Pacific Zen Institute

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Santa Rosa, CA
Pacific Zen Institute

We use Zen koan meditation, art and conversation toward this end. Other centers and groups can be found on our website, pacificzen.org.

PZI operates from the simple yet profound discovery that awakening can happen in this very life, at this very moment, rather than in some other life at some other time. Our two main centers are The Santa Rosa Creek Zen Center at santrarosazen.org, and Rockridge Meditation Community at oaklandzen.org. After 20 years of teaching koans in a classical way, John Tarrant, the founder of PZI, developed a new way of teaching koans in a setting that requires no experience with meditation or Zen. The emphasis is on taking one step into freedom. Everything we do is directed to that end. We hold 7-day and 1-day retreats devoted to freeing the mind. We also have small group seminars on koans. As a community we help deepen one another's practice, often without really trying. PZI holds weekly gatherings online see pacificzen.org/events

10/11/2025

Sunday Zen is on break for Great Fall Sesshin!

While we are away for the next two weeks, we thought catching up on PZI’s growing podcast would be a great way to keep us all connected.

Featured this week is Episode 23: The Stone Drenched with Rain

In this talk, Roshi Allison Atwill speaks on a koan born of a haiku by Japanese poet Santoka Taneda.

What does it mean to be drenched in our own lives and experiences?

This episode invites listeners into the constant downpour that is the universe itself.

Listen & Subscribe to Meeting the Inconceivable – Link in comments.

Many thanks to everyone who rates and leaves a comment! This actually boosts the signal and perks more ears to these teachings.

10/04/2025

On the Hundred Grass Tips, the Great Masters’ Meaning

Sometimes practice comes easily ... the bright moon seems to follow us everywhere we go, the night forest draws near with its strange creatures and ancient trees, and without effort, we find ourselves at home wherever we are.

But other times practice is gruelling ... we can barely tolerate the world, our body, our mind; everything is wrong or tangled or dull, and though we bring ourselves to the cushion, or try, the way seems wholly lost or out of reach.

What to make of this? One of the great old families in our tradition, the Pangs, found themselves exploring this quandary one day when someone asked about the nature of practice.

"Difficult, difficult," said the father; "like trying to scatter ten measures of sesame seed all over a tree."
But his wife disagreed.
"Easy, easy," she said; "like touching your feet to the ground when you get out of bed."
"Neither difficult nor easy," offered their daughter, opening the territory a little wider; "on the hundred grass tips, the great Masters' meaning."

What if it's impossible to be outside the field of awakening?

This Sunday we'll take up with the Pangs and their inescapable joy. Join us.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Tess Beasley & Friends – October 5th – 10:30am PT in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

*Registration is FREE for members and guests, or you may elect to donate $10. Dana gratefully accepted.

09/28/2025

UPDATE: John Tarrant will lead Sunday's Temple.

Don't worry, it will all work out even if we don't know what's going to happen.

Join us! It's always such fun.

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – September 28th – 10:30am PT in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

*Registration is FREE for members and guests, or you may elect to donate $10. Dana gratefully accepted.

09/27/2025

This Ordinary Life

Outside the sliding screen door, a pair of black and white patterned pants hang on a railing to dry. Just a little further, cypress and eucalyptus trees lean gently with the breeze. Laughter and the rattle of shopping carts waft up from the grocery store parking lot below. Late at night, they will be replaced by the faint rumble of ocean waves.

This ordinary life, with all its sorrows and surprises and banalities, is the abode of all the buddhas past, present, and future. What a thing, to be here! Let’s do it together this Sunday.

—Jesse Cardin Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Jesse Cardin & Friends – September 28th – 10:30am PT in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

*Registration is FREE for members and guests, or you may elect to donate $10. Dana gratefully accepted.

09/22/2025

Tonight at six on Pacific Zen Luminaries!

Thomas Yuho Kirchner, the widely respected translator of Zen koan classics, joins host Jon Joseph to discuss Dahui’s Letters.

These letters are the critical writings of Dahui Zhonggao, considered the father of koan meditation and the leading figure of the Linji Chan-Zen School in 12th c. China. The letters are timeless in that they provide valuable lessons on koan practice for modern–day meditators.

Follow the link in comments to register and get your link for the event. Very excited to be there with you tonight!

09/20/2025

In the Gaps, the Whole Universe

It’s a promising moment when what have been our perfectly good delusions begin to wear out.

Suddenly we can't go along with what we once did, or can't convince ourselves of the same reasons. Or maybe less suddenly, the old story we've carried just doesn't quite hold together anymore, and a gap appears. This is the same gap that ushers in awakening.

But the trick is when the old car we've been tooling around in starts to sputter, not to just tape the fender or drag the engine into the shop. The trick is to open to a new way of moving.

Koans relish and potentiate these gaps as moments the whole vast universe tucked inside each moment can appear.

With empty hands I pick up the hoe.
As I walk, I ride the water buffalo.
As I cross the bridge, the bridge flows, the water is still.

—Mahasattva Fu

Join us Sunday for meditation, music, and expeditions into the truly strange, wonderful landscape called your own heart–mind.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Tess Beasley & Friends – September 21st – 10:30am PT in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

*Registration is FREE for members and guests, or you may elect to donate $10. Dana gratefully accepted.

09/15/2025

Next Monday night on Pacific Zen Luminaries!

Thomas Yuho Kirchner, the widely respected translator of Zen koan classics, joins host Jon Joseph to discuss Dahui’s Letters.

These letters are the critical writings of Dahui Zhonggao, considered the father of koan meditation and the leading figure of the Linji Chan-Zen School in 12th c. China. The letters are timeless in that they provide valuable lessons on koan practice for modern–day meditators.

We are really looking forward to this discussion and hope you join us!

Follow the link in comments to register and get your link for the event!

09/13/2025

The Courage to Have a Practice

It's no small thing to open ourselves to the full spectrum of the universe unfolding, otherwise known as this very heart-mind. Any given moment might bring trembling, rending, deep uncertainty, or inexplicable joy. Sometimes, strangely, it's the joy and freedom we hold off most.

But in taking up a practice we slowly come to recognize all that's on offer if we don't blow past things or turn away, or if we don't somehow try to make life more reasonable than it actually is.

Shenshan was mending clothes when Dongshan asked, “What are you doing?”
“Mending,” said Shenshan.
“How is it going?” asked Dongshan.
“One stitch follows another,” said Shenshan.
“We’ve been traveling together for twenty years and that’s all you have to say?” said Dongshan. “How can you be so clueless?”
“How do you mend, then?”
“With each stitch the whole earth is spewing flames.”

Another translation of this exchange says, "with each stitch, the earth crumbles," pointing just the same toward how we can't hold a tether to reach this moment from the last, but we find ourselves undeniably carried along anyway.

Join us Sunday for meditation, koans, and companions. We'll be lucky enough to have music, too.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Tess Beasley & Friends – September 14th – 10:30am PT in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

*Registration is FREE for members and guests, or you may elect to donate $10. Dana gratefully accepted.

09/06/2025

Sickness and Medicine Correspond

Sickness and medicine are in accord with each other. The whole world is medicine. What am I?
—Yunmen

We are guests in the world, and what is happening to us in the darkness is that our character is transforming.

It is well known that this life is not a place that we can stay long.

A blade of grass, the sound of a truck, the tsst! tsst! of a hummingbird, everything is included.

“Sickness and medicine correspond with each other…”

“Dear Sickness,” writes Medicine, “I’m wondering how you are. Your friend, Medicine.”

Join us this Sunday!

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – September 7th – 10:30am PT in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

*Registration is FREE for members and guests, or you may elect to donate $10. Dana gratefully accepted.

08/20/2025

Join us for our 2025 Great Fall Sesshin!

October 13th—19th at the beautiful Mount Madonna in northern California.

There will be personal interviews and deep meditation, teaching talks and some conversations, old friends and new, brilliant teachers, music, great enlightenment, mistakes, and delight.

With PZI Teachers: John Tarrant, Allison Atwill, Tess Beasley, Jesse Cardin, Jon Joseph, and David Weinstein.

Join us, join us!

We meet and sit together. There will be ceremonies and sutras and teachings and also deep and marvelous silence.

More details and registration options may be seen through the link in comments.

08/15/2025

Registration now open for PZI's Into Fall Open Temple!

Morning Meditation, 5 Days Weekly — FREE to PZI Members.

Wherever you are in the world, let's sit together.

Open Temple Pass gives you eleven weeks of unlimited access to two morning meditations, Mondays–Fridays, August 18th through October 31st.

Practice leaders ring the bells and hold a cushion for you.

All are welcome. Join us!

Register for PZI's Into Fall Open Temple – August 18th–October 31st in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

08/02/2025

Like a Moth to a Flame, the Draw of Practice

A monk asked Yunmen, “What was Niutou after he met the Fourth Ancestor?”
Yunmen said, “The moth in the flame swallows the tiger.”

Something draws us toward this fire called illumination. Whether in response to curiosity, great change, or some kind of deep ache, we begin to make our way out of the dark with questions and longing—not just once, but again and again.

Many stages unfold as we draw near and take up a real practice, many more as practice deepens. Hunger, relief, delight, despair...doubt. How to progress, we wonder. Do we have what it takes? Resistance plays its role, too, showing us what we fear most to let go.

There's no rushing transformation, but there's no need either. As Wumen writes in his Gateless Gate collection:

Because it’s so very clear,
it takes so long to realize.
As soon as you know that a candle flame is fire,
you’ll discover your rice has long been cooked.

Join us Sunday for meditation, stories of practice, and company of the finest temple musicians around.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

P.S. John Tarrant is continuing to recover well in the care of his Summer garden. He'll happily be teaching in Bolinas next weekend and, with any luck, be back in the temple August 17th.

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Guest Host Tess Beasley & Friends – August 3rd – 10:30am PT in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

*Registration is FREE for members and guests, or you may elect to donate $10. Dana gratefully accepted.

Address

P. O. Box 2972
Santa Rosa, CA
95405

Telephone

+15105249575

Website

http://www.pacificzen.org/

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