John Tarrant demystifies Zen koan practice. Yes, it’s paradoxical, poetic, and totally personal. And so is life. The koan: The coin lost in the river is found in the river. A koan is a little healing story, a conversation, an image, a fragment of a song. It’s something to keep you company, whatever you are doing. There’s a tradition of koan study to transform your heart and [...]
About John Tarrant
It Would Be a Pity to Waste A Good Crisis
Zen teacher John Tarrant offers seven guidelines for taking advantage of life's crises and surprises. Zen Student: “When times of great difficulty visit us, how should we greet them?” Teacher: “Welcome.” The new world looks surprisingly like the old one, except that it’s different. Two years ago housing prices fell off a cliff and mortgages went underwater. Today, the [...]
How to Welcome the End of the World
What is the best response to difficult and uncertain times? Welcome. John Tarrant, Roshi offers 10 Zen pointers on the practice of welcoming. Old pirates, yes, they rob I; Sold I to the merchant ships, Minutes after they took I From the bottomless pit. —Bob Marley Bob Marley’s version of a rough patch is that pirates snatch you from the slave pit, and then they rob you [...]
Ordinary Life is the Way
Zhaoshouo asked Nanquan, “What is the Way?” Nanquan said, “Ordinary mind is the Way.” “Should I turn toward it or not?” “If you turn toward it you turn away from it.” Zhaozhou asked, “How can I know the way if I don’t turn toward it?” Nanquan said, “The way is not about knowing or not knowing. When you know something you are deluded, and when you don’t know, you [...]
The World Catches Us Every Time
A mysterious beast captures your attention. Is it distracting you or calling you? It can be hard to tell, says Zen teacher John Tarrant, what’s distraction and what could have real meaning for your life. Either way, there’s no going back. Abiding nowhere, the heart comes forth Zen koan Distracted from distraction by distraction T.S. Eliot When people ask about [...]
Enlightenment is Something We Do Together
There’s a romantic idea of enlightenment as a solitary and heroic act, but even if you’re off by yourself in a cave, you are still part of a culture, and it’s observable that some cultures are more friendly to discovery than others. Building a culture has been an ongoing and repeated task of Buddhism since the time of the Buddha. When I was teaching meditation at the [...]
A Beautiful Wish (You Are the Sun…)
Like the lotus in muddy water, our wish to be better people grows among our many worldly desires. Just follow the wanting itself, says Zen teacher John Tarrant. That is the gate. Part of "You Are the Sun Not the Clouds," a special section on the Buddhist approach to becoming a better person in Shambhala Sun's September 2013 issue . Student: I’m reaching for the light, please [...]
You Don’t Have to Know
John Tarrant discovered that not knowing is the best—and maybe the only possible—response to suffering. Into this wild Abyss The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave— Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create [...]
Review: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Thinking, Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011; 512 pp., $30 (cloth) Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling Thinking, Fast and Slow is a gallery of the built-in biases and strategies of the mind. We might call them the delusions that we come by honestly, just by having a brain. Kahneman is a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for economics. His [...]
Let Me Count the Ways
It was his first kiss, a moment when no one was running the show and no calculations were being made. In so many ways, says John Tarrant, love is like enlightenment. It teaches us how to live down a level, to follow instructions that come from deep inside. Question: Why is it like this? Teacher: It is for your benefit, honored one. When love strikes, it fills us with an [...]
