Jun Po Roshi: An Interview
People will tell you a mantra carries no meaning. If that's true for you, then set it aside. Mantra can work as a tomb for the mind or as a point of focus. When you repeat one, you're really working a koan, and a koan is only the finger pointing at the moon. Someone might insist the mantra holds a hidden mystical charge, that the words themselves matter. Fine. If you want to do it, do it. But my question is simpler: why not actually understand what you're doing while you do it? I don't want anyone sitting for forty years chanting nonsense syllables with no idea what the practice is for.
So ask. Why are you doing this? What is the mechanism? How is it supposed to function in you? Once you grasp that, you can hand yourself over to it completely. Is that hard? Of course. Anything good tends to be hard. And that's where a change in attitude helps.
Is Zen difficult? Yes. Zen is dog training. Step one is learning to sit. Sit. Be quiet. Sit. Is that easy? No. But difficulty becomes a pleasure once you know what it's in service of. It's leading you toward freedom. You're building the capacity to stay fully awake even when someone insults you, to let nothing knock you off center. Your heart cracks open. You're left standing exposed and clear, naked in a way, if that's what you want.
To reach that, we offer a path that's been walked before. Concentrate. Go down, then further down, then further still. Quiet, quiet, again and again. Do I really have to repeat it? How deep does your realization actually run? Can you hold the witness steady in the ordinary chaos of your daily life?
Hakuin is the reason I sit here. He brought Rinzai Zen back to life in the eighteenth century, and he said that practicing in the middle of your life is worth a thousand times more than sitting on a cushion in a monastery. I took that seriously. Meditation has no finish line. Build the ability to rest in the witness and in intelligence while the self-referencing ego keeps doing its thing, and you've won. You're home. First, grow that capacity. So I'll ask you: are you willing to change how you see?
The second question is this. Given all that, can you listen purely? Erik, can you? Is there something clean and open running inside you?
Erik: Yes, I think I can listen purely.
Jun Po: And now I'd push back. You think you can?
Erik: I think I can. That's how I'm talking with you right now.
Jun Po: Is that a way out you're leaving yourself? Can you, or can't you? This isn't about the person named Erik. Is there a deep, pure listening in there, underneath all your self-reference? Am I ready. One, two, three.