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

09/05/2026

We spend most of our lives far from home. Not by way of war or distant lands, just through the simple habit of assuming whatever appears in our own heart and lives must not be the right thing.

An old teacher once asked his attendant, “What is that underneath your robe?”
The attendant, Liangshan, replied, “Intimate.”
The teacher repeated, “Intimate, intimate.”
Liangshan began to understand.

Later he wrote a verse:

The song of Liangshan,
Even the skilled find it hard to sing.
These ten years I’ve searched for someone to sing it,
But ‘til now I’ve found no one.

Being far from ourselves keeps us far from everything else, too. To recognize all that’s already here is another way of saying to awaken.

Join us Sunday for meditation, stories, and discoveries.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

Register for Sunday Zen September 6th – 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.

09/04/2026

Registration now open for PZI's Autumn Open Temple!

Morning Meditations, 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, September 7th through October 30th.

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

All are welcome. Join us!

Register for PZI's Autumn Open Temple – Link in comments!

08/29/2026

Meditation can’t be praised enough.
The benefits of generosity and discipline,
prayer, self-reflection, and practice,
have their source in meditation.

With what we gain from just one sitting,
all our crimes are wiped away.

—Hakuin Ekaku

Enlightenment happens inside this life that we have. It’s not some other more satisfactory life with special conditions. So you set off!

You go through one archway, and then you go through a second, and then a third archway, and eventually your worries fall away, though you didn’t ask them to, all desperation falls away and any cause of suffering in the mind is illuminated. Life after life you have been doing this and it’s not a surprise that you come eventually to the Buddha, who is sitting on an ordinary zafu smiling, and Buddha says, “Yes, that’s it, you are doing it alright, just do zazen like that!” and happiness comes over you.

Meditation is also extra good if you do it together with friends.

—John Tarrant Roshi

Join us this Sunday as we take up the koan:

In a well that was never dug
water ripples from a spring that doesn’t flow.
Someone with no shadow or form is drawing the water.

—PZI Miscellaneous Koans, Case 22 (from a poem by Ikkyu)

Register for Deep Sit Sunday Zen August 30th – 9:00am 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.

08/24/2026

Tonight on Pacific Zen Luminaries!

Peter Hershock, PhD is a philosopher, scholar and former director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i. For decades he has used Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues of global concern, including the way technology is affecting our modern world.

The author and editor of numerous books, in 2018 he established the Humane AI Initiative, a program at the center that coordinated working papers, scholarly forums, and collaboration with media to address human rights and global governance of the technology. His most recent works include Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future (2021) and Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis (2023).

With three other Buddhist leaders, last year Peter co-founded the Buddhism & AI Initiative, an international workshop group. Since retiring from EWC last year, Peter has served as a consultant to AI companies such as Anthropic, and is an eagerly sought speaker on the subject throughout the world.

Join us tonight at 6pm Pacific!

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

08/22/2026

Stillness

When all else fails, we can just stop.

In stillness you are at the center of everything.

Since it’s hard to describe the way presence spreads out, Zen uses images:

A tree with no wind.

A pool of dark water with the moon.

The mountains at midnight.

When we meditate or listen, we

are at the still point of the turning world.

Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.

—T.S. Eliot

Join us this Sunday to enter the stillness.

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for Sunday Zen August 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.

08/17/2026

Next Monday night on Pacific Zen Luminaries!

Peter Hershock, PhD is a philosopher, scholar and former director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i. For decades he has used Buddhist conceptual resources to address contemporary issues of global concern, including the way technology is affecting our modern world.

The author and editor of numerous books, in 2018 he established the Humane AI Initiative, a program at the center that coordinated working papers, scholarly forums, and collaboration with media to address human rights and global governance of the technology. His most recent works include Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future (2021) and Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis (2023).

With three other Buddhist leaders, last year Peter co-founded the Buddhism & AI Initiative, an international workshop group. Since retiring from EWC last year, Peter has served as a consultant to AI companies such as Anthropic, and is an eagerly sought speaker on the subject throughout the world.

Join us next Monday night at 6pm Pacific!

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

08/15/2026

Out east, Summer thunderstorms wield tremendous force and beauty most afternoons and evenings, sweeping in and out like vast dragons summoning the winds and rain to move the world along.

Being in the company of a great storm enfolds us in the world and reminds us it's not so hard to let the universe pour through.

In the I Ching, ancient book of changes, thunder is a rousing force … awakening all that’s dense and stuck in us toward movement and new life.

Shock comes—oh, oh!
Laughing words—ha, ha!
- Hexagram 51

Fear is chief among the gates of awakening.

Join us Sunday for meditation and more under the great skies.

—Tess Beasley Roshi

Register for Sunday Zen August 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.

08/08/2026

Student: “Please explain it to me.”
“I could tell you but you would blame me later.”

Be a person here. Stand in your own life.
No one else can make our mistakes for us.
It’s a joyful thing to take account of our own lives.

Here’s William Stafford:

Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own call.

Join us in the great open temple.
Sunday 10.30—noon

—John Tarrant Roshi

Register for Sunday Zen August 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.

08/06/2026

Sesshin—to touch the mind, to touch the heart
2026 Great Autumn Sesshin
with John Tarrant & PZI Teachers

San Damiano Center
Danville, California
October 25–November 1, 2026

We walk the avenue of autumn,
stags are standing on their hind legs to reach the last apples.
The trees, the blowing leaves
and the antlers—
inside all the emptiness is a great pattern
that we too are a part of.
The stars remember you too,
they consider the beauty of your individual life as a star.

A seven day sesshin is one of the great things a human can do.
Afterwards, we are changed.
Join us

—John Tarrant Roshi

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

07/31/2026

Registration now open for PZI's August Open Temple – Special Summer Intensive Training Period

Late Summer is a precious time before the acceleration and great turning of Fall.

In traditional temple life, seasonal intensives complement long retreats each year as times of wading out deeper into the river under the river that carries everything along. As well as more sitting, the idea was everything became practice … washing the floor, tending the garden, sweeping the stones. Creative work often came calling, too.

Our temple life is less traditional, but continues to deepen year after year, and so we’re going to undertake our own Summer Intensive this year by adding two hours of meditation to the Open Temple each weekday (4-hours total) until the August 28th Full Moon.

The idea is whatever you’re up to, even if it’s visiting family or rushing along in the usual, your practice comes, too, and we companion each other a bit more than usual.

Tess Beasley, Roshi will also be offering a practice/koan discussion each Friday in both the East & West Temples.

Please join us for any or all you can.

Something strange and wondrous about being part of a community is that somehow you’re never outside any particular gathering.

Whether you’re able to sit one period each week or eight every day, you’re with us.

Register for PZI's August 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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