Jun Po Roshi on Where Zen Is Headed (Interview Archive)
Erik: Part of why we wanted you at this conference is that there are so many teachers in the Zen tradition we could have sat down with, but you seem to be pulling in a lot of Western ideas. I know you're well versed in integral theory, and you talk about our genetics, our primate drives. So where is Zen going? Can this kind of awareness actually be plotted onto that kind of map? How do we help it grow into a modern Zen, and what will modern Zen even be?
Jun Po: Here's what happened. Once I received Inka at the monastery, which is the formal acknowledgment that mind has been transmitted, I realized right away that I had a problem on my hands. There was a riddle to solve. I had to work out how to actually do this. Picture it: sitting in the monastery in Chinese and Japanese robes, eating sushi, immersed in the whole Japanese cultural production. The Japanese are a beautiful people, yet they carry racism, sexism, imperialism, and in certain respects they remain pretty constrained. And now it falls to me to carry this revolutionary, awakening dharma into America. How exactly am I supposed to pull that off? How do I deal with the knots and the trouble spots? Zen simply didn't come equipped with the tools for it.
Traditionally, Zen walks the path of right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right effort, right livelihood, right concentration, meditation, and Samadhi. And it arrives wrapped in a particular culture. In the Koan work there are around 1,400 classical Koans, and that process of study is supposed to resolve into a certain way of behaving. But how do you actually grasp that? Are you watching it from the outside? It resembles trying to take someone immature and unawakened and alter their conduct while they're digging in their heels, insisting this is simply who they are. That breeds every kind of confusion.
So I cracked a crude joke once. I said the only trouble with psychotherapy and Zen is that neither one works. Now, I don't mean that literally. I say it to grab your attention. What I'm pointing at is that the foundation underneath both is still muddled. If you believe you're a self rather than a passing process, you get stuck managing yourself as some fixed thing instead of as a process. Your egocentric process is a temporary thing happening inside the vehicle of consciousness. You are that consciousness. You're free to do whatever you choose, depending on how you interpret things and how you answer them. So what counts as the correct understanding?
Which brings us to the real question. We say, fine, let's throw out the bathwater and hold onto the baby. But who is the baby? And what does the baby have to do with Japanese culture at all?