Teachers
John Tarrant Roshi
Director of the Pacific Zen Institute
I’m interested in Zen as a way that transforms the mind. This makes me an innovator. I studied and taught Zen in a classical manner for about 15 years before developing new ways of introducing koans that even people with no experience of meditation can find useful.
—John Tarrant
John’s personal site is tarrantworks. Articles, poems and event designs are here. His blog and primer on how to work with koans in a way that is actually meant to change your life are in zenosaurus.
John’s books: Bring Me The Rhinoceros and Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life – a calling card for our approach to Zen – and The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul & the Spiritual Life– an integration of Zen and western approaches, especially art, Jungian work and the imagination.
David Weinstein Roshi
Director of the Rockridge Meditation Community
After practicing Zen traditionally first in Hawaii and then Japan, when John Tarrant and I reconnected and the question, “What is the koan in your life?” emerged, it was like starting over and sinking deeper at the same time.
Though I had practiced meditation for over a decade, it was only with that question about what it is in my life, that the integration of my practice into my life began.
With that integration came the feeling that koan practice opens the possibility of living life as a work of art.
—David Weinstein
David is available on alternate Saturdays (twice monthly) for conversations with PZI Members about koan meditation practice.
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