South Bay InsightLA
South Bay Study Group
Third Thursday of the Month
7:00 - 9:00 pm
October 2024 - June 2025
Our South Bay monthly study group aspires to be a community based in spiritual friendship and good will. The Buddha teaches that no other external factor does so much for the development of awakening as spiritual friendship.​​
South Bay InsightLA Teacher - Eric McCullum
Registration:
Email Eric at
eric@insightla.org
Online Donations
About Our 2024 - 2025 Study Group Plan
This year we will focus on Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life by John Tarrant, a book that explores 14 traditional koans. These ancient koans (or questions to sit with) are explained in a contemporary light with each chapter devoted to one koan. The author weaves in personal stories along with wise suggestions to support a rich exploration of these timeless inquiries.
​
Each month there will be suggested readings. We’re asking you to commit to a daily practice and to attending all monthly meetings (extenuating circumstances aside).
​
There is a suggested donation of $20/class (optional and not required). All donations/money raised will be given to charities that are collectively agreed on at the end of the year.
Email Eric at eric@insightla.org for more information and registration. See the map below for the location of our meetings.​
About Our Text
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. From the Publisher
"This book's straightforward honesty, clear writing, and destabilizing insight have a profound effect. John Tarrant does indeed bring on the rhinoceros and a host of other powerful but invisible creatures, ready to run us down when we refuse to acknowledge the fierce, awkward, and beautiful world we inhabit." David Whyte
"John Tarrant's talent for telling these classic Zen tales transforms them magically into a song in which, as you read, the words disappear as the music continues to echo in your mind and make you happy. Mysteriously, like koans." Sylvia Boorstein
Location
St. Cross Episcopal Church
1818 Monterey Avenue, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
​
Room #4, Park anywhere in the St. Cross parking lot (free)