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Mindrolling with Raghu Markus

Ep. 586 – Qualities of Spirit and Soul with Zen Teacher John Tarrant

Mindrolling with Raghu Markus

Be Here Now Network

Religion, News, Mindrolling, Mindpodnetwork, Mindpod, Meditation, Society & Culture, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Consciousness, Mindrollingpodcast, Psychedelics

4.7543 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Recognizing the beauty in being human, Raghu and John Tarrant discuss incorporating the qualities of both soul and spirit into our lives.

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This week on Mindrolling, Raghu and John discuss:

  • John’s work with protecting Aboriginal land rights 
  • How taking a Tibetan retreat changed the course of John’s life and directed him to Zen 
  • Emptiness and love as the same principle 
  • How each piece of the universe contains the entire thing 
  • Reaching a crystalline view of reality through Buddhist practice 
  • The importance of spiritual clarity and the mistake of rejecting our inner life 
  • Qualities of soul/spirit and the beauty of being human 
  • The parts of life we may miss with an over-focus on spirituality
  • Not disapproving of what our hearts bring up in meditation 
  • Jungian psychology, shadow work, and dream work 
  • Stories that go into the psyche in a non-rational way
  • Bringing the imagination into Buddhism 
  • The peace of the Buddha found inside our daily lives
  • The necessity of working with the inner life
  • A short, guided practice from John

About John Tarrant:

John Tarrant is a Western Zen teacher and director of the Pacific Zen Institute, 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. Check out Tarrant’s book, The Story of the Buddha, or learn more about his work and events on his website.

 “Being at peace is to be at peace with the whole of you, with your soul, your frustration, your anger. They can appear, but you’re not fighting with it. In some way they fertilize your practice like rain on the earth.” – John Tarrant

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi, everyone, Ragu, and I'm back with Mind Rolling, and someone I've known of for quite some time, but we've never met, John Tarant.

0:23.5

John, welcome to the show, as they say.

0:27.3

I'm glad to be here.

0:31.0

We've been delayed by all sorts of things, including fires and whatever else.

0:36.5

I feel it's fate that we're here now and it's good.

0:39.4

We'll trust that.

0:40.5

What would you do?

0:41.2

You went out, so everybody would happen, we were going to do it when the fires started out in Los Angeles and they were cutting power and so we couldn't do it.

0:50.7

And then, John, you went to Japan.

0:54.7

Yeah, yeah.

0:55.1

What did you, I always wonder, were you teaching over there?

0:58.9

No, no, it's just, I nurse a bunch of people over there, and I was just visiting, and, you know, it's sort of nice for me sometimes to, I don't know, go somewhere and not teach, actually.

1:12.1

Yes, yeah, really good.

1:13.8

And I like the gardens and things like that.

1:16.2

And there's a beautiful little temple just outside of Kyoto that I love.

1:21.2

That's 900s, built in 8th and 900s and restored a million times.

1:27.3

And I know that as a guy who runs it was really sweet

1:29.6

oh um just for everybody uh john uh teaches zen and he writes and he's a poet and studied coins which we'll mention

1:43.3

that obviously at some point here.

1:46.8

And yeah, and a Jungian person as a psychologist as well.

1:53.7

So I love that mix.

1:56.0

That's why I thought Ram Dass was, you know, one of the most essential things about him, how he could bring

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