John Tarrant, Roshi
Founder and Director, Pacific Zen Institute
I’m interested in Zen as a way that transforms the mind. This means that innovation is essential. Imagination and the arts are too, and I like to write about Zen and write poems. I studied and taught Zen in a classical manner for about fifteen years before developing new ways of introducing koans that even people with no experience of meditation can find useful.
Zen as a set of rules and procedures is not so interesting to me. I learned Zen when we were still trying to find what worked in the west. And people now seem to find freedom more naturally than I had assumed during my own initial studies. My experiments have led me to trust people more than I once did, and to teach people to trust their own moves. To me this means that koans are not a gadget that you put all your effort into using. They’re an environment—you wander around and they teach you. You have to listen and look.
Other background: For a couple of decades I did Jungian dream work and I have a PhD in psychology. I helped design the pioneering mind-body curriculum in Integrative Medicine at The University of Arizona at Tucson. It was intended to develop a culture for change in medical education. I also helped design the original curriculum at Duke Integrative Medicine.
For a full bio, you can visit tarrantworks.com/about.
Books by John Tarrant
- Bring Me The Rhinoceros — and Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life. This is a calling card for our approach to Zen.
- The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul & the Spiritual Life. This is an integration of Zen and western approaches, especially art, Jungian work and the imagination.
Contact
- johntarrant@gmail.com
- Website
- tarrantworks.com