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Tenney gives the second night talk at our March 2024 Desert Rain Zen Desert Sunrise Refuge Retreat. 

 “There is someone at peace, / walking in the Tao . . . “ (Yongjia Xuanjue, “Song of Realizing the Way”)

 Is that about realizing “oneness” and, if that’s the case, is that the whole story, the whole of “the absolute”?  Maybe not. As Shitou puts it, in Joan Sutherland and John Tarrant’s translation of “Taking Part in the Gathering” (=, in the Japanese, Sekito, “Sandokai”):

We and everything we perceive\

are interwoven and not interwoven,

and this interweaving continues on and on,

while each thing stands in its own place.

 

And this “each thing” standing “in its own place,” as Suzuki Roshi stresses in his book on Shitou’s poem, is also “RI,” the absolute. Dualism or non-dualism? Yes. So:

 BLAM! That’s (also) it!

 Corollary (in for a penny, in for a pound):

 “Each being's eternal radiance appears before you. Each being is an 8,000-foot precipice.”

--Miaozong

 

There is someone at peace, walking in the Tao.

 

 (talk given March 20, 2024 at the Redemptorist Renewal Center out at Picture Rocks in Tucson) 

 

 

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About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

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Tenney and Megan give the opening night talks at our March 2024 Desert Rain Zen Desert Sunrise Refuge Retreat, suggesting some ways we can let ourselves fall open to what’s already available, on offer. 

 “There is someone at peace, / walking in the Tao . . . “ (Yongjia Xuanjue, “Song of Realizing the Way”)

  (talks given March 19, 2024 at the Redemptorist Renewal Center out at Picture Rocks in Tucson) 

*

About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

Send a text

Sarah gives the talk on the fourth night of our retreat.

A group conversation follows Sarah’s talk.

(talk given October 16, 2025 at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico) 

*

About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

Send a text

Tenney gives the talk on the second night of our retreat. Beginning by exploring various translations of the “Golden Wind” koan and the different feel they give to Yunmen’s response to the student, Tenney brings the case into relation to Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Snow Man.” Then, via consideration of commentaries on the case by Xuedo, Yuanwu, Hakuin, and Tenkei, dragons get into the mix. This leads, courtesy of a suggestion made by Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi in a recorded talk on the case, to an exploration of dragon imagery and energies in Dogen’s fascicle “Dragon Song.”

 A group conversation follows Tenney’s talk.

  (talk given October 14, 2025 at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico) 

*

About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

Send a text

Tenney, Megan, and Sarah give brief talks on the opening night of our Fall 2025 Open Source “Golden Wind” retreat. 

 

A student asked Yunmen, “When the tree withers and the leaves fall, what’s that?”

Yunmen said, “The Golden Wind reveals itself.”

                                                                        Blue Cliff Record Case 27

 

 (talks given October 13, 2025 at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico) 

*

About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

Send a text

Tenney gives the second night talk on “Sickness and Medicine,” discussing the Blue Cliff Record commentary on the case and bringing in a few anecdotes, from both his own practice history and the Open Source community. Hakuin says that if you take the phrase “sickness and medicine cure each other” as itself being medicine, that’s a big mistake (it’s too glib). Sickness isn’t “quelled” so simply, through a formula or an upbeat attitude, one-and-done. If not, what might the koan ask of us, and what might it offer us? 

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About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

Send a text

Sarah gives the fourth night talk on “Sickness and Medicine.” (check back soon for expanded notes on this episode!)

*

About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

Send a text

Megan gives the third night talk on “Sickness and Medicine,” focusing on sickness and suffering not as mistakes to be “fixed” but as inescapable aspects of our vulnerable lives in the world that deepen and humanize our hearts, making us tender and strengthening our practice, our zen minds. Medicine, likewise, takes multiple forms: often it consists of a widening of perspective, a softening of our views about our illness, a sense that suffering might draw us toward others rather than isolate us. “Sickness and medicine correspond”: an always unfolding conversation, a shimmer. Other koans discussed include “Dongshan is Unwell” and “Master Ma’s Sun-Face Buddha Moon-Face Buddha.”

*

About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

Send a text

Open Source teachers Tenney Nathanson, Sarah Bender, and Megan Rundel each give introductory talks on the first night of our retreat. Our retreat takes its title from Blue Cliff Record Case 87: “Yunmen said to the assembly, ‘Medicine and sickness cure each other. The whole earth is medicine. What is the self?’” (translation by Joan Sutherland and John Tarrant).

 

Sarah Bender Roshi leads Springs Mountain Sangha in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Megan Rundel Sensei leads the Crimson Gate Meditation Community in Oakland, California. Tenney Nathanson Roshi leads Desert Rain Zen in Tucson, Arizona. All these groups hold regular events on Zoom.

 

(Talks given September 30, 2024 at the Open Source Mahasangha Retreat held at Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.)

*

About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen

Send a text

Tenney and Megan each give talks on the final night of the retreat. Tenney brings in a collection of anecdotes to continue exploring the sustenance available when we allow loss and grief to permeate us and intertwine with the radiance and eternal quality of things that practice helps make palpable. Megan muses on the Prajna Paramita teachings and their grounding in our deep and primal relation to the maternal, evoking the receptive, embodied, and pre-verbal aspects of practice revealed in gesture, breath, and rhythm. The Mother of all Buddhas, Prajna Paramita is the Perfection of Wisdom; the loom of origins and the source; the Tathagata Garba or womb of Buddha nature that we also carry within us; original perfection.

 A group conversation follows the talks.

  (talks given March 8, 2025 at the Redemptorist Renewal Center at Picture Rocks in Tucson) 

*

About us:

Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.

Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html

For more information you can email us at [email protected] or find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/ and on Facebook.

You can also find additional teachings and updated information about Tenney's various activities at https://tenneynathanson.com/ and on his Substack at https://tenneynathanson.substack.com/p/about-tenneynathansonzen