Pacific Zen Institute | |
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Religion | |
Affiliation | Zen (independent) |
Location | |
Location | P.O. Box 2972 Santa Rosa, California 95405 |
Country | United States |
Architecture | |
Founder | John Tarrant |
Completed | 1999 |
Website | |
www.pacificzen.org/ |
Part of a series on |
Zen Buddhism |
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Part of a series on |
Western Buddhism |
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The Pacific Zen Institute (PZI), is a Zen Buddhist school centered in Santa Rosa, California, with affiliates in Oakland, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, and Waco, Kentucky. Its students live and practice throughout North America, South America, and Asia. Established in 1999, Pacific Zen's stated mission is to "create a culture of transformation through meditation, koans, conversation, and the arts." Its founding director, John Tarrant, was the first dharma heir to Robert Baker Aitken, in the line of the Sanbo Kyodan school of koan Zen. [1]
Tarrant has creatively developed ways of teaching koans that can orient anyone, including those with little or no experience in meditation or Zen, toward awakening to a richer, fuller engagement with their own lives. According to the PZI website:
Koan meditation is a way of showing up for your own life
You sit or work or talk and don't add anything to it. You don't criticize anything your mind offers. You don't need to assess or improve the moment. And if you are criticizing the moment or your own state of mind, you don't criticize that. In that way compassion appears.
Koan meditation offers a path out of the burning house, without abandoning the promise and good-heartedness of being human.
Practice is the last best hope of living up to that good-heartedness, the only thing that never hurts and usually helps. And even at the beginning of the meditation path, on a good day it's exciting. It actually makes you happy.. [2]
— John Tarrant, Pacific Zen Institute
The Pacific Zen Institute offers daily meditation (Open Temple), weekly meetings, and multi-day retreats in several California locations including San Rafael (sesshin) and Bolinas (Open Mind), California, as well as virtually. [3]
James Ishmael Ford says of Tarrant, [1]
He is known for pushing the boundaries of Zen institutions, introducing and dropping liturgical experiments—such as allowing Zen sutras to be set to Cajun tunes or passing out grapes during the service—just to see what happens. Today the Pacific Zen Institute is marked by its willingness to innovate and creatively explore the range of Zen disciplines.
John Nan'un Tarrant[ citation needed ] (born 1949 in Tasmania, Australia) is a Western Zen teacher who explores "meeting the inconceivable" in koan study as a way to discover freedom and build a hand-crafted life. [2] He is both traditional ~ in his use of ancient koan texts ~ and modern ~ as he employs a wide range of Western myths as koans in small group settings.
After graduating for the Australian National University, Tarrant worked at many jobs, ranging from laboring in a copper mine and smelter, to fishing commercially on the Great Barrier Reef. For some time he worked as a lobbyist for the Australian Aboriginal land rights movement. He later earned a Ph.D. in psychology from Saybrook Institute in San Francisco, with a doctoral thesis on "The Design of Enlightenment in Koan Zen." [10] For two decades, he worked as a Jungian psychotherapist as he developed his koan teaching methods. In the late 1990s, he left his practice for write and teach Zen full time.
Tarrant's first Buddhist studies, in the early 1970s, were with Tibetan Lamas who visited Australia. He discovered koans, and lacking any teachers in the Southern Hemisphere, worked on them by himself for a number of years. Later in the United States he passed his first koans with Korean teacher Seung Sahn, and went on to study with Robert Baker Aitken in Hawaii for 9 years, becoming Aitken's first dharma heir. He also did advanced koan work with Koun Yamada, and was given permission by Aitken to teach 1983. In 1987 he founded the organization that evolved into the Pacific Zen Institute (PZI) in Santa Rosa, California.[ citation needed ]
In February, 2011, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review , a Buddhist quarterly, incorrectly reported that in 2000, Robert Aitken "disowned John Tarrant for what Aitken considered credible allegations of sexual indiscretions with students, and also criticized Tarrant's teaching style and conduct as a therapist." [11] However, as a careful reading shows of the Diamond Sangha Teacher's Circle open letter to Tarrant, published in the March, 2000 Sydney Zen Center Newsletter, Tarrant left the Diamond Sangha a year or two earlier on his own accord. [12] Later, at least two of the most senior Diamond Sangha teachers, both among the 11 signatories (some teachers declined to participate), deeply regretted adding their names to the list. Augusto Alcalde ended up sending a note of apology to John Tarrant for his own involvement, while Pat Hawk recalled, "'That was bad business,' shaking his head. 'I like John [Tarrant].'" PZI never made a public reply to the letter, but the female student in question was Joan Sutherland, who became a popular teacher and founder of Open Source Zen. [13]
Tarrant has contributed poems to The Paris Review , Threepenny Review and the books Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry;What Book? Buddha Poems From Beat to Hiphop, and The Book of Mu; Essential Writings on Zen's Most Important Koan. Tarrant's own books include The Light Inside the Dark: Zen Soul & The Spiritual Life (HarperCollins) ~ a map of the spiritual journey including the dark bits ~ and Bring Me the Rhinoceros & Other Zen Koans To Bring You Joy (Shambala), which has become a teaching text at many Zen centers for its innovative approach to koans.
PZI's projects include creating new English translations of some of the elements of the sutra collection as well the evolution of musical settings of many parts of the chanted liturgy. Working translator Joan Sutherland and Zydeco band leader Richie Domingue, Tarrant collaborated in developing what is probably the first sung Zen liturgy in an American idiom.
Among Tarrant's successors and collaborators through Pacific Zen Institute include the Joan Sutherland, founder of Open Source Zen; Susan Murphy, a film maker and leader of the Zen Open Circle based in Sydney, Australia; David Weinstein, a therapist in Northern California; James Ishmael Ford, founder of the Boundless Way Zen network; [1] Allison Atwill, a teacher and artist originally from Santa Barbara; Jon Joseph, a former financial analyst from San Mateo; David Parks, a former Christian minister in Waco, Kentucky; Tess Beasley, a therapist from western Connecticut, and Jesse Cardin, a therapist from Volcano, Hawaiʻi.
Tarrant has sanctioned a number of teachers, several of whom have also appointed teachers: [14]
Philip Kapleau was an American teacher of Zen Buddhism in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition, which is rooted in Japanese Sōtō and incorporates Rinzai-school koan-study. He also strongly advocated for Buddhist vegetarianism.
Robert Baker Dairyu Chotan Aitken Rōshi was a Zen teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He co-founded the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in 1959 together with his wife, Anne Hopkins Aitken. Aitken received Dharma transmission from Koun Yamada in 1985 but decided to live as a layperson. He was a socialist advocating social justice for homosexuals, women and Native Hawaiians throughout his life, and was one of the original founders of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
The Rinzai school ,named after Linji Yixuan is one of three sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism, along with Sōtō and Ōbaku. The Chinese Linji school of Chan Buddhism was first transmitted to Japan by Myōan Eisai. Contemporary Japanese Rinzai is derived entirely from the Ōtōkan lineage transmitted through Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1769), who is a major figure in the revival of the Rinzai tradition.
Richard Dudley Baker is an American Soto Zen master, the founder and guiding teacher of Dharma Sangha—which consists of Crestone Mountain Zen Center located in Crestone, Colorado and the Buddhistisches Studienzentrum (Johanneshof) in Germany's Black Forest. As the American Dharma heir to Shunryu Suzuki, Baker assumed abbotship of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) shortly before Suzuki's death in 1971. He remained abbot there until 1984, the year he resigned his position after it was disclosed in the previous year that he and the wife of one of SFZC's benefactors had been having an ongoing affair. Despite the controversy connected with his resignation, Baker was instrumental in helping the San Francisco Zen Center to become one of the most successful Zen institutions in the United States.
Jakusho Kwong, born William Kwong, is a Chinese-American Zen Buddhist teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki. He serves as head abbot of Sonoma Mountain Zen Center, of which he is founder. He received the title Dendo Kyoshi from the Soto School of Japan in 1995.
The term American Buddhism can be used to describe all Buddhist groups within the United States, including Asian-American Buddhists born into the faith, who comprise the largest percentage of Buddhists in the country.
Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi was a Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhist priest who substantially contributed to development of Zen in the USA.
James Ishmael Ford is an American Zen Buddhist priest and a retired Unitarian Universalist minister. He was born in Oakland, California on July 17, 1948. He earned a BA in psychology from Sonoma State University, as well as an M.Div. and an MA in the Philosophy of Religion, both from the Pacific School of Religion.
Anne Arundel Hopkins Aitken was an American Zen Buddhist, in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. She co-founded the Honolulu Diamond Sangha in 1959 together with her husband, Robert Baker Aitken. She purchased both of its properties: the Koko An Zendo and Maui Zendo. Honolulu Diamond Sangha has been considered "one of several pivotal Buddhist organizations critical to the development of Zen" in western countries. Anne Aitken was also one of the original founders of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
Dennis Merzel is an American Zen and spirituality teacher, also known as Genpo Roshi.
Japanese Zen refers to the Japanese forms of Zen Buddhism, an originally Chinese Mahāyāna school of Buddhism that strongly emphasizes dhyāna, the meditative training of awareness and equanimity. This practice, according to Zen proponents, gives insight into one's true nature, or the emptiness of inherent existence, which opens the way to a liberated way of living.
Bernie Glassman was an American Zen Buddhist roshi and founder of the Zen Peacemakers, an organization established in 1980. In 1996, he co-founded the Zen Peacemaker Order with his late wife Sandra Jishu Holmes. Glassman was a Dharma successor of the late Taizan Maezumi-roshi, and gave inka and Dharma transmission to several people.
Eido Tai Shimano was a Rinzai Zen Buddhist priest. He was the founding abbot of the New York Zendo Shobo-Ji in Manhattan and Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-Ji monastery in the Catskill mountains of New York; he was forced to resign from that position of 40 years after revelations of a series of sexual relationships with and alleged sexual harassment of female students.
Yamada Koun Zenshin, or Koun Yamada, was a Japanese Buddhist who was the leader of the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism, the Dharma heir of his teacher Yasutani Haku'un Ryoko. Yamada was appointed the leader of the Sanbo Kyodan in 1967, 1970 or 1973 and continued to differentiate the lineage from other Japanese Zen traditions by deemphasizing the separation between laypeople and the ordained—just as his teacher Yasutani had done. Yamada was also instrumental in bringing Christians to the practice of Zen that “by the end of Yamada’s teaching career approximately one quarter of the participants at his sesshins were Christians”.
Below is a timeline of important events regarding Zen Buddhism in the United States. Dates with "?" are approximate.
Michael Danan Henry is an American Roshi in the Harada-Yasutani lineage, a Zen sect derived from both the Rinzai and Sōtō traditions of Japanese Zen, practicing in the Diamond Sangha lineage of Robert Baker Aitken. The founding teacher of the Zen Center of Denver, Henry received Dharma transmission from Philip Kapleau Roshi in 1989 and, after many years of subsequent training with Robert Aitken Roshi, was recognized as a Diamond Sangha teacher and master by Aitken. Danan Henry Roshi created and implemented the Monastery Without Walls training program; the Lotus in the Flame Lay Order; and the "Every Minute Zen" mindfulness practice as abbot and spiritual director of the Zen Center of Denver.
The Zen Peacemakers is a diverse network of socially engaged Buddhists, currently including the formal structures of the Zen Peacemakers International, the Zen Peacemaker Order and the Zen Peacemaker Circles, many affiliated individuals and groups, and communities formed by Dharma Successors of Roshi Bernie Glassman. It was founded by Bernie Glassman and his second wife Sandra Jishu Holmes in 1996, as a means of continuing the work begun with the Greyston Foundation in 1980 of expanding Zen practice into larger spheres of influence such as social services, business and ecology but with a greater emphasis on peace work. Eve Marko, Bernie Glassman's third wife, is a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order. Zen Peacemakers have developed from the White Plum Asanga lineage of Taizan Maezumi.
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Zen was introduced in the United States at the end of the 19th century by Japanese teachers who went to America to serve groups of Japanese immigrants and become acquainted with the American culture. After World War II, interest from non-Asian Americans grew rapidly. This resulted in the commencement of an indigenous American Zen tradition which also influences the larger western (Zen) world.