John Tarrant, Roshi is Director and Senior Faculty for Pacific Zen Institute and Senior Teacher for Desert Lotus Zen Sangha in Phoenix, AZ. He has a PhD in psychology and is the author of Bring Me The Rhinoceros & Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life, and The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul & the Spiritual Life. He also teaches at Integrative Medicine within Duke University Medical School. John’s life work is centered on the transformation of consciousness and he is one of the foremost koan teachers in the United States. 

website: tarrantworks.com     blog: zenosaurus.blogspot.com
Q&A blog: Q&A blog on Shambhala SunSpace

David Weinstein, Roshi is lead teacher at PZI’s Oakland Zendo, San Jose Sitting Group and Wind-in-Grass Sangha in San Francisco. He is also a visiting teacher at the Springs Mountain Sangha in Colorado Springs. David lives in Oakland with his wife, where he is a psychotherapist specializing in addiction and spirituality. His teaching emphasizes ways of discovering true Zen practice in the midst of ordinary life. He is especially interested helping people cultivate an appreciation of koan practice as a way of recognizing our lives as works of art.

Joan Sutherland, Roshi is Senior Teacher Emerita of Pacific Zen Institute and the founder of Awakened Life in Santa Fe, New Mexico; she is the holding teacher for The Open Source, a network of communities and individuals in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California. She is a writer whose work appears frequently in Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma, and a translator from Chinese and Japanese collaborating with John Tarrant on a new translation of three major koan collections. She is deeply involved in re-imagining the koan tradition and exploring its relationship to creativity. For more information, please see awakenedlife.org, a community whose motto is enlightenment as a conspiracy of friends.

Deborah Saint, Sensei is a koan teacher with Pacific Zen Institute. Deb retired from a long productive and satisfying public service career working with Indian tribes to resolve water resource issues in the Colorado River basin. She has two happy adult children. Deb began her practice with Desert Lotus Zen of the Pacific Zen Institute and has led DLZ for 10 years. She is interested in how koans work to open the heart revealing kindness and compassion.

Desert Lotus website: desertlotuszen.org     

Allison Atwill is PZI's Art Sensei. The role of Art Sensei is filled by a teacher who is an artist in any medium and who holds up the teachings through her art. Allison is a visual artist who works in acrylic and whose work is based on an intense and embodied interaction with koans. The way she describes it is that a koan chooses her and begins to show her the images as she paints. The placement of the image in the painting and even the size of the piece are also part of her conversation with the koan. Also included are birds, canyons, snakes, people, anything in the world that comes to meet her when she is in the field of the koan. The way her work makes itself through her is an illustration of the way a koan can open your life when you keep company with it. Allison teaches art at Montecito Union School in Montecito California.

Watch a video of Allison giving a talk at a PZI Sesshin.