Jun Po Roshi: An Interview

Jun Po Roshi sat down for this conversation as part of A Psychology of the Future, an online summit put together by Erik Lenderman that gathered voices from self-development, spirituality, neuroscience, medicine and related fields. Lenderman hosted the exchange and opened by welcoming listeners before turning to his guest.

Jun Po, Lenderman explained, holds a fully empowered lineage in Rinzai Zen. He trained under some of the first Japanese Zen teachers who came to the United States, back in a period when those teachers still regarded Americans as too rough and unschooled to take on Zen practice. Before his Zen name, he went by Dennis Kelly. His published work includes "The Heart of Zen" and a biography titled "A Heart Blown Open." He also heads the Hollow Bones Society and created the Mondo Zen Process, a method of Zen training and awakening that folds in dialogue and neurolinguistic programming.

Invited to speak, Jun Po said he was glad to take part and grateful for the chance to pass along the dharma, adding that he was looking forward to the event. Lenderman thanked him and called it an honor to have him there, then said he wanted to begin with the guest's own history.

His first question was simple enough: where did Jun Po come from, and how did he end up as one of the earliest Westerners to be acknowledged as a Zen lineage holder?

"I come from nowhere," Jun Po answered. Then, with a touch of playfulness, he asked what the second half of the question had been.

Lenderman clarified that he meant the physical journey, the path of this one lifetime that led to Jun Po becoming a lineage holder.

"Karma," Jun Po replied. The unfolding of karma and circumstance. He was born in 1942, and the circumstances of his arrival were striking. His mother and father carried an Rh-negative blood incompatibility. A brother born before him survived only a single day. Jun Po himself came at seven months, without fingernails. As he described it, he entered the world made by both his sacred mother and his actual physical mother, and at the very same moment he was being poisoned and torn down by that blood conflict. So he showed up, he said, carrying something of an attitude.

Lenderman, taking this in, repeated it back to be sure he understood: so his parents' blood types were, in effect, toxic to his body.