Mondo Zen is based on Japanese Rinzai Zen, updated for the twenty-first century. Mondo Zen transcends the hierarchical/authoritarian, gender-biased and constraining monastic aspects of traditional Zen, without jettisoning the essential and transformative parts of the practice. It includes a more practical, experiential “in the world” engagement of Zen. Relying only on direct personal experience, as taught by the Buddha himself, it does not allow mythic/religious constructs or mental abstractions to complicate its philosophical orientation.
It is important that in the practice of Mondo Zen we consciously choose to set aside beliefs about God, reincarnation, karma, and other concepts, at least temporarily. This allows us to experience, test, and evaluate for ourselves a simpler and stronger way of knowing.
This is important because our beliefs and concepts about God, karma, or an afterlife can force our immediate experience into a container of predefined understanding. Preconceived ideas rob us of deeper insight.
“As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.”—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi
By letting go of our attachment to our beliefs and mythologies—at least while we are actively doing this practice—we remove a barrier to insight caused by our attachment to those views. This attachment to our views is part of why realizing our true nature, in this moment, eludes so many of us!
No one can do this for you! Jun Po encourages “teaching the teacher within,” meaning his Mondo Zen dialogue radically undercuts the need for a student to project a “guru” status onto an outside teacher, even though you may very well need a teacher to help you to stabilize your insight, correct your understanding, and help you with emotional integration and maturity. Just understand that before you Awaken, you will have to reclaim any projections you have placed on a teacher, and be willing to claim your insight for yourself.
The Mondo Zen process is a modern interpretation of an ancient teaching. Ultimately it is you, and you alone, who must claim the realization of this teaching.
Mondo is an ancient koan dialogue practice. A koan is a special kind of inquiry, a seemingly enigmatic question designed to Awaken one to a deeper truth. To answer a koan one must have an actual realization experience, not just an intellectual understanding of it. Koans are designed to break through the neurolinguistic philosophical language barrier, allowing us to experience the vast, empty silence within us, what is called Clear Deep Heart/Mind. They are designed, quite simply, to still the noisy mind and allow the light that is always shining in the silence to Enlighten us.
Enlightenment is right here this very moment, permeating all of who we are. It is our conditioning that prevents us from seeing this, and a koan is simply a direct question designed to help break up our habitual way of viewing the world. In an instant flash of insight, we can see the deep truth of our liberated mind. With this twofold understanding—experiential and philosophical—we can experience and understand the openness and fearless stability within our ordinary mind. We can then choose to articulate, access, recognize, realize, and maintain awareness of Clear Deep Heart/Mind.
Mondo Zen koan dialogue comprises thirteen koans, all requiring a spontaneous answer. The first ten are insight, embodiment, and articulation koans. The last three koans are emotional.
Sit for thirty minutes, using the techniques discussed in Chapter 12: concentration, insight, samadhi. Once you have reached a state of insight, go through these thirteen koans slowly and carefully, making sure that you have the full realization of every answer.
1. Is it possible to just purely listen? Can you listen without an opinion?
2. Where is this deeper listening located within your body?
3. Who are you—who am I—within this deep, heartfelt listening?
4. Differentiate between “not knowing” and “I don’t know.”
5. What are you like, what are we like, at this depth of consciousness?
6. Now leave out your words. Express your new insight with a silent gesture of embodied consciousness.
7. Choose a name for Clear Deep Heart/Mind. Call to and respond to this awareness using this name.
8. Does Clear Deep Heart/Mind come and go?
9. How can you be absolutely certain that this Clear Deep Heart/Mind is real? What is the first thing you must do to manifest this realization and understanding in your life?
10. What feelings arise when you experience this insight and understanding?
11. Has anyone ever made you angry, shamed you, or caused you to turn away?
12. Silently, through your eyes and your body, demonstrate the intense clarity that always arises before you choose a negative emotional reaction. Now show me Clear Deep Heart/Mind.
13. Visualize yourself transforming a habitual negative reaction into a conscious, compassionate response.
1. Is it possible to just purely listen? Can you listen without an opinion?
Yes! Find this experiential truth for yourself. Simply release and allow yourself to experience sound arising within you, without thought or effort. Speak with awareness of this silent depth.
2. Where is this deeper listening located within your body?
Can you listen with more than just your head? Drop deeper into the listening, to find your body- or heart-centered listening. Realize the difference between these two perspectives.
3. Who are you—who am I—within this deep, heartfelt listening?
If you really drop into your deep consciousness, you will see you don’t know who you are. From a deeper perspective, you are the not-knowing itself, emptiness, shunyata. Listening has never spoken, but once experienced there is much to say! Understand this seeming paradox!
4. Differentiate between “not knowing” and “I don’t know.”
Clench your fist and answer, “I don’t know” with your ego. Now open your hand, and answer from your Clear Deep Heart/Mind. Drop the pronoun “I,” and claim Not Knowing in your direct experience. Experience this viscerally. Enlightened mind is also embodied!
5. What are you like, what are we like, at this depth of consciousness?
Drop into this depth of awareness that is beyond description, and give your experience in words, as inadequate as they may be. Watch out for things that arise within this emptiness, reactions caused by realization of this state. Things that come and go such as love, happiness, and peace are not it! Go deeper. Find the truth of words. Vast—how vast? Empty—how empty? Dark—how dark? Timeless—how timeless? Silent—how silent? Peaceful—how peaceful? Recognize that none of these signifiers can be violated! Recognize that none of them are this depth of mind!
6. Now leave out your words. Express your new insight with a silent gesture of embodied consciousness.
Use your eyes. Then, use your body. Ask yourself: how does Enlightenment move in the body? How does it move the body? Do you move toward life, or away? Toward connection, or away? Stay connected to the experience of deep mind and choose to express yourself. It’s spirit, mind, and body!
7. Choose a name for Clear Deep Heart/Mind. Call to and respond to this awareness using this name.
First you choose one of the words you picked in koan five. Then, once you can respond to that name from emptiness, try using your birth name. Can your own name call to awareness, to emptiness? If not, what (or who) is in the way?
8. Does Clear Deep Heart/Mind come and go?
No! YOU, your ego-mind, comes and goes. Go deep enough into your practice to experience this truth for yourself. Something that comes and goes cannot be described the way you described emptiness in koan five! Feelings, thoughts, sensations, and concepts all come and go.
9. How can you be absolutely certain that this Clear Deep Heart/Mind is real? What is the first thing you must do to manifest this realization and understanding in your life?
You can be sure because you experienced it. The first thing you must do to manifest this realization is to claim it! Your seat will not be given to you—you must take it. And you now have the choice. Make it!
10. What feelings arise when you experience this insight and understanding?
Joy! Freedom! Equanimity!
Jun Po Denis Kelly saw that in our culture the traditional view of Enlightenment alone was not enough. We also need emotional maturity. His insight was that emotional koans, taken from our actual lives, provide a process that transforms habitual, negative emotional reactions into compassionate, intelligent responses. Instead of reacting mindlessly to our emotions, we experience their deeper message, and listen to the information they bring us.
For instance, from Clear Deep Heart/Mind—our Enlightened self—anger does not mean to act violently; it means to deeply care about something and to take action. From this new understanding, we can choose a conscious, compassionate response to circumstances instead of reacting unconsciously and violently.
11. Has anyone ever made you angry, shamed you, or caused you to turn away?
No! You have always chosen these reactions to your deeper feelings. You’ve reacted unconsciously to these deeper feelings. But you can slow down your reaction and see the true, deep feelings of fear, sadness, and care that are under your conditioned negativity. You can then choose your response, instead of reacting to your superficial emotions, like anger, depression, lust, or greed.
Anger clearly understood and experienced is actually sacred. It is intense clarity and deep caring. Anger is not violent. Fear is just excitement and opportunity. It is not collapsing. Depression, anxiety, and other destructive emotions are trying to show you something deeper that needs your attention. Look! Get the information in the feeling, break your reactive patterns, stop choosing to be a victim, and live in the freedom of your ability to choose your emotional and practical responses to life.
12. Silently, through your eyes and your body, demonstrate the intense clarity that always arises before you choose a negative emotional reaction. Now show me Clear Deep Heart/Mind.
Experience the clarity of mind, the passion, and the concern that always arise before you react. Notice how this state of mind is nearly identical to your meditative mind! Your most intense emotions can now call directly to your Awakened nature.
13. Visualize yourself transforming a habitual negative reaction into a conscious, compassionate response.
It is not enough to know this intellectually. You must find a place in your life where there is conditioned, emotional reactivity and visualize this newfound freedom. Then you must actually practice it, act it out in your life. When you do you will discover that your angst has become your liberation.
The koans help you to deconstruct your current philosophical view and emotional understanding, allowing insight that might otherwise be blocked by that view. From this position of deeper insight, you can choose to witness how you have been blocking realization of your true nature by holding a confused, illusory, and ignorant view.
This insight and choice transforms your understanding of the nature of your mind and your emotional relationship to circumstances. With this experience confirmed as your foundational perspective, you can choose a new, more liberating philosophy. Then, you integrate this new understanding into your everyday life.