Lesbian Spiritual Book Group Portland

Note: This will be a joint meeting with the Lesbian Spiritual Book Group--Seattle/Eastside
What a wonderful and rich discussion we had on September 13 when we discussed Rest Is Sacred: Reclaiming Our Brilliance through the Practice of Stillness by Octavia Raheem. Thank you so much to the 7 of us who logged onto Zoom and joined in, creating a very intimate discussion. The strength and commitment of this group makes it possible for us to connect deeply even online, and I so appreciate this remarkable group of women.
Our next meeting will be on Saturday, November 1, 2025, from 4:00-6:00 pm PDT. We will discuss Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life by John Tarrant. The book is widely available in print and audiobook, new and used and electronically from www.amazon.com, www.alibris.com and other sellers. Please contact me if you need help locating or purchasing the book.
You are welcome whether you have read or listened to the book or not--the conversation will be rich and intimate regardless. Each time we are joined by some who have not read the book, and I think they can attest that our conversations start with the book and roam freely into the rest of our lives.
We have had a problem with uninvited disruptors. Please note that all members will be held in the waiting room and only admitted if they respond to messages or are known to us. All members must be willing to appear full face on screen throughout the meeting. If you have not RSVP'd, you will not be admitted if you are not known to the group.
About the book:
Bring Me the Rhinoceros is an unusual guide to happiness and a can opener for your thinking. For fifteen hundred years, Zen koans have been passed down through generations of masters, usually in private encounters between teacher and student. This book deftly retells more than a dozen traditional koans, which are partly paradoxical questions dangerous to your beliefs and partly treasure boxes of ancient wisdom. Koans show that you don’t have to impress people or change into an improved, more polished version of yourself. Instead you can find happiness by unbuilding, unmaking, throwing overboard, and generally subverting unhappiness. John Tarrant brings the heart of the koan tradition out into the open, reminding us that the old wisdom remains as vital as ever, a deep resource available to anyone in any place or time.
About the author:
John Tarrant (born 1949) is a Western Zen teacher, director of the Pacific Zen Institute (pacificzen.org) which has centers in California, Arizona, and Canada. He teaches and writes about the transformation of consciousness through the use of the Zen koan and trains koan meditation teachers. Tarrant is from Australia, he came from an old Tasmanian family and grew up in the City of Launceston on Bass Strait. His early influences included 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 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. Tarrant’s first Buddhist studies, in the early 1970’s, were with Tibetan Lamas who visited Australia. He discovered koans (stories sometimes given to Zen practitioners to hasten and refine insight and enlightenment) and, lacking any teachers in the southern hemisphere, worked on them by himself for a number of years. Later in the United States he passed his first koans with Korean teacher Seung Sahn. He studied with Robert Aitken in Hawaii for 9 years and was Aitken’s first dharma heir. He also did advanced koan work with Koun Yamada. He began teaching in 1983. In 1987 he founded the organization which evolved into the Pacific Zen Institute (PZI) in Santa Rosa, California, devoted to koan work and the arts.

John Tarrant’s reputation as a writer and poet grew with contributions to many publications including The Paris Review, Threepenny Review and the books, Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry and What Book? Buddha Poems From Beat to Hiphop. Tarrant’s own books include The Light Inside the Dark: Zen Soul & The Spiritual Life (HarperCollins) —a map of the spiritual journey including the dark bits—and Bring Me the Rhinoceros—& Other Zen Koans To Save Your Life (Harmony), which is a sampler of koans and a western approach to them.

Although his training was originally in what was essentially still the medieval koan system, Tarrant has spent many years exploring how koans are pertinent to people living in the modern world. He holds koan seminars where people of all levels of experience are welcomed and a collaborative culture is encouraged. Pacific Zen Institute’s program of Koan small groups and salons allow people to study koans together in an ongoing way. He teaches koans as doorways available to anyone, not only for advanced practitioners.

Here is the link:
Andrea Bride is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Lesbian Spiritual Book Group--Seattle/Eastside/Portland
Time: Nov 1, 2025 04:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Meeting ID: 841 4084 1453
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