John Tarrant (Zen Buddhist)
| Pacific Zen Institute | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Basic information | |
| Location | 825 Sonoma Ave., Suite B, Santa Rosa, California 95404-4746 |
| Affiliation |
Zen (independent) |
| Country | United States |
| Website | www.pacificzen.org/ |
| Architectural description | |
| Founder | John Tarrant |
| Completed | 1999 |
The Pacific Zen Institute (PZI), is a Zen Buddhist practice center in Santa Rosa, California. Established in 1999, it has several affiliate centers in the lineage of John Tarrant, a dharma heir of Robert Baker Aitken, and formerly of the Sanbo Kyodan school of Zen.
Students and teachers at PZI work with Zen koan as the primary tool for transforming the mind and finding freedom, According to the PZI Web Site,
Zen koans are a key part of what we do in PZI, although there is no requirement that anyone work with koans to practice with PZI. For a long time PZI has been exploring different ways of working with koans to expand the ways that koans can be helpful.
The Pacific Zen Institute offers multi-day retreats in several California Locations including Santa Rosa, California, and Bolinas, California as well as one-day workshops in the San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Oakland and Berkeley areas.
James Ishmael Ford says of Tarrant,
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 Tarrant (born 1949) is a Western Zen teacher who explores koans as a way to discover freedom and unexpected openings. John is the founder and director of the Pacific Zen Institute (PZI). PZI has large centers in California, Arizona, and Canada as well as "Small Groups" in many states throughout America. John teaches and writes about the transformation of consciousness through the use of the Zen koan and trains koan meditation teachers. John grew up in the City of Launceston on Bass Strait.
Tarrant was born in Australia and came from an old Tasmanian family. John was influenced early in his life by English literature, especially poetry, the Latin Mass, the Tasmanian bush, and Australian Aboriginal culture. Tarrant worked at many jobs, ranging from working as a laborer in an open-pit mine, to commercial fishing the Great Barrier Reef. Eventually he also worked as a lobbyist for the Australian Aboriginal land rights movement. Tarrant attended the University of Tasmania and then the Australian National University, where he earned a degree in Human Sciences and English Literature. He later earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from Saybrook Institute in San Francisco. He wrote his doctoral thesis on “The Design of Enlightenment in Koan Zen” and for twenty years was a Jungian psychotherapist working on dream analysis at the same time as he developed his teaching of koans.
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