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

11/15/2025

The Mountains Are/Not Mountains

Enlightenment is a slippery thief. It sneaks up when we're not looking and *WHAM!* we've lost everything. But after a time, it's just like the old joke about playing a country song backward: except instead of getting your lover and your dog and your truck back, you get your bad habits and your neuroses and your beef with your coworker back. Dogen describes it like this:

Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.

I don't know about you, but I came to Zen to get enlightened for good. I don't want the mountains to go back to being mountains and the waters to go back to being waters. But if this is the case, how do we proceed?

Join me. We'll sit together and explore the great matter with music and joy and great silence.

—Jesse Cardin, Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Jesse Cardin & Friends – November 16th – 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.

11/08/2025

What is Buddha? Don't Keep Hunting Around

A friend of mine got a Buddha tattoo a few years ago, from the best artist money could buy. He considered it a reminder to be at peace, something he’d heard about.

Since then, he’s moved around the world half a dozen times or so, in search of a place without racism, without war, without anything too old or too new or that reminds him of anything that hurts.

In an old case of The Gateless Gate collection, a student asks Great Ancestor Ma, one of the foundational Chan teachers, What is Buddha? Ma simply replies, This very heart–mind is Buddha. Gateless–Gate then offers a verse:

On a bright day under a blue sky
don’t keep hunting around.
If you ask “What is Buddha?”
it’s like declaring your innocence while clutching stolen goods.

What does it mean that we have “It” already? Why do we still suffer if we do?

Join us Sunday for meditation, stories, companions, and the best temple musicians around.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Tess Beasley & Friends – November 9th – 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.

11/07/2025

Registration now open for PZI's End of Year 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 eight weeks of unlimited access to two morning meditations, Mondays–Fridays, November 10th through January 2nd.

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

All are welcome. Join us!

Register for PZI's End of Year Open Temple – Link in comments!

11/01/2025

On Being Upside Down

“Why are we upside down, Daddy?”
“Isn’t that like asking, ‘Are we there yet?’”
“Well, are we there yet?”

Always, we’re always here.
Why is October yellow and blue?
Why do we never believe even our own explanations?

A student asked Yunmen,
“But when it’s not the things I can see, and it’s not what they’re doing, what is it?”
Yunmen said, “Say something upside down.”
(Blue Cliff Record, Case 15)

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – November 2nd – 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.

10/27/2025

Tonight at six on Pacific Zen Luminaries!

David Chadwick, author, activist, musician, and Zen priest, joins host Jon Joseph for remembrances about the early days of San Francisco Zen Center and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.

David began his study of Zen in 1966 under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi who ordained him as a priest in 1971, shortly before Suzuki’s death. Later, Chadwick continued to study with Zentatsu Baker Roshi and assisted in the operation of the San Francisco Zen Center for a number of years. Throughout this time, he helped SFZC develop its centers and businesses, including Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.

He is widely known as the primary archivist and biographer of Shunryu Suzuki, with his Crooked Cucumber (1999), Zen is Right Here (2007), and Zen is Right Now (2021). Now, Chadwick has begun to publish a three part series of anecdotes and recollections of the founding of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, called Tassajara Stories: A Sort of Memoir, of the first Zen monastery in the United States.

Join us tonight at six!

Follow the link in comments to register and receive your link for the event.

10/25/2025

Great Linji said,
“Wherever you are, just take the role of host,
and that place will be a true place.”

And yet, it’s not so easy sometimes. Saying, even knowing, what’s true can be hard. Hearing what’s true can be hard, too, though somehow a relief to the part of us that sides with awakening.

Meditation clears space inside so the full splendor of reality can appear without all our adornments and disguises and objections. We learn to recognize it and its thusness, it becomes an ally in the end.

Join us this Sunday for tales from our Great Fall Sesshin and for companionship and music in the ancient hall.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Tess Beasley & Friends – October 26th – 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.

10/20/2025

Next Monday on Pacific Zen Luminaries!

David Chadwick, author, activist, musician, and Zen priest, joins host Jon Joseph for remembrances about the early days of San Francisco Zen Center and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.

David began his study of Zen in 1966 under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi who ordained him as a priest in 1971, shortly before Suzuki’s death. Later, Chadwick continued to study with Zentatsu Baker Roshi and assisted in the operation of the San Francisco Zen Center for a number of years. Throughout this time, he helped SFZC develop its centers and businesses, including Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.

He is widely known as the primary archivist and biographer of Shunryu Suzuki, with his Crooked Cucumber (1999), Zen is Right Here (2007), and Zen is Right Now (2021). Now, Chadwick has begun to publish a three part series of anecdotes and recollections of the founding of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, called Tassajara Stories: A Sort of Memoir, of the first Zen monastery in the United States.

Join us for this fascinating conversation next Monday night!

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

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!

Address

P. O. Box 2972
Santa Rosa, CA
95405

Telephone

+15105249575

Website

http://www.pacificzen.org/

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