Pacific Zen Institute

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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

07/12/2025

Riding the Dragon

There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief

—Bob Dylan

This world is absolutely crazypants! How can any halfway reasonable person be expected to make their way through a life as weird as this one without losing their dadgum mind? There must be some trick to this, right?

Well boy howdy, have I got a deal for you! With my 10-step plan, Riding the Dragon, you’ll never have to be a victim of life’s cruel capriciousness ever again!

Loved ones not acting right? No problem! Society falling to pieces around you? Piece of cake! Favorite sports team having a bad season? That’s a tough one, actually…

Join us on Sunday for a revolutionary program that will turn your life around.

I’ll share my patented method, answer questions from listeners, and we’ll all enjoy meditation and music together.

If you’ve got questions or comments about riding the dragon in your life that you’d like addressed on air, shoot them to me ASAP at jesse.r.cardin@gmail.com.

See you there!

—Jesse Cardin Roshi

(Disclaimer: Jesse Cardin assumes no responsibility for the veracity of any claims made in this or any advertisement and makes no guarantees as to the effectiveness of any methods provided in any program, workshop, or retreat. Dragons may vary.)

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Guest Host Jesse Cardin & Friends – July 13th – 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.

06/28/2025

Fate, Destiny, Karma & Coincidence

Patterns, rhymes, callings, and coincidences all seem to mark and steer our lives, often as if by an unseen hand, gently or firmly guiding us along.

Sometimes such forces can feel like magic, other times like a curse, but either way they open us to the inconceivable and inexplicable—both of great interest in Zen.

In meditation, we become more tuned to the larger currents flowing through, and less preoccupied with our own plans and schemes. We begin to trust the fabric of things as they are, and over and over again discover we're in just the right place.

Join us Sunday for stories, meditation, music, and deep companionship.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Guest Host Tess Beasley & Friends – June 29th – 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.

06/25/2025

This August, join us for PZI's Summer Open Mind retreat!

There and Back Again: Pilgrimage of the Inner–Life

Pacific Zen Institute’s Open Mind retreats come out of our impulse to make a Zen meditation retreat that is native to American culture. When we take away the barriers to understanding, things just naturally shine.

This is a residential retreat held in a beautiful place on the ocean with a simple feel, and wonderful food.

People find that this retreat has a powerful effect on their lives and understanding of the practice of the inner life and the world of work and personal interaction. It has the deep strength of an intensive meditation retreat inside a form that works for people with different levels of meditation experience. It has a flexible schedule that works well for those who would like to bring a partner or a friend.

*No particular background in spiritual practice is required.

Join us for an exploration of the great way of Zen—koans, stories, meditation and dreams. We’re looking forward to it, and there are limited numbers, so if you want to come, sign up soon!

Register and find more details through the link in comments.

06/14/2025

Receiving Our Inheritance

In The Story of the Buddha, Siddartha’s maturing son is brought to his father to ask for his inheritance.

It is an inheritance on offer to all of us, one still being handed along after all these years and universes, inexhaustible at its source.

Being part of the world, entering this shape for a time, comes with this and other unfathomable gifts, but also niggling questions of our legitimacy and right place. Part of practice is discovering our own seat at the feast, as well as our own tasks and invitations to keep handing the treasure along.

"The bright road of the ancestors is in everything you see and hear," said one teacher.

Join us Sunday for Father’s Day, meditation, and stories of lineage and belonging.

P.S. Tess will provide an update on John Tarrant's recovery as well.

—Tess Beasley

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Guest Host Tess Beasley & Friends – June 15th – 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.

06/09/2025

Tonight!

Renowned author, Zen teacher, & Jungian psychotherapist Koshin Paley Ellison joins host Jon Joseph Roshi on Pacific Zen Luminaries tonight, June 9th at 6:00 p.m. PT.

He will read from his book Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion and discuss his leadership work in contemplative care.

Koshin is recognized as one of today’s most thoughtful and trusted leaders in the contemplative medicine movement. With his husband, Chodo Campbell, he co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, an educational non-profit dedicated to integrating contemplative approaches to care with contemporary medicine. Through Koshin’s leadership and vision, NYZC has developed transformational, collaborative training experiences: the Foundations in Contemplative Care and the Contemplative Medicine Fellowship. Today, New York Zen Center’s teachings and practices are internationally recognized — and have touched the lives of tens of thousands of individuals.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we believe our own thoughts! Koshin Paley Ellison shares his wisdom and passion in Untangled. Written with truth, humor, sometimes revealing pain, always manifesting compassion, Untangled is a gem.”

―Sharon Salzberg, author of Loving Kindness and Real Change

To register and explore more of Koshin's work, click on the link in comments.

We are excited to see you there!

06/07/2025

He Finds Himself in a Stone Crypt

Plants grow when I’m sleeping, perhaps awakening does, too.

Everyone has their own predicament, and—who knows?

Let’s start with being a body in pain; the body has its own trajectory.

What does it mean to turn towards the unsympathetic moment?

That’s what enlightenment is, too, a moment unsympathetic to everything previously understood.

Join us on Sunday.

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – June 8th – 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.

06/02/2025

Renowned author, Zen teacher, & Jungian psychotherapist Koshin Paley Ellison joins host Jon Joseph Roshi on Pacific Zen Luminaries next Monday, June 9th at 6:00 p.m. PT.

He will read from his book Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion and discuss his leadership work in contemplative care.

Koshin is recognized as one of today’s most thoughtful and trusted leaders in the contemplative medicine movement. With his husband, Chodo Campbell, he co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, an educational non-profit dedicated to integrating contemplative approaches to care with contemporary medicine. Through Koshin’s leadership and vision, NYZC has developed transformational, collaborative training experiences: the Foundations in Contemplative Care and the Contemplative Medicine Fellowship. Today, New York Zen Center’s teachings and practices are internationally recognized — and have touched the lives of tens of thousands of individuals.

“Intimacy is based on the willingness to open ourselves to many others, to family, friends, and even strangers, forming genuine and deep bonds based on common humanity. Koshin Paley Ellison’s teachings share the way forward into a path of connection, compassion, and intimacy.”

—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

To register and explore more of Koshin's work, click on the link in comments.

We look forward to seeing you there!

05/31/2025

When Useless Things Don’t Stick in the Mind

Spring comes with its flowers, autumn with the moon.
Summer with breezes, winter with the snow,
when useless things don’t cloud the mind
that is the good season.
(Wumen’s Verse)

This raises the question about what should stick in the mind?

The Blue Cliff Record starts with, “Knock on any door someone will answer.”

The irises dying, the dahlias not yet arrived—is this our moment of beauty?

The idea is that you can enter from anywhere—a child’s eyes, a single leaf falling, a feeling in your own heart.

Whatever appears is a door.

Departing spring,
birds cry out
tears in the eyes of fish
(Basho)

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – June 1st – 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.

05/30/2025

Registration now open for Summer 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 nine weeks of unlimited access to two morning meditations, Mondays–Fridays, June 2nd through August 1st.

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

All are welcome. Join us!

Register for Summer Open Temple – June 2nd–August 1st in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

05/24/2025

Calming the Mind, Protecting the Mind, Trusting the Mind.

If you try to calm the mind, you just make waves. If you don’t practice, well you are just lost in Delusionville. What to do?

Changqing Da’an said, “I lived with Guishan for more than thirty years. I ate Guishan’s food, I shat Guishan’s s**t, but I didn’t study Guishan’s Zen. All I did was look after an ox. If he got off the road, I dragged him back; if he trampled the grain in others’ fields, I trained him with a whip. For a long time he was so pitiful, at the mercy of everyone’s words! Now he’s changed into the white ox on the bare ground, always right in front of my face. All day long he clearly reveals himself; even if I chase him he doesn’t go away.”

Join us on Sunday, Friends, to examine the question of meditation.

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – May 25th – 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.

05/17/2025

Without comparing yourself with others, take a step. “But what will they think of me?” You might ask.

“Ah, who cares?” We live for a short time and every moment is sacred, every moment free. And then we have the idea of kawai—Everyone is cute like Hello Kitty, and having a good time being themselves.

Walking in the moonlight, walking after the moon has set, a solemn step and another.

Here’s the koan about what happens when you stop comparing:

Shoushan said to his assembly, “If you get it the first time you hear it, you’ll teach buddhas and ancestors. If you get it the second time you hear it, you’ll teach gods and humans. If you don’t get it until the third time, you won’t even be able to save Yourself.”

A student asked, “When did you get it?”
Shoushan said, “The moon sets at midnight, I walk alone through the town.”

—Book of Serenity Case 76

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – May 18th – 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.

05/12/2025

Tonight at six!

Acclaimed author & Zen teacher Henry Shukman joins host Jon Joseph Roshi on Pacific Zen Luminaries tonight, May 12th at 6:00 p.m. PT.

Henry will read from his memoir One Blade of Grass as well as his latest book, Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening and discuss how his history of both studying and teaching Zen has influenced his work and life.

Henry is a teacher in the Sanbo Zen lineage and has trained in various other meditation schools and practices. His poems have been published in the New Yorker, Guardian, Sunday Times (UK) and London Review of Books, and his essays in the New York Times, Outside, Guardian and Tricycle. He has also taught poetry at the Institute of American Indian Arts and Oxford Brookes University and was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow of Poetry, and Poet in Residence at the Wordsworth Trust. He has an MA from Cambridge, an M.Litt. from St Andrews.

“Original Love is one of the rare books destined to inspire new and seasoned meditators alike. Drawing on his own deep experience and years of teaching, Henry Shukman brings a lucid and refreshing cast to the fundamentals of practice, and reveals how the loving we yearn for is always, already here; love is intrinsic to what we are.”

—Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance

Register and explore more of Shukman's work through the link in comments.

See you there!

Address

Santa Rosa, CA

Telephone

+15105249575

Website

http://www.pacificzen.org/

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