Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi sits across from me, on a rainy morning in Massachusetts, a black hood draped over his head.  We are on the porch of an old lake home, overlooking a small stand of trees and then, through an opening in the underbrush, water.  We are both holding steaming cups of coffee, and even though it is late June our hands huddle around our cups for warmth. 

Jun Po’s eyes, intensely blue, stare past me at the distant memories I know he was summoning, watching them take shape in his mind.  We sit together, my digital recorder at the ready, notebook open with pen in hand; we wait together in a measured silence as he searches for a place to begin.

Dennis Kelly is tall and muscular with broad shoulders and a natural athleticism that defies his age, but his mass is now subdued, thoughtful, turned in on itself. When he places his coffee cup on the table, I notice the hands of a laborer; broad and ropy muscles cover large bones.  There are pleats in his cheeks, and deep lines etched into the skin around his mouth.  The scars from his radiation treatments a few years before can be seen running across his neck, as if he’s an old cowboy who somehow escaped the hangman’s noose.  His is a face accustomed to wearing serious expressions, and seems most at home with slightly narrowed eyes and downturned lips, despite the fact I know he is prone to sudden laughter and frequent smiles.  His eyes are intelligent and measure and hold no fear or hesitation.  Like the water outside the window they are clear, deep, still.   The dark hood comes away from his face, exposing large ears and a large nose and a large chin that, taken together, create a rugged handsomeness that harkens back to some Dust Bowl farmer deeply in touch with the wisdom of his land.

His 67 years show on his face, but the decades of daily yoga practice are hinted at in the deep masculinity and strength that emanates from his body.   This is the first day of two weeks we are to spend together, two weeks in which he will go over the events of his extraordinary life in extraordinary detail, being candid to the point of making me occasionally squirm in my chair.  I will come to understand that any discomfort is mine alone to bear, for he long ago made peace with the monsters and angels that gave him form and purpose.    

When he finally speaks, his voice is a grumble, coming from somewhere deep in his belly, as if the story of his life will emanate from that space. “Okay,” he says, his eyes briefly engaging mine before they find some undefined point in the ether behind me, “The first thing I remember.  Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Had to be forty-five or six.  Father was just back from the War.  Nasty alcoholic.  I was lying in a pool of my own piss, my little fat baby boy hands stuck out in front of me.  In the next room, there’s an explosion of violence.  Screams and yelling, and I’m just trying to get away from it, and have backed myself under a bed.  I stare out between my hands and my piss, trying to make sense of just what the fuck is going on in the next room, and then,” he snaps he fingers, “And then I’m gone, out of the body, out of that place, in the most serene stillness you can imagine…”  His words are calm, and sometimes border on the lyrical.  They are driven by the intensity that is this man, but there is little other emotion to animate them.

I will eventually become used to this; Jun Po’s descriptions of his life are at times unbearably sad and poignant, but he never once falters in his story, never dabs a tear from the corner of his eye, never has a quivering voice, and never once expresses much beyond a stoic wonder and a wry sense of humor and irony.  Far from being repressed or detached from his emotions, I realize as our days together go past that he has already spent more than two decades of his life deconstructing them; many of these stories, once problematic, have become old friends full of their own hard wisdom.  He welcomes them as such, mostly without valuation, although in a few areas he is harsh — almost cruel — in his assessment of himself.  

His life has been almost unimaginably full; a world traveler, seeker of wisdom, ascetic, holder of vast wealth and power, lover of women, homeless mendicant, wanderer, fearless warrior, father and husband, spiritual adept, yogi, federal prisoner, family deserter, hedonist, Zen master. There are a dozen men that sit down with me every morning, but they are all held by this man who has become Jun Po Roshi.

At the end of our time together, I spend a long day reviewing my notes, and I realize something profound: I have been handed a story far richer and more incredible then I could have ever imagined.  For this I am, and will always be, deeply grateful.  

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