Introduction

My teacher, Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi, was a Rinzai Zen master. As such, he often said things intended to irritate listeners in a way that would cause them to reflect more deeply on their beliefs. It is our beliefs, more than anything, that obscure us from the deeper clarity sought through a spiritual practice.

One of his favorite sayings was, “The only trouble with Zen, and with psychotherapy, is they don’t work.”

That is a very interesting thing for a Zen master and lineage holder to say; especially one who was the head abbot of his own school of Zen, and who spent many years in ongoing forms of psychotherapy, even well into his later 60s.