As we become more intimate with the world, it shares its secrets with us. As we become less certain, new pathways appear.

At first, we are reaching for the beautiful and timeless world. We practice and suddenly we find that it just surrounds us and we are not reaching any more.

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."

Pondering the inevitable questions that appear as part of koan study, like where do we come from, and what is the source of this existence we find ourselves part of, Tarrant considers the traditions of Zen and Haiku as well as hippopotamuses.

What do we do when everything we are holding onto falls down?

Listen in to learn more.

"The whole universe is in the glimpses." - John Tarrant.

Learn more about this episode of Meeting the Inconceivable at https://www.pacificzen.org/11

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 strategies for making a separate self that cannot bear the intimacy of awakening.

If we imagine that we are "us", it can be difficult to stare into someone's eyes for a long time until we envision ourselves as the night sky.

When we forget to be ourselves our true nature can appear.

"There is something nourishing and almost healing about seeing things as they are." - Tess Beasley.

Learn more about this episode of Meeting the Inconceivable at https://www.pacificzen.org/10

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 of one sailor's solo journey around Cape Horn and reveals how, in the end, he gives up on the mind that races and compares, and turns toward Tahiti...a beacon for his true nature.

What does it mean to give up on the project of improving and protecting the self? How does Zen Buddhism help us navigate a path to freedom?

Each person takes the voyage of awakening alone and in some sense entirely accompanied by the universe." - Allison Atwill.

Learn more about this episode of Meeting the Inconceivable at https://www.pacificzen.org/09

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 Japanese, and "Wu" in Chinese).

Exploring the vivid commentaries that accompany this foundational koan case, including instructions to "cut off the mind road" and "make your whole body a mass of doubt," Tarrant speaks about entering deeply the very trouble we usually seek to avoid, and the modesty of setting down our most treasured defenses against it. Being clever, being important, being tough won't help. It's when all this falls away that freedom appears.

How then should you work with this? Listen to find out.

"For the practice of Zen it is imperative that you pass through the barriers set up by the founding teachers." - John Tarrant.

Learn more about this episode of Meeting the Inconceivable at https://www.pacificzen.org/08

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 whip."

Tarrant investigates our relationship to suffering, describing the four kinds of horse metaphors in Zen Buddhism, ranging from the one who runs at the mere shadow of the whip to the one who must be whipped to the bone.

Noting how everyone wants to be the best horse, but Buddha's compassion actually arises for the worst, Tarrant reveals the unexpected joy and wholeness found in our "worst horse" moments. After all, it is the very worst horse who reaches enlightenment in the end.

Listen for stories and reflections on embracing the worst horse.

"We often give away our life hoping for a later improved version." - John Tarrant.

Learn more about this episode of Meeting the Inconceivable at https://www.pacificzen.org/07

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 of Genghis Khan's army burn brightly through the night.

Fire has a terrifying power for destruction but also a sacred role in connecting us.

Like the old alchemists, we must immerse ourselves in something to transform it, and thereby we, too, cannot help but be transformed in the process. We cannot achieve much without a fire inside us, and meditation becomes a vessel by which we cultivate our capacity to become a living flame.

Listen in to hear stories of all kinds of fire and also how koans come into existence.

"Fire burns the barriers."  —John Tarrant.

Learn more about this episode of Meeting the Inconceivable at https://www.pacificzen.org/06

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 once abbot of the mountain temple, but was sentenced to live 500 lives as a fox for misapprehending the nature of cause and effect. The story of his eventual freedom touches on the relief we find in realizing that our particular karma holds within it our awakening, and indeed our piece of the world's awakening.

Listen to learn how Allison found Zen and why even 500 lives as a fox become 500 lives of grace.

"Suddenly it is like you become the center of the universe." - Allison Atwill.

Learn more about this episode of Meeting the Inconceivable at https://www.pacificzen.org/05

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 already are.

Listen in to discover the red thread in your own life.

“Somehow in the silence, we find each other.” - Tess Beasley.

Learn more about this episode of Meeting the Inconceivable at https://www.pacificzen.org/04