JOHN TARRANT is the Founding Director of Pacific Zen Institute — an organization devoted to koans, the arts, and spirituality as a creative act. He has pioneered the development of koans as a method for understanding the mind in Western culture. John has a PhD in psychology, teaches physicians and executives at Duke Integrative Medicine, and for many years had a practice in Jungian psychotherapy. John Tarrant: “I’m interested in Zen as a way that transforms the mind. There’s a dance between innovation and tradition, the way there is in English poetry… A koan is a doorway. Strangely enough these imaginative little poems and stories and dialogues open into something more real than the usual stories the mind makes up.”
In this talk: “the artists as shaman” – John will talk about how “creativity comes from where the shaman goes…”
Tarrant: “…Mountains, rivers & the great earth, the sun, the moon & the stars are no other than your own heart and mind…”
Good Morning Gloucester 