Meeting the Inconceivable | Zen Koans, Dreams & the Creative Life

With realization, all things are one family. Without realization, all things are separate and disconnected.

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant talks about the empathy of meditation and its lack of o…

Today, Roshi Allison Atwill shares a poem about our intrinsic ability to always carry light and silence.

In this episode, she explains how the original silence is always with us and within us.

What a…

There is always a certain amount of mystery to who we are and where we are.

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant takes up a poetic case entitled Jiashan's Beautiful State of Mind.

What is your state o…

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant tells the story of Deshan and his transformative pilgrimage of awakening.

We are all Deshan, ready to let go of our old pile of stories.

What is it like to be on a…

Today, Roshi John Tarrant takes listeners on a vivid imaginal journey into the depths of the Blue Dragon's cave of wisdom.

"For twenty years, I've struggled fiercely. How many times have I gone down …

Today, Roshi Allison Atwill explores the bodhisattva’s unique relationship with uncertainty as a healing balm for suffering.

Describing how Zen Buddhism draws from the Mahayana tradition in which the…

Can we trust our own unique response to life, our own dharma?

In this episode, Roshi Tess Beasley speaks about how seductive problems are, and how frozen we can become when we think that something be…

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant takes up a series of bright gate koans from The Blue Cliff Record, all featuring one of the greatest Zen masters of all-time, Yunmen.

At the root of these dharmaka…

Today, Roshi John Tarrant speaks about peach blossoms and the end of doubt.

Everyone has a light inside.

What is this light that everyone has?

Can you see the silvery threads connecting all koans?

Li…

In this episode, Roshi Allison Atwill offers insight into Zen's signature transmission beyond words and letters.

Telling the story of infamous Japanese Zen Master, Ikkyu Sojun, and his ambivalence to…

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant takes up a deep, strange koan in which a student asks Yunmen, "Where do all the Buddhas come from?" And, Yunmen answers: "East mountain walks on the water."

Ponder…

In this episode, Roshi Tess Beasley speaks about the nature of self-consciousness and how the koan path slowly guides us through the process of discovering our part in it all.

It also ferrets out our…

Join Roshi Allison Atwill to explore awakening as a great voyage, one that is entirely your own, and yet in which you are somehow accompanied by the entire universe.

Atwill tells the riveting story o…

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant tackles the first great gate of koan study, in which a student asks, "Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?" And, Zhaozhou simply answers, "No," (translated as "Mu…

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant takes up a koan from The Gateless Gate collection in which the Buddha tells his attendant, "That person is like a fine racehorse who runs at the mere shadow of a w…

Fire is the vital element of transformation.

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant discusses the Zen koan, Put Out the Fire Across the River, which originally arose in response to seeing the camp fires…

In this episode, Roshi Allison Atwill tells the story of Baizhang's Fox, a classic koan from The Gateless Gate collection about the nature of karma.

In this koan case, an old man confesses he was onc…

Telling stories of how we are most deeply transformed by the encounters we try to keep at bay, Beasley reveals the tenderness that emerges when we can just simply feel how connected to everything we …

In this episode, Roshi John Tarrant explores a koan from The Blue Cliff Record featuring great Yunmen, great Cloud-Gate:

A student asked Yunmen, “When the tree withers and the leaves fall, what’s tha…

Koans transform us through immersion and saturation, by dissolving the usual boundaries we keep between us and the world. If you have an unanswerable question, the koan is designed to open it.

Today'…