The word Zen is tossed about a lot these days, but real Zen is simple: it's coming back to this moment, to the natural, obvious simplicity of our true nature.
“This is one of the most important works on spiritual realization to be written in years…you really can’t afford to miss this revolutionary process for your own awakening. My absolutely highest recommendation”
Ken Wilber, author of The Integral Vision
One of the paradoxes of a meditation practice is that the things that make you effective elsewhere in life — like willpower and setting and achieving goals — will utterly fail you in meditation.
It takes willpower and discipline to get you onto your meditation cushion, of course, but once you’re there it takes something else entirely. Which makes it unlike the gym, or the classroom, or pretty much anything else you’ve ever done. There is no willing your way into awakening, and no amount of trying to get it is going to help. In fact, the more you attempt to “get” enlightenment (whatever that is), the more it moves steadily away from you, and the more your practice is one of futility, trying to “find” something that you think you don’t have.
Someone wise once said, “The diamond is in your pocket.”
Zen is the practice of realizing that you have, and are, the very thing that you seek. You cannot get what you already have, nor can you discover your true nature, or find your true self. You have and you are what you seek, and so the practice of meditation is the process of looking out at the world as the world and as awareness itself.
And yes: for most of us, this simple truth takes a great deal of practice to realize.
Junpo Roshi and I in late 2017.
My Zen Path
In 2007 I met the irreverent and iconoclastic Zen master, Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi. By that point, I'd been studying and training in Tibetan Buddhism (Dzogchen) for over ten years under Lama Tsering Everest, but what I lacked was integration. I had my spiritual practice and insights here, my work there, my relationships over yonder, my books over there — all separate from one another.
Junpo had the wisdom and experience to show a path that integrated contemplative insight with day-to-day, real world life. It welcomed, even encouraged, skepticism and critical thinking, while pushing for radical emotional maturity.
Since that first meeting, Junpo and I collaborated on two books on Zen -- the award-winning A Heart Blown Open (Divine Arts Media, 2012), and The Heart of Zen (North Atlantic Books, 2014). Our first meeting about me writing his life story is a story in-and-of itself. Junpo passed away in May of 2021, and my latest book, When the Buddha Needs Therapy, is an exploration of the implications of his work and his insights through my lens.
I was ordained by Junpo as a Zen priest in 2012 and given my dharma name, Kogen Ananda. In 2016, Doshin MJ Roshi of Integral Zen made me a sensei. As the Rev. Kogen Ananda Sensei, I (mostly) go by my lay name, Keith.