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

01/03/2026

Traveling by Moonlight

Waking just after 1am, I see deer grazing in the white night of the full moon. They're digging patiently, expertly, anciently for grass tucked under the blanket of snow. Their coats are thick and the world is quiet.

The flue bangs closed without effort, the house happy to keep warm, and large ears turn to face the darkness.

Everything stands open and intimate. Nothing need be accounted for or understood.

When all the thoughts in your head are all used up, why does joy remain?

Join us Sunday to find out as we feel our way into the year appearing.

—Tess Beasley, Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Tess Beasley & Friends – January 4th – 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.

12/27/2025

Eternity Draws Near – With A Special Extended Meditation Series

Whether through billowing clouds, rushing rivers, or softly falling snow, eternity uncloaks itself as the mind grows still. We come to recognize each and every bit of things as alive and unfolding, and discover that we, too, are inextricable from the great magic trick of existence.

Sh*tou Xiquan, one of Zen's great founding ancestors, tells us in Taking Part in the Gathering:

Each thing by nature has worth,
but we notice it is shaped by its circumstances.
Things fit together like boxes and lids,
while the absolute is like arrows meeting in mid-air.
When you let these words in, you encounter the ancestors;
Don’t limit yourself to your own small story.

In these last days of the year, all that's been and all that's to come find each other in the dark for a cuddle and a dance. Nothing is certain, and with any luck, we just might have a dream.

Join us this Sunday for a special extended meditation series by candlelight, and then at 10:30 PT we'll gather for stories, music, and whatever the Tao may have in store.

—Tess Beasley, Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Tess Beasley & Friends – December 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.

12/20/2025

Everyone! There’s Nothing to Worry About. Try to See That!

Ultimately, how is it? Everyone, there’s nothing to worry about. Try to hold it up to view.

There was a modern Zen teacher who would ask, “What is it?” It felt like a kind of harassment, but amusing. Eventually someone would say, “It’s this! Just this!”
And the teacher would say, “Very good.”
Later he would ask for more. He wanted to hear, “Only just this.”
And then everyone would relax until he was driven to ask for a new way to say, “It’s all here already.”

But right now, there’s nothing to worry about. The year is heading into the solstice and ‘Chrissie’ as the Australians say.

In the dark and silence and quiet there is nothing to worry about.

Join us on Sunday and let’s not worry together.

—John Tarrant, Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – December 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.

12/17/2025

Silence: Winter Sesshin 2026

Winter retreat is a chance to make tea in your own kitchen and turn your home into a temple. You might discover that your whole house is sacred. The house is happy to have you doing meditation and actually loves you.

Join us online in the silence of retreat.

Silence has secret powers. To meet silence is to enter the deepest questions and the deepest kindness. It befriends our dreams. Just to step into the quiet of retreat is to find healing for troubles. We feel how much we are held by our friends who know about silence.

At winter retreat, even one sitting wipes away regrets and fears. When we awaken, the universe is our friend.

Join us online. Turn your home into a temple.

—John Tarrant

Registration now open! Follow the link in comments for retreat details and to register.

We look forward to greeting you in the Online Temple!

12/13/2025

Have Confidence in the Light That Is Always Working Inside You

Whatever confronts you, don’t believe it.
When something appears shine your light on it.
Have confidence in the light that is always working inside you.

—Record of Linji

It can be very seductive to convince ourselves that we need something we don’t have—that something about our circumstances, or our person, could use a bit of improvement.

The funny thing is, in any moment we can’t have what we don’t have or be something other than what we are.

Zen practice calls us to become interested in what is apparent in any moment if we’re not rejecting it. Koans turn us towards our mysterious connection to all things, and also our own unique way of appearing in the world. The way in is our own way of seeing and perceiving, our own inner light.

Linji is instructing us to have some suspicion about the things we think are not ok (how do we know?), and to notice how each of us already has the light we long for.

Join us this Sunday for meditation, music, and stories of our own light. I’ll share some stories from the transmission ceremony this past weekend in which I gave up a lock of hair and gained a new rakusu, a new Zen name, blessings of a community and Zen ancestors, and still nothing was given and nothing taken away.

—Michelle Riddle, Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Michelle Riddle & Friends – December 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.

11/29/2025

Peace Is Here Now

The trees and animals turn inwards, we turn inwards, to warmth and quiet and company.

The maple, apricot, persimmon, sigh and gradually shed their leaves in many shades of yellow and green.

We don’t have to decorate the inner life. Simple is good, simple is the greatest richness.

Join us!

—John Tarrant, Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with John Tarrant & Friends – November 30th – 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.

11/24/2025

Tonight on Pacific Zen Luminaries!

Helen Tworkov joins host Jon Joseph to discuss her editorial work and writing including her most recent book, Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America.

"With Tricycle magazine, Helen Tworkov had the vision to create a forum for dialogue about Buddhism in the West. Lotus Girl provides an inside look at how her art world background and the political issues of those days prompted her personal search for wisdom and spiritual development. This rich and unique memoir has value for any reader interested in the possibilities of positive change.” —Philip Glass

Tworkov is the founding editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the first independent Buddhist magazine; and the author of Zen in America: Profiles of Five Teachers; and co-author, with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, of In Love with the World: A Monks’s Journey through the Bardos of Living and Dying.

She first encountered Buddhism in Japan and Nepal during the 1960s, and has studied in both the Zen and Tibetan traditions. She began studying with Mingyur Rinpoche in 2006 and currently divides most of her time between New York and Nova Scotia. Her new book, published in April 2024, is Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America.

Source: helentworkov.com

Follow the link in comments to register and receive your link for tonight's event!

11/22/2025

The Most Wonderful Thing in the World

A student asked Baizhang: What’s the most wonderful thing in the world?
Baizhang answered: Sitting alone on Great Courage peak.
The student bowed, and immediately, Baizhang hit him.

It’s a glorious thing to have companions on the Way. It’s also one of the great gifts of practice to learn to enjoy one’s own company with the same curiosity and care as one might a dear friend.

Who is this one with whom I seem to spend so much time? Whose worries wake me in the night, and whose heart beats fast or slow in my chest?

In Zen, to befriend this One is to befriend the whole universe.

Join us Sunday for meditation, music of the spheres, and stories of entering that Great Room of one’s own.

—Tess Beasley, Roshi

Register for SUNDAY ZEN with Tess Beasley & Friends – November 23rd – 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.

11/17/2025

Next Monday on Pacific Zen Luminaries!

Helen Tworkov joins host Jon Joseph to discuss her editorial work and writing including her most recent book, Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America.

Tworkov is the founding editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the first independent Buddhist magazine; and the author of Zen in America: Profiles of Five Teachers; and co-author, with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, of In Love with the World: A Monks’s Journey through the Bardos of Living and Dying.

She first encountered Buddhism in Japan and Nepal during the 1960s, and has studied in both the Zen and Tibetan traditions. She began studying with Mingyur Rinpoche in 2006 and currently divides most of her time between New York and Nova Scotia. Her new book, published in April 2024, is Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America.

Source: helentworkov.com

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

“My favorite parts of this very American and far-ranging story chart Helen Tworkov’s deeply personal discovery of the vast, boundless dimensions of mind. As she recognizes mind itself as the source of suffering and the key to liberation, we are treated to a forthright account of an absorbing journey filled with honesty, humor, and wisdom.” —Pema Chödrön

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!

Address

P. O. Box 2972
Santa Rosa, CA
95405

Telephone

+15105249575

Website

http://www.pacificzen.org/

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