Foreword
Doshin Michael Nelson Roshi
Abbot and Founder, Integral Zen
One of my wiser professors in graduate school said that there were advantages to filtering knowledge through many different minds. He said there were also advantages to integrating knowledge within a single mind. This has proved to be true and helpful over the years for me, especially when it comes to knowledge. However, this book is not about knowledge, it is about what the author calls “Enlightening,” which relates to insight, discernment, wisdom, and awakening. It is also a deep look into the teachings of a great Zen Master — Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi (1942-2021) — that were received, integrated, and further evolved by a single mind, the mind of the author.
Keith Martin-Smith was not only one of Junpo Kando Roshi’s senior students, but he is also an award-winning author of two books written about and with Junpo. A Heart Blown Open (2012) was Junpo’s spiritual biography, while The Heart of Zen (2014) articulated Junpo’s deepest wisdom through his teaching of Mondo Zen. In both books, Keith brought Junpo’s insight and wisdom into the world in a powerful way. In this book, Keith begins the articulation of his own insights and more integral understanding of Junpo’s teaching, revealing how those teachings have taken root, grown, and are beginning to flower in Keith’s own body, mind, and life.
One of the provocative teachings of Junpo was, “The only trouble with Zen, and with psychotherapy, is they don’t work.” Junpo was indeed a troublemaker. He loved to throw emotionally charged hand grenades like this one into a crowd, and then step back and bare witness, making note of who got triggered, and why. This was one of Junpo’s most skillful means. It was a tool and he used it like a fishing pole as he hooked, with unparalleled mastery, many of his students and then released them into the community where he could teach them —about insight, about emotional maturity, and about proper stewardship of all their relationships, with sentient and non-sentient beings. He was incredibly skilled at this method. I was hooked several years before Keith, and I was able to witness the process of Keith first being hooked, receiving these powerful teachings, and then helping Junpo disseminate them through two books. And now one year after Junpo’s death, I am delighted to write this forward because Keith is breathing new life into Junpo’s original teachings for the next generation. But be careful, for as Keith warns: “Your biggest triggers and your deepest fears are the places where Enlightening begins.”
Junpo’s core teaching of Mondo Zen is clearly articulated in The Heart of Zen. It consists of two separate processes. First the Ego Deconstruction Process, followed by the Emotional Koan Process. Keith lives and works in Boulder, Colorado where most people you encounter on the street consider themselves to be “spiritual,” but not “religious.” This is a most interesting and tenacious form of New Age (postmodern) spiritual identity that must begin to be deconstructed before the process of awakening, or Enlightening, can even begin. Keith wisely avoids the messy quagmire of Junpo’s Emotional Koans, which too many of Junpo’s postmodern students reduced into a superficial addiction to feeling good rather than a means of true liberation from ego confusion and suffering.
In this book Keith is presenting a more evolved form of Junpo’s Mondo Zen Process, in a voice uniquely his own, to reach an audience that most desperately needs it. The process of deconstructing the postmodern collective spiritual identity is a crucial beginning point to heal the collective illnesses of those who are stuck in victim mentality as well as those whose spiritual identity is pretending to be some heroic rescuer of all victims. Keith cuts through this dualistic conflict of false spiritual identity and dysfunctional victim mentality with Manjushri’s sword. He swings the sword, distilling Junpo’s emotional koan into one statement of diamond clarity: “There are no victims in Zen.” No victims, no suffering.
As you are reading, remember that this book is specifically written for those who want to step onto a path of “Enlightening.” Be warned, the first step on this path is the deconstruction of your precious “spiritual identity.” So, proceed with caution and persistence, for this book may at first seem problematic for certain readers. For those who want to feed or inflate their “spiritual identity,” and for those who need to pretend they always feel good, their defenses will rise up to meet this challenge to their tightly held views. The hidden issue with pretending to always feel good is it requires us to suppress all bad feelings. Ignoring half of our feelings automatically creates and reinforces a false spiritual identity. This book can also present moral dilemmas for those who see themselves as “spiritual entrepreneurs,” who try to enhance their spiritual identity by increasing their wealth and status by selling the Dharma — reflecting their lack of penetrating insight and egolessness in the face of a truly earth-shattering awakening. (Selling the Dharma reflects a lack of insight into the negative karma and suffering it can cause because the selling negates the very process needed to fully awaken.) So, if you get triggered by anything in this book, take a breath, get curious about the gold buried under your discomfort, and keep reading!
Keith is standing on groundless ground articulating, in his own voice, the essence of his teacher’s teaching. He is talking to a specific collective group – those who are imprisoned by their addiction to their own spiritual identities and infected with feelings of helplessness. These two issues are plaguing whole generations today, infecting them with the toxic shame of being helplessly stuck in victim mentality without any hope of healing or attaining freedom. Keith has provided a brilliant implicitly integral perspective that invites each reader to step into a bigger and deeper view of the world and themselves. And of course, the invitation can only be accepted by those who have the ears to hear and the tongue to taste the deepest truth of who we are. For those who have successfully accepted or been called by the invitation to experience this “Buddha Nature” for themselves, remember Keith’s profound discernment that transcends Junpo’s idea of an emotional koan: This embodiment of Buddha Nature, once tasted, will still need significant, ego-based psychotherapy to completely awaken for the benefit of all beings. Because the Buddha (that’s you and me) does indeed need therapy.
“Keith cuts through this dualistic conflict of false spiritual identity and dysfunctional victim mentality with Manjushri’s sword. But be warned, the first step on this path is the deconstruction of your precious ‘spiritual identity.’ So, proceed with caution and persistence!”