Pacific Zen Institute

Registration now open for PZI's Summer Open Temple!

Morning Meditation, 5 Days Weekly — FREE to PZI Members.

Wherever you are in the world, let's sit together.

Open Temple Pass gives you nine weeks of unlimited access to two morning meditations,
Mondays–Fridays, May 18th through July 17th.

Practice leaders ring the bells and hold a cushion for you.

All are welcome. Join us!

Register for PZI's Summer Open Temple – Link in comments!

APRIL 26th Deep Sit Sunday Zen: What Is This Light That Everybody Has?

Meditation can’t be praised enough.
The benefits of generosity and discipline,
prayer, self-reflection, and practice,
have their source in meditation.

With what we gain from just one sitting,
all our crimes are wiped away.

—Hakuin Ekaku

Enlightenment happens inside this life that we have. It’s not some other more satisfactory life with special conditions. So you set off!

You go through one archway, and then you go through a second, and then a third archway, and eventually your worries fall away, though you didn’t ask them to, all desperation falls away and any cause of suffering in the mind is illuminated. Life after life you have been doing this and it’s not a surprise that you come eventually to the Buddha, who is sitting on an ordinary zafu smiling, and Buddha says, “Yes, that’s it, you are doing it alright, just do zazen like that!” and happiness comes over you.

Meditation is also extra good if you do it together with friends.

Join us this Sunday as we take up the koan:

Yunmen taught, “Everybody has a light inside. When you’re looking for it, you
can’t see; it’s obscured in the dimness. What is this light that everybody has?”

He answered his own question, “The kitchen pantry, the entrance gate.”

Then he said, “It’s better to have nothing than to have something good.”

—Blue Cliff Record, Case 86
(transl. by John Tarrant & Joan Sutherland)

—John Tarrant, Roshi

Register for Deep Sit Sunday Zen April 26th – 9:00am PT in the PZI Online Temple – Link in comments!

*Registration is FREE for members and guests, or you may elect to donate $10. Dana gratefully accepted.

Dragons & Tigers, Oh My!
Our Great Summer Sesshin with John Tarrant & PZI Teachers

Mount Madonna Center
Watsonville, California
June 8th–14th, 2026

Dragons and tigers, hidden and crouching, and bears, song birds, and tall, thin mystics and plump, kind librarians in aprons, and queens who give gifts.

All things appear in sesshin, all things that fall under the law of change and sesshin makes a vessel in which fires and darkness and kindness occur together, transforming us.

Join us for our Great Summer Sesshin!

—John Tarrant, Roshi

Registration now open! Follow the link in the comments for more details and to register!