Pacific Zen Institute

Pacific Zen Institute
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/

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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]