Listen to dharma talks by our teacher Tenney Nathanson Roshi and other teachers in our tradition. Desert Rain Zen is part of Cloud Gate Zen, a branch of the Pacific Zen School founded by Joan Sutherland Roshi. Our practice centers on an innovative approach to koans and includes group koan conversations as well as individual koan work with Tenney.
Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen.org/donate.html
Most of Desert Rain Zen's activities take place on Zoom. For more information you can:
email us at desertrainzen@gmail.com
find us at https://www.desertrainzen.org/
and on Facebook.
You can also find more teachings by Tenney at
https://tenneynathanson.com/ .
Other Cloud Gate Zen groups include Springs Mountain Sangha in Colorado Springs, led by Sarah Bender Roshi, and Crimson Gate Meditation Community in Oakland, CA, led by Megan Rundel Sensei. Desert Rain Zen podcasts will include talks by Sarah and Megan, including (but not limited to) when they are part of shared Cloud Gate Zen retreats and other activities.
Springs Mountain Sangha spring retreat, Benet Hill Monastery in the Black Forest, Colorado, March 2026: 1st night: Sarah
Send us Fan Mail Sarah Bender Roshi gives her first talk on the opening night of the Springs Mountain Sangha Retreat, on March 9. * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us. Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertra...
28 Jun 2026
Desert Rain Zen Sunrise Retreat, March 2026: 4th night talks: Tenney & Megan
Send us Fan Mail In these talks from the last evening of retreat, Tenney returns to Zhaozhou's mondos and talks about how they show different ways of knowing, and subject-object relationships. Megan comes back to the theme of the knowing body and explored the relational and collective field of awakening. * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us.&nbs...
30 Apr 2026
Desert Rain Zen Sunrise Retreat, March 2026: 3rd night talk: Megan
Send us Fan Mail Megan gives the third night talk at our spring retreat focusing on Zhaozhou. She explores the crucial ways in which Zhaozhou’s teaching not only emphasizes our ordinary mind and our actual lives, but does so by inducing us to ground ourselves in our embodied experience, in our actual bodies, where prajna is already at home. * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live...
16 Apr 2026
Desert Rain Zen Sunrise Retreat, March 2026: 2nd night talk: Tenney
Send us Fan Mail Tenney gives the second night talk at our spring retreat focusing on Zhaozhou. Bringing in several short Zhaozhou mondo, Tenney talks briefly about some of what he’s noticed keeping company with these short dialogues, and then opens things up for a koan conversation. * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us. Desert Rain Zen pod...
29 Mar 2026
Desert Rain Zen Sunrise Retreat, March 2026: 1st night talks: Tenney & Megan
Send us Fan Mail Tenney and Megan give the opening night talks at our spring 2026 retreat, which focuses on the teachings of Chan teacher Zhaozhou. * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us. Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website...
12 Feb 2026
Desert Rain Zen Desert Sunrise Retreat, March 2024: Refuge Retreat, 2nd night talk: Tenney
Send a text Desert Rain Zen Desert Sunrise Retreat, March 2024: Refuge Retreat, 2nd night talk: Tenney gives the second night talk at our March 2024 Desert Rain Zen Desert Sunrise Refuge Retreat. “There is someone at peace, / walking in the Tao . . . “ (Yongjia Xuanjue, “Song of Realizing the Way”) (talk given March 20, 2024 at the Redemptorist Renewal Center out at Picture Rocks in Tucson) * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizon...
24 Jan 2026
Desert Rain Zen Desert Sunrise Retreat, March 2024: Refuge Retreat, 1st night talks: Tenney & Megan
Send us a text Tenney and Megan give the opening night talks at our March 2024 Desert Rain Zen Desert Sunrise Refuge Retreat, suggesting some ways we can let ourselves fall open to what’s already available, on offer. “There is someone at peace, / walking in the Tao . . . “ (Yongjia Xuanjue, “Song of Realizing the Way”) (talks given March 19, 2024 at the Redemptorist Renewal Center out at Picture Rocks in Tucson) * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson,...
23 Nov 2025
Open Source Retreat, October 2025: “Golden Wind,” 4th night talk: Sarah
Send us a text Sarah gives the talk on the fourth night of our retreat. A group conversation follows Sarah’s talk. (talk given October 16, 2025 at the Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico) * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us. Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you ...
23 Nov 2025
Open Source Retreat, October 2025: “Golden Wind,” 2nd night talk: Tenney
Send us a text Tenney gives the talk on the second night of our retreat. Beginning by exploring various translations of the “Golden Wind” koan and the different feel they give to Yunmen’s response to the student, Tenney brings the case into relation to Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Snow Man.” Then, via consideration of commentaries on the case by Xuedo, Yuanwu, Hakuin, and Tenkei, dragons get into the mix. This leads, courtesy of a suggestion made by Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi in a recorded talk ...
23 Nov 2025
Open Source Retreat, October 2025: “Golden Wind,” 1st night talks: Tenney, Megan, and Sarah
Send us a text Tenney, Megan, and Sarah give brief talks on the opening night of our Fall 2025 Open Source “Golden Wind” retreat. A student asked Yunmen, “When the tree withers and the leaves fall, what’s that?” Yunmen said, “The Golden Wind reveals itself.” &...
22 Sept 2025
Open Source Retreat, September-October 2024: “Sickness and Medicine,” 4th night talk: Sarah
Send us a text Sarah gives the fourth night talk on “Sickness and Medicine.” (check back soon for expanded notes on this episode!) * About us: Desert Rain Zen is located in Tucson, Arizona. But almost all our activities take place on Zoom or as hybrid events, so you don't need to live here to practice with us. Desert Rain Zen podcasts are free. If you'd like to support our podcasting and other activities, you can make a tax-deductible donation on our website at https://www.desertrainzen....
22 Sept 2025
Open Source Retreat, September-October 2024: “Sickness and Medicine,” 3rd night talk: Megan
Send us a text Megan gives the third night talk on “Sickness and Medicine,” focusing on sickness and suffering not as mistakes to be “fixed” but as inescapable aspects of our vulnerable lives in the world that deepen and humanize our hearts, making us tender and strengthening our practice, our zen minds. Medicine, likewise, takes multiple forms: often it consists of a widening of perspective, a softening of our views about our illness, a sense that suffering might draw us toward others rather...
6 Sept 2025
Open Source Retreat, September-October 2024: “Sickness and Medicine,” 2nd night talk: Tenney
Send us a text Tenney gives the second night talk on “Sickness and Medicine,” discussing the Blue Cliff Record commentary on the case and bringing in a few anecdotes, from both his own practice history and the Open Source community. Hakuin says that if you take the phrase “sickness and medicine cure each other” as itself being medicine, that’s a big mistake (it’s too glib). Sickness isn’t “quelled” so simply, through a formula or an upbeat attitude, one-and-done. If not, what might the koan a...
27 Jul 2025
Open Source Retreat, September-October 2024: “Sickness and Medicine,” 1st night talks: Tenney, Sarah, & Megan
Open Source teachers Tenney Nathanson, Sarah Bender, and Megan Rundel each give introductory talks on the first night of our retreat. Our retreat takes its title from Blue Cliff Record Case 87: “Yunmen said to the assembly, ‘Medicine and sickness cure each other. The whole earth is medicine. What is the self?’” (translation by Joan Sutherland and John Tarrant). Sarah Bender Roshi leads Springs Mountain Sangha in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Megan Rundel Sensei leads the Crimson Gate Med...
22 Jul 2025
Desert Rain Zen Sunrise Retreat, March 2025: "The World of Dew," 4th night talks: Tenney & Megan
Tenney and Megan each give talks on the final night of the retreat. Tenney brings in a collection of anecdotes to continue exploring the sustenance available when we allow loss and grief to permeate us and intertwine with the radiance and eternal quality of things that practice helps make palpable. Megan muses on the Prajna Paramita teachings and their grounding in our deep and primal relation to the maternal, evoking the receptive, embodied, and pre-verbal aspects of practice revealed in ges...
21 Jul 2025
Desert Rain Zen Sunrise Retreat, March 2025: "The World of Dew," 3rd night talk: Megan
Megan gives the third night retreat talk, bringing in several Issa poems that focus on impermanence, loss, and grief, then offering an extended meditation on “the world of dew / is the world of dew / and yet, and yet.” How can we allow ourselves feel this “and yet, and yet” fully, letting our hearts be broken when they are broken and feeling and working through our grief as deeply as we can? What makes it hard to do this, and how can our practice help us enter this difficult terrain and accom...
14 Jul 2025
Desert Rain Zen Sunrise Retreat, March 2025: "The World of Dew," 2nd night talk: Tenney
Tenney gives the talk on the second evening of our retreat (the end of our first full day). Taking up three koans from The Blue Cliff Record that all concern the mysterious interweaving of the ephemeral and the eternal, he focuses on our mobile and multiple human responses to this intertwining of what’s poignant, painful, or tragic with a maybe unanticipated sense of radiance, timelessness, and serenity. The Blue Cliff koans: case 82, “Dalong’s Flowers Like Brocade”; case 18, “Hui...
12 Jul 2025
Desert Rain Zen Sunrise Retreat, March 2025: "The World of Dew," 1st night talks: Tenney & Megan
Tenney and Megan give introductory talks on the first night of our Spring 2025 Desert Sunrise Retreat, "The World of Dew." Issa's heartbreaking haiku for the death of his young child is a central focus of these opening talks, and of the retreat. Tenney and Megan each begin to explore the intertwining, in our practice, of our deepening awareness of the stillness and silence at the heart of things with the endless rising and falling that are its manifestations. How might "the deep samadhi of th...
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