we needed your help. And you came through! We set out to make $75,000 and thanks to you, we did even better than that.

Perhaps because of the times, or just because it’s the right thing to do, we’ve been growing more collaborative at PZI. Thanks to you, we are now able to pay a part-time living wage to several highly-skilled people, who keep the lights on and systems running behind the scenes. We built a bright, beautiful, spacious new W ebsite to better communicate with the world, and we’ve adopted a more flexible payment and membership system this year.

Our Scholarship Fund has grown – thank you! This fund allows young and lower income practitioners to attend our retreats and special events.

We have launched a new kind of retreat, too. Non-residential urban Commuter Retreats connect koan practice with ordinary life in an affordable way. We are also expanding into new cities and venues and our twice-monthly Livestreamed Talks help us gather together in the same room, even when we are separated by distance. And we are making short YouTube teaching videos, too.

John Tarrant will be the American Buddhist teacher on a retreat and tour in Bhutan this fall.

Our other fabulous teachers are busy running or opening centers from California to Arizona, from Kentucky to Texas, guiding students, and teaching, and giving retreats as well. Your donations will help immensely to fund these new and ongoing projects.

Like everyone, we have been tossed and turned by events of the past year. We’ve noticed we’re also filled with moments of astonishing beauty, real concern, and deep uncertainty. We hold koans and our practice close, as guides, companions, lights in the confusion. Our community and our practice provide shelter, even as they ask us to turn towards the storm.

John Tarrant gave a talk about this in February.

We hope that you are able to join us – online, in person, on retreat – as we continue on this year’s journey of transformation. And please, if you are able:

Donate Now

Thanks, from the PZI Fundraising Team:
Corey, D, Amy & Rachel

Please note that your donation can go even further with a match!
Check to see if the company you are working for offers matching grants to nonprofits of your choice. Companies will often match 100% of any donation you make.