Soldiers, housewives, farmers, and merchants used koans to find freedom within the often difficult conditions of their times. The method was to immerse yourself in the saying and see how it changed you. This meant letting the koan teach you by interacting with your life and your mind; the activity wasn’t confined to periods of formal meditation. People farmed the land, ran bureaucracies, and raised children, all the while keeping moment-to-moment company with their koan.
This is not the method, not as Dahui designed it, and not how we practice it in our (Rinzai) lineage.The method was to immerse yourself in the saying and see how it changed you.
I’m interested in Zen as a way that transforms the mind. There’s a dance between innovation and tradition, the way there is in English poetry. I studied and taught Zen in a classical, pretty much Japanese, manner for about 15 years before developing new ways of introducing koans that even people with no experience of meditation can find useful. A koan is a doorway. Strangely enough these imaginative little poems and stories and dialogues open into something more real than the usual stories the mind makes up.
https://www.pacificzen.org/library/full ... ant-roshi/
Regarding his approach to meditation, here’s a short explanation:Although his training was originally in what was essentially still the medieval koan system, Tarrant has spent many years exploring how koans are pertinent to people living in the modern world. He holds koan seminars where people of all levels of experience are welcomed and a collaborative culture is encouraged. Pacific Zen Institute’s program of Koan small groups and salons allow people to study koans together in an ongoing way. He teaches koans as doorways available to anyone, not only for advanced practitioners.
But there’s more detailed instructions on sitting meditation (also, walking meditation) on the link.Meditation can be as complicated as you want to make it, but here’s a move in the other direction:
1. Pay attention to whatever you notice (inside or outside yourself, it doesn’t matter) without thinking it’s good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, wise or stupid, worthy or unworthy.
2. Actually there’s only one step. That’s it.
3. Sometimes the word “curiosity” will help you.
https://www.pacificzen.org/meditation/
Regarding healing, he says:By mysterious, I mean that while the effect of meditation is more or less as advertised, you are on a journey that does not reveal all its features at once, and even the destination is uncertain.
So, while Tarrant Roshi is not a traditionalist, neither is he outside of the Zen tradition.Meditation is a project of healing, of putting ourselves and the world into harmony with the flow of life. As we integrate meditation more and more into our culture, it is coming to seem natural that the healing of our states of mind is the beginning of kindness and imagination and making a successful culture. I’m interested in the question, “What are the essentials of the meditation path as a basis for this healing—healing of both person and culture?”
—John Tarrant
Ok, you've distanced yourself.
His preference includes using his own koans (e.g. 99 curves). That belongs to no one else. This proves that what he studied and what he now teaches is not necessarily the same, or that it has been otherwise vetted.clyde wrote: ↑Sun Mar 13, 2022 10:55 pm Regarding Tarrant Roshi, “. . . he passed his first koans with Korean teacher Seung Sahn. He studied with Robert Aitken in Hawaii for 9 years and was Aitken’s first dharma heir. He also did advanced koan work with Koun Yamada.” So for those who follow his practice methods and teaching, they are not practicing “according to one's own preferences.”
Collaborative culture?! Sorry, but with something as intimate as an assigned koan, the student needs to do their own work in close relationship with a qualified teacher. (Unless, of course, you are saying that someone else can exactly share another's experience.)clyde wrote: ↑Sun Mar 13, 2022 10:55 pm Regarding his approach to koans,Although his training was originally in what was essentially still the medieval koan system, Tarrant has spent many years exploring how koans are pertinent to people living in the modern world. He holds koan seminars where people of all levels of experience are welcomed and a collaborative culture is encouraged. Pacific Zen Institute’s program of Koan small groups and salons allow people to study koans together in an ongoing way. He teaches koans as doorways available to anyone, not only for advanced practitioners.
Yup. Speaks for itself. Not zazen. And healing DNE samadhi.clyde wrote: ↑Sun Mar 13, 2022 10:55 pm Regarding his approach to meditation, here’s a short explanation:But there’s more detailed instructions on sitting meditation (also, walking meditation) on the link.Meditation can be as complicated as you want to make it, but here’s a move in the other direction:
1. Pay attention to whatever you notice (inside or outside yourself, it doesn’t matter) without thinking it’s good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, wise or stupid, worthy or unworthy.
2. Actually there’s only one step. That’s it.
3. Sometimes the word “curiosity” will help you.
https://www.pacificzen.org/meditation/
Reiun has quoted the website accurately (“mysterious and unpredictable healing power.”), but he left out some of the accompanying explanation.
Here is how Tarrant Roshi defines “mysterious”,Regarding healing, he says:By mysterious, I mean that while the effect of meditation is more or less as advertised, you are on a journey that does not reveal all its features at once, and even the destination is uncertain.Meditation is a project of healing, of putting ourselves and the world into harmony with the flow of life. As we integrate meditation more and more into our culture, it is coming to seem natural that the healing of our states of mind is the beginning of kindness and imagination and making a successful culture. I’m interested in the question, “What are the essentials of the meditation path as a basis for this healing—healing of both person and culture?”
—John Tarrant
Meido is correct. Tarrant Roshi and PZI are not Rinzai sect, but in the Japanese Sanbo Kyodan sect of Zen, which “incorporates Rinzai Koan study as well as much of Soto tradition, a style Yasutani had learned from his teacher Harada Daiun Sogaku.” (Wikipedia)
Or maybe try a sesshin somewhere with teachers who know traditional koan, like a couple who have posted here, if you want to get a backbone in the tradition. Not as easy as reading a book, but you will never forget it.clyde wrote: Meanwhile I’ll read a bit more of his book. Maybe it will speak to me.
He then retells the story. He adds background and insight of Emperor Wu and more details of the Emperor’s interaction with Bodhidharma and its effects. It’s a heartfelt retelling.Emperor Wu of Liang asked the great master Bodhidharma,
“What is the main point of this holy teaching?”
“Vast emptiness, nothing holy,” said Bodhidharma.
“Who are you, standing in front of me?” asked the emperor.
“I do not know,” said Bodhidharma.
The emperor didn't understand. Bodhidharma crossed the Yangtze River and went to the kingdom of Wei.
Later, the emperor raised this matter with his advisor, Duke Zhi. The advisor asked,
“Your Majesty, do you know who that Indian sage was?”
“No I don’t,” said the emperor.
“That was Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, carrying the seal of the Buddha’s heart and mind.”
The emperor felt a sudden regret and said, “Send a messenger to call him back.”
Duke Zhi told him, “Your Majesty, even if everyone in the Kingdom went after him he wouldn't return.”
I would like to beg you, dear Sir, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
- Rainer Maria Rilkes advice to a young poet
clyde wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 5:41 am After presenting the koan Zhaozhou’s Dog (Mu), Tarrant Roshi has this quote which I felt was quite beautiful:I would like to beg you, dear Sir, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
- Rainer Maria Rilkes advice to a young poet
