​Unless this mind is present, there's nowhere for an ego to construct. So no matter what the feeling, what the sensing is, that sensing cannot exist without the purity of the receptive mind. The non-dual realization does not make arguments about good or bad. The non-dual realization in non-dual. It's the truth of the unfolding of life. This is Buddha, once again. Everything is burning, everything is on fire. Everything is interacting and burning. [Inaudible 00:52:36] and then does this come and go? No. Then the realization, okay, what must you do to bring this forward, into your life? That's the next question once we've gone that far. So you have to choose, you choose this you’re your egocentric value. You have to choose this reality.
 
Erik: And what motivates people to choose that reality?
 
Jun Po: Insight, but once you've got it, then you've got to choose. It just doesn't happen. It's like your perspective shifts from egocentric to Buddha centric. And in the context of once things arise, you maintain the integrity of the witness.
 
Erik: I just want to say thank you for walking us through that process, and I'm curious as we wrap up the call, is there anything that people should know that hasn't been said yet that you want to get across to folks?
 
Jun Po: Well, this is your liberation and your freedom. If you can accomplish this, and you can if I did, you certainly can. So that being the case, there's no doubt that this will transform your life. It transforms your life and then the [inaudible 00:54:12] avows say over and save all beings, and so you're now compassionately involved. And you reach out, your relationships work. Nothing can disturb you once again, and your whole life takes on.
 
We have five training elements. The first is sacred stewardship, arms' reach. Everything you touch, are you are in conscious relationship with, what you buy, what you eat, your relationship with your family, your friends and your parents? Are you coming from this depth of compassion, understanding and realization or responsibility? The first element is the realization and transformation of your life. The [wards].
 
Erik: Thank you. Thank you.
 
Jun Po: Thank you.
 
Erik: Thank you so much. It was a real pleasure hearing you speak on Zen and what Zen is becoming. And so I just want to say, as we conclude our call, thank you for joining us, and I'll be in touch after we end the call, immediately afterward, just to check in and see how things are going. So thank you again so much, and deep bow to you, Jun Po. This is Jun Po Roshi with Mondo Zen. You can learn more about Mondo Zen at, is it www.mondozen.org?
 
Jun Po: M-O-N-D-O-Z-E-N.org. And everybody's on their own path, so just keep pursuing your path. If Zen or something you don't align with, keep looking, keep searching. It's there for you. And thanks so much.
 
Erik: Thank you. Thank you.

​Say, "Okay, now ready?" Now, show me who you are. Excuse me, you want to have one question. The next question is, "Okay, now using the language, give me an adjective that describes who we are at this great depth. Not something that comes and goes, but who are we at this great depth? Who am I? Who are we? Who are we at this great depth? At this great depth, I am what? You are what? Deeper than the relative mind. [Inaudible 00:49:34], unselfless end. There is silence." Then if they get the silence, then they'll say how silent? And then I'll say, "How about deathly silent?" That's the mind. You're deep enough. Death is here. You don't have to wait for death. [Foreign language 00:49:53] is at the [binder] point of any sentient manifestation.
 
Go deep enough into silence and receptivity, you'll come to that...In Zen we say die on the cushion. We're talking about going to that depth of stillness where the lights go out. The great joke is you come back. It's like with psychedelics. I kept coming back. I died [inaudible 00:50:19] psychedelic journey and then I'm back, same bullshit. Then this is why the whole process, going back to the training and doing all this, is I had to sort it out, and work it out, and come to practically being able to do and bide in this state on my own.
 
Once that happens, we say, "Okay, that's silent, timeless, empty [inaudible 00:50:42]." Fear can arise, but the mind does not react. Fear is excitement and opportunity from this perspective, superficially in the mind, once you have the realization. So suddenly, fear is excitement and opportunity, not reactivity. So this depth of witnessing then, is vast, silent, fearless, present, aware, timeless. This is it. So now you're claiming these. This is who I am, I'm vast. This step, I'm silent at this step. I'm fearless at this step. Got it?
 
Then we say, "Okay, now that you've done that, let's flush the toilet. You have the philosophical construct in place, now show me. Don't use words. With your body, with your psyche, with your eyes, with your formality, show me this witnessing intelligence. Viscerally move forward. Don't have this as the abstract reality. Show me," and then spontaneously some gesture will come from the body, through the eyes or something some gesture comes. If the gesture is genuine, you reflect it. And that being the case, so now we're slowly moving down the, down the, down the line. And then does this state come and go? And people say all the time. Wait a minute, who comes and goes? The ego comes and goes. The ego awareness comes and goes.
 

​I'll say, "Okay, tell me again, who else, where are you at this step?" Good. Not quite right. So they give you a variety of answers, and then finally you say, "Well, it sounds like you don't know who you are at this step." So then I say, "Has listening ever spoken?" Because there's pure listening, there's much to say and that's superficial mind, temporary ego mind. So that being the case, this purity and this silence is always within you. Speaking is always through the ego, either realization and a reasonably awakened one or a confused neurotic one. Life is supposed to be erotic, not neurotic.
 
Erik: Life is supposed to be erotic?
 
Jun Po: Yes, not neurotic. Eros, not Neuros, that's one of my jokes.
 
Erik: That's nice. I think that there are a lot of people who would be interested in going through a training like this, and I'm wondering where do people find the core and the heart of Zen these days. Where can people go to find Zen that can really meet them where they are, not in this older 17th-century style Zen?
 
Jun Po: We're a post-modern Zen school, and if you go to Mondozen.org, that's the website. On the website, there's the whole story. There's a training manual there, a basic sutra book, the structure and understanding of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And we have a Cyber Sangha program where people from around the world come in, we practice for 70 days together online committing to the practices and stuff. We do Skype calls and Google calls with people one-on-one. I have people fly in and I work with them personally. And we do retreats. In mid-May, we got a retreat in Colorado, a small one, it's a Mondo retreat, which is 26, 27 people coming to that one. And so by going online and pursuing information there, this is one school. This is happening throughout the Buddhist world, how to do this, how to move our tradition forward into current times and circumstances. So this is happening across the board. I've just had a particular vehicle on a way of doing that and it works.
 
So then the next question is saying, "That being the case, you understand this much, then the next question is, okay, now I don't know a not knowing, get the body involved." So now, first of all, I'm going to ask you who you are and I want you to say, "I don't know," from the ego. Who are you? And make a fist, "Who are you?" I don't know. Feel the psyche interact. Who are you? I don't know. Now how about we cut the head off the beast and get rid of the eye and just say not knowing from the heart? Who are you? I don't know. So we say feel the contraction and the release. You can actually feel the psyche function, or the ego function, inside here, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So we play with that game, so it gets the body involved in the process. Once that's done, then we say, "Okay, got that experience. Feel the difference? Feel it?" "Yes, I can feel the difference between receptivity physically, emotionally, philosophically."

​So the second question is that once somebody admits that, "Yes, deep listening is within me," and we do a dialectic here, a dialogue, so it's a transmission. So when I ask you, "Can you purely listen?" As an instructor, I have to be listening deeper, so I'm talking through to you but the listening here, so that's presented, can you listen? And so that's reflected and tasted, and that being the case, the second question is where in your body, mind, corporal spirit, being as your whole being is, is this deeper place of listening located? Is there a locus? Is it here, is it here? Is it in your feet? Where? We've discovered that 98% of people instantly go where? Where is the deepest place of listening within you, you're listening right now.
 
Erik: I feel it in my heart.
 
Jun Po: Yeah, and this is what everybody does. Not everybody because you got about 10% you get to have some fun with. So when you're in deep listening, you're in your heart. When you're in superficial listening, where are you?
 
Erik: My ears.
 
Jun Po: Yeah. Your ears, your head, your brain. It matters, I've got to figure this out, but if I just open and drift to the deepness, then I discover, oh, that locus goes to the heart center, heart chakra, in a sense the spiritual center. Whether this exists or not or it simply is a philosophical construct based on our interpretation of feeling, but this is what happens. It's there. So then we say what's the difference? So that being the case, now what's the difference for you if you're in heartfelt listening or you're in egocentric listening? So then you'll give a description of the difference between the states. We're deconstructing your perspective, or your view, or your position, experientially, and having you select language to describe it and to claim it.
 
You are now writing the new map. You're establishing a neurolinguistic. And you continue to fill this in. So there is pure listening within me, absolutely, and if I open to it, it's at my heart. If it's in my heart, fierce love and compassion is where I'm at. Then we say, "Okay, now who are you?" The next question once that's established. So if you establish that truth, and admission and owning. Then we say step is , okay, that being the case, now who are you at this step? And this is where you have fun once again because people will tell you what they think or what they feel.

​Zen is dog training. The first thing we do is teach you to sit, "Sit shutup, sit." So is that difficult? Yes, yes, yes. Difficult is delicious once you understand why you're doing it. You're leading to freedom. You need the ability to stay absolutely awake in the face of insult. Nothing can turn you away. Your heart breaks open. You stand naked, vulnerable and clear, if you would like. But to do it, then we say we have a traditional path you can follow. Concentrate go deeper, and deeper, and deeper. "Shhh," again and again. Do I have to do it again? How deep is your realization?
 
Can you maintain the integrity of the witness in normal circumstances in your life? Haitu [SP] I think was his name. Zen Master said, and Hakuin was the reason that I sit here. Hakuin revitalized Rinzai Zen in the 18th century. And he said meditation practice in your life is a thousand times more valuable than that sitting in a monastery on the cushion. I took that to heart. So meditation never ends. So develop the capacity to be in the witness and the intelligence as well as the egocentric referencing and you've won the game, you're home. So the first thing is develop that capacity. So are you willing to shift your perspective? The second question that we ask is, that being the case, can you listen purely? Erik, can you listen purely? Is there pureness running in you?
 
Erik: Yes, I think I can listen purely.
 
Jun Po: So now, I would say, "You think you can?"
 
Erik: I think I can. That's how I'm communicating with you.
 
Jun Po: Is that an escape clause? Can you or can't you? It's not about you. Is there deep pure listening within you, deeper than your self-reference? Am I ready 1,2,3?
 
Erik: Yes.
 
Jun Po: So one thing I like to do is play with the bell. I'll say, "Can you listen with no opinion?" Now, keep the sound out of deeper listening. Argue with it, "Stop, go away." Meanwhile, this bell penetrates deeper and deeper. The surface is reactivity. The bell is always ringing deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper into the period of receptivity. Can you listen? Can you just release your ego for a moment, open the mind, open the heart?
 
Erik: Well, it's very difficult to sustain.
 
Jun Po: Absolutely. That's why we practice. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice. Overtime and direct proportion to the amount of time and energy you spend in the discipline, you will have a result. Do it, you have a result, you don't do it, you don't. It's not rocket science. In direct proportion to the time you spend and introspective inside training you will have depth of [inquiries] and come forward.

​Erik: That's great. That's great. I'm curious, some folks may not have experience with meditation, or Zen may still seem very strange and foreign to them, especially the Koan practice. And so I'm curious, how is it that somebody may be listening to our dialogue right now could get in touch with that awareness right away? What would they have to do to get in touch with that at that awareness that you're talking about?
 
Jun Po: You have to shut up, shut up. Good Koan, shut up, shut up, shut up. So the first Koan that we use in the dialogue of the Mondo Dialogue is the question is, okay, it possible for you to purely listen? Can you listen with no opinion? Is their pure receptive listening deep within you? And then what we do is we sit for a while, and the instruction that you give yourself is listen, listen, listen. So the mind is repeating, the arrow is pointing at the purity of receptivity of your listening. The arrow is pointing at the moonlight at the center of your being.
 
It's like, "Listen, listen, listen." If the mind is busy, you can increase the repetitivity of that, listen, listen, listen. When the mind starts to become still, you listen. We use the listening practice as a Koan practice to get you deeper, and deeper, and deeper into silence. And so the first practice is the listening practice. So listening, it could be yabba-dabba-do. What are you doing to concentrate the mind to bring yourself right here? The Soto tradition will say you do nothing, you just sit and fall into stillness. So go ahead and sit and fall into stillness.
 
I discovered that didn't work for myself and most of my friends, so we went to the classical concentration practice, which is Hindustani. Katama, Sarafa Katama [SP] was a great yogi. He studied eight years with the two very well-known masters in his yogic tradition. During that time, he studied the [vinyasa] yoga process. So that being the case, he was trained about concentration practices leading to the insights, so Dharana leading to Dyhana. So we'd say, "Okay, what is that form? And realize it can be anything.
 
When they say mantras don't have meaning, then don't do them. Mantra, mind tomb or mind focus. If you're doing a mantra, you're doing a Koan, but the Koan is just the finger pointing at the moon. So you can say, well, the mantra has some mystical meaning, it doesn't matter what it is. Okay, you want to do it, but I'm saying why don't you have meaning and understand in what you are doing? So it isn't like I'll just sit and go yabba-dabba-do for 40 years. Why are you doing this? What is the technology involved? How is this going to work? Once you understand it, then you can surrender to it. Is it difficult? Yes, good things are difficult. So again, you should also shift your perspective. Is this hard? Absolutely. 

​Erik: That's great. That's great. I'm interested in learning a little bit more about what is it that can help people to do this more quickly? Are we just sitting on the cushion for 20 years, or is there a way we can get a result more quickly?
 
Jun Po: No, no. No! Sitting is of primary importance to develop the ability to stay with it, to stay present. So the sitting practice, but sitting Zazen is sittings meditation, sitting awareness. So there's moving awareness, right? It's like in the yoga system when I studied Viniyoga with Patabi, so where are you moving from in the physical process of attentiveness? We drive around all the time, so I say, "Do you have a car? Turn off your radio." I have a Buddha on my dashboard. My car is my Zendal [SP]. I get in, it's meditation. So your practice of meditation can be anywhere. Set aside time to make sure you do it. So I sit every morning for an hour. Practice is enlightenment. So it's like, "Well, why am I still sitting? I got the insight, blah blah blah." He is a really interesting character.
 
Erik: Who is an interesting character?
 
Jun Po: Yeah, he's an amusing character.
 
Erik: Who?
 
Jun Po: Pardon?
 
Erik: Who is?
 
Jun Po: Jun Po.
 
Erik: You.
 
Jun Po: [Stellar]. He's an enormously entertaining and amusing character from the perspective of witnessing. And he's wholly conditioned, and he's changed a great deal, and he has more work to do. So that being the case, the practice for me will not end. It's not like one day I'm going to achieve complete [foreign language 00:34:16] and not have an ego to deal with. Old triggers come up. I survived throat cancer nine years ago, stage four. I've got all the [inaudible 00:34:29] tissue in my throat, swallowing problems. Last year I developed Parkinson's disease.
 
It's like, "Hey ho." Well, the ego runs certain numbers on that and that your body goes into the sympathetic nervous system, your brain chemistry changes, I don't have the neurotransmitters. So, okay, practice is very helpful in relationship to counterbalance the reactivity in my emotional body and the reactivity in my physical body. So practicing is something I will always do, Chi gong, yoga, Tai-chi, swim, tango. I'm doing a lot of tango these days. It's really good for my balance with the Parkinson's. Sorry, I got off track there. 

​If we deconstruct your view right now and say would you consider the possibility, for instance, that anger as it's normally expressed, I'd say it's not really a feeling, it's an interjection or a violent reaction. Most people are talking about a violent reaction or projection when they're saying I'm feeling angry. Saying well what you can say that's a secondary thing, there's a visceral quality to it, but you're intervening in some way. Now what's the feeling under that? And nobody ever fails after a few questions. Fear, and what's with fear? A [pedigree] for sadness.
 
Something awful could happen. What's under that? Grave concern. I care deeply about this, I'm afraid, I'm a little bit sad. And okay, I'll protect, so I strike out, or I strike in, or I disassociate. So okay, well, stop it. Stop, no. Okay, what's the information in the feeling? Oh, I'm being insulted? I'm being dangerous? A bus is coming? What do I need to do? So it's a shift in the understanding of the nature and function of emotion and reactivity to emotion. Once you get that in place, then you re-visit the circumstances in your life. Has your mother ever made you angry? Has your father made you angry? No, they haven't made you angry. Those are chosen reactions to intervene in some way. That being the case, go back and re-visit them. In my Zen tradition we say, "Quickly, send me to hell. I think I'm ready to go."
 
Erik: What do you mean by that?
 
Jun Po: Put me in a situation where I'm challenged and see whether compassion comes up or the hysterical historical again arises. Insult me. This is what Christ did, turn the other cheek. He didn't say become masochistic. He was saying well thank you what was that about? I'm extremely angry. I care deeply. This matters, but I'm not violent anymore. I'm not an idiot. [Inaudible 00:31:31] and compassion. Not idiot compassion, but compassion. Help me to understand. What do we do? This is wholly unacceptable, wholly unacceptable. What do we do? I'm extremely angry, but I'm not violent. Could I be violent? The Dalai Lama, one time, said it so beautifully. He said, "Don't you hate the Chinese? Don't you feel anger and violence towards the Chinese?" and he said, "How would that be expedient?" When I heard that it was like, "Hallelujah."
 
Erik: Yeah.
 
Jun Po: I could do that if it would work, but why would I do it? 

​So, back to saying, "Okay, fundamentally what's the shift that's necessary in your understanding?" So what I did is I took my classical training and just compressed it, brought what I understand on my own psychological awakening transformation process and brought that all and brought it into the Koan, or dialectic dialogue process. This is a vehicle or a way to bring the ancient tradition forward and honor it and then integrate it into our culture and society. We're evolving. Like my master would say to me, he said, "There is no Zen outside Japanese culture." I said, "There must be." So it isn't like we're all going to become Japanese. How do we clean up the teaching? How do we get to the fundamentals, and do we present it for liberation, realization, and transformational circumstance?
 
I say your angst becomes your liberation. Fear is excitement and opportunity. Anger is intense clarity of mind and presence, not violent reaction. So all of these are done through a dialectic dialogue on your inside where you take your position. That reestablishes a map, you might say, or a neurolinguistic. The ego can react only with the memory structures it's got built up over a period of life. It goes to the database and it reacts. It goes to the database and it reacts. So we say, "Noknow." We use the noknow [calling], N-O-K-N-O-W. Noknow, I take my seed.
 
And then, Noknow, to stop the reactivity. And then what? What do I do? So we'd say, "Die upon your cushion." How can you be reborn? You have to die. Your ego has to grow and open up. So I dialogue with the air. Can I talk to your inner-being? Can I talk to your child? Can I talk to the reactive patterning, egocentrically? You get to grow up. The ego is not a problem. It's not problematic. It's a technical problem, not an emotional one where you change your philosophical perspective and paradigm based on your understanding and the nature of mind. It's your consciousness.
 
Erik: What do you mean that ego is a technical problem?
 
Jun Po: Well, what it becomes is you're no longer a victim of your emotionality. You're no longer subject to confused emotional reactivity. Once you understand and experience the nature of feelings, feeling is informational. This is again, basic Buddhism, smell, taste, touch, thought, feeling. Thought and feeling are some of the senses. So we have the physical senses and then we have the mind senses. So these are senses. They're all designed to bring information. And what we do is we get confused about the nature of the feeling, and we get confused of the emotional reactivity of the feeling. We don't get to the feeling.

​Erik: One of the reasons why we really wanted to feature you in this conference is because there are perhaps so many different folks in the Zen tradition who we could have conversations with, but it sounds to me as though you're bringing in a lot of these Western concepts. And I know integral theory is one that you're very familiar with, your referring to our genetics, our primate drives. Where is Zen going in the future? Is it possible to really [inaudible 00:23:41] this kind of awareness into this kind of map? How do we get this to grow and flourish as the modern Zen? What is modern Zen going to be?
 
Jun Po: Okay, so at the monastery once I received Inka, which is a recognition of transmission of mind, I found that suddenly it was problematic. I had to solve the riddle. I had to figure out how to do this. So wearing Chinese, Japanese dresses sitting in the monastery, eating sushi, the whole Japanese cultural affair. Japanese are beautiful people, but they suffer from racism, sexism, imperialism, and they're still quite held back, you might say, in certain ways. So suddenly it's my job to transmit and bring revolutionary, enlightening dharma into America. So how do I do that? How do I address the difficulties and the problems? Zen did not have the skill set involved.
 
So classically, Zen follows a path of right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right effort, right livelihood, right concentration, meditation and Samādhi. And classically, it comes in a cultural package, and what you do with the Koan study, there are 1,400 classical Koans. The Koan process of study ends with preset or behavior, but how do you understand that? Are you standing outside of it? It's like attempting to take an immature, unawakened individual and change their behavior when they're insistent upon this is who they are. It creates all kinds of confusion. So I made a rude joke, I said, "The only problem with psychotherapy and Zen is they don't work."
 
Now, I don't mean that, that's literally to get your attention. I'm saying their basis is still confused. If one thinks they're a self rather than a temporary process, you're caught in dealing with yourself as this entity as opposed to a process. Your egocentric process is a temporary process within the vehicle of consciousness. You are this consciousness. You can do whatever you would like to do based on how you translate and respond things. What is the correct understanding? So we're saying, "Okay, so what do we do? We'll throw out the bath water and keep the baby." Well, who is the baby? What does the baby have to do with Japanese culture?

​Erik: And so how does one do that? How does one recognize who one actually is? What is the practice? I know you have a Mondo Zen process and many people may have never heard of it before, and this is the first time that they're exposed to it. So what is Mondo Zen? What does it look like? How does it work?
 
Jun Po: Mondo Zen go back to the 6th, 7th century Chinese. Mondo is public dialogue or dialectic. It's like a Socratic dialectic theses, anti-theses and synthesis. So what happens is that a question is asked in the dialectic, what was your original face before your mother was born? So what is that question? How do you understand that question? That is a so-called enigmatic question. So those questions have been used inside the Zen vehicle to develop deeper insight. Where is the Buddha within you? So then you would use a concentration practice, like where, concentrating the mind. The ego now is concentrated with one thought that points in and says where, where, where, where, where? You don't look away. You don't turn away. You keep inquiring. You don't struggle with thought. You don't push it away. You just go return again and again to that deeper witnessing, witnessing within, going deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper. So the finger-pointing at the moon is a concentration practice. Classically, a concentration practice leads to insight.
 
In Zen, we have two schools. There are three schools left, but two schools that are significant in the United States. One is the Rinzai School, our school, that uses Koan or enigmatic questions as a concentration practice. The Soto School says, "No, that's kika-onza, that's confused, you must do Shikantaza which is just sit." My experience and our experience with just sitting is it gets lazy and your mind can run about. The Soto School is larger than the Rinzai School. The question is which school is more efficient? The answer is they both take about 20 years.
 
So whether you're just sitting, eventually and inevitably you'll fall into stones, we say it's more effective to concentrate. For me, it was necessary, the concentration practice, so I continue that. The concentration practice is the fundamental vehicle for stabilization of insight and mind. When the mind becomes absolutely still and stable, you experience mind this self instead of the finger pointing at the moon you get the moonlight. And then the moonlight illuminates and shines through the egocentric structure. Ego is not bad. It's a process, it's not a self. It's a temporary reflective process of duality and interpretation of circumstance based on genetic survival, procreation, patterns and sociopolitical [inaudible 00:22:56] from familial and then culturally. 

​Erik: Yes. So in terms of this sense of adolescence, of an adolescent spirituality, I think which could apply to all different kinds of spiritualities, people go through stages of development over time. And what does it look like to reach a mature, adult spirituality, if you would?
 
Jun Po: We have the realization of knowing who you are fundamentally. It's like, superficially speaking, we say the ego is a self, this is who I am, as opposed to who you are is the awareness of the consciousness. The ego is a temporarily constructed self-referencing product of mind. And this is why Buddhism is so exquisite in its teachings. Its fundamental teaching is the three marks of existence are impermanence, nothing lasts. If you really understand that, things change. Nothing lasts. Well, what does that mean that nothing lasts? Everything you're with is transitory and disappearing right before your eyes. Everything is evolving, coming into existence and disintegrating. So it's like, "Wow," right? So if you really get impermanence, things change. [Inaudible 00:17:38] impermanence.
 
The second is ouch, suffering, ouch, [inaudible 00:17:43] sickness, old age, and death, inevitable for all conditions. Impermanence leads to disintegration and dissolving, disappearance. And then finally, emptiness, [foreign language 00:17:58], emptiness. Fundamentally, my so-called spirit is empty, void of ego. Ego is a temporary manifestation that comes with the biophysical circumstances of the Homo sapien construction. It's like, "How extraordinary. This mind is temporary. My view is temporary." And if we deconstruct you down a timeline, you'd get to infancy where if you can regress that deeply, you'd get it.
 
There's you, but there's you without view and opinion. You haven't built the neurolinguistic structures, you haven't built mind enough yet, to get that sense of self. Whenever the sense of self begins, the ego constructs. But if we disintegrate you down the line, you'll come to that truth of the spirit, spirituality, the pure spirit awareness that you actually are at the root. So then are you egocentric in your orientation or Buddha centric? Are you looking at the world as an unbelievable manifestation of divinity unfolding all circumstances?
 
And do you go deep enough into that state of realization to taste the compassion [of him that holds naturally]. I say if you go deep enough into the witness, you'll discover the intelligence that comes with the gift of life, and that that intelligence is louder, you might say, or brighter than emotional reactivity, so suddenly you've got a whole different shift and understanding the nature and intention, function of emotion. It's not you. It's a conditioned reaction. So then you can reestablish and reprogram yourself, re-write your map, and live in freedom.
 

​Jun Po: Spiritually, speaking, a pure psychedelic, and the psychedelic that I'm speaking of is 100% denormal lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD 25, but not an impure product, an absolutely pure product. If you take that in a ritual setting with the correct support, what you can do is disintegrate your ego and have a realization of the pure receptive consciousness or spirit within, dhyana. That can happen. And then you can also have a non-dual realization integration with circumstances. There's one breathing, living, God, you might say, or Universe, you might say, or reality.
 
And then there's a perspective and interpretation of that through a translation of the reflection between sentience or consciousness and formalized matter, and you can have that realization come into the divine union, the tantra of the moment, you might say. One living being and then, "Oh," you get the integration. You can also have the experience of the purity of, like I said, the outer mind or meditative mind, or what we call deep mind or [Buddha] mind. So that's a possibility. The problem is that with psychedelics, when you start to have a disintegration process of your egocentric circumstances you start to see what is, there's a tendency to hallucinate, and so you can become distracted in the path.
 
So it's very effective at getting you an insight experience, but then you say how do you integrate this insight into your life? How do you utilize this insight in your life? So it brought me back to a philosophical and cultural religious tradition that gave support and a way and a vehicle for that, which then brought on the necessity. We'll get there later, but to say, "Okay, that being the case, how is this explained and understood? How does this transform our lives? What are the mechanics? What's the experience? How do we go forward? Once you've got the insight, what is the meaning of the insight?"
 
Buddhism begins with correct understanding, not correct meditation. So what is your understanding? What is your perspective? Where do you take your seat? Do you take your seat egocentrically or Buddha centrically, meaning are you conscious? Meaning are you aware of the depth of the clarity and the purity of your consciousness and the stability of it, or are you confused by the superficial interactors and reactivity of the ego mind? Or can you see through that? So the psychedelic can be a way to give you the experience. Then you have to sort it all out and figure it out so that you can integrate it and bring it into your life.
 

​And I'm not reincarnatious or [foreign language 00:06:20] in my understanding and practice at that particular time, so I was attracted to Zen and Buddhism, in particular because I love The Buddha's story when he was asked, "Do you believe in life after death? Do you believe in another world? Do you believe in [foreign language 00:06:36]?" His answer was, "We have more important things to discuss." When I got that line I went, "Oh, okay, this is something I won't even take a look at.
 
Then I was looking for a serious discipline and I studied ray chung [SP] with Trupa [SP] and I studied BKS lyengar in the yogic tradition, Patabi Jois, I got certified to teach in the [ungi] tradition teaching yoga. Then I discovered Eido Roshi. I had read an article he had written, Eido Shimano Roshi, and the article said, "Don't send me anymore more PhDs, I already know everything." So again, this really struck really deep in my heart. It got it, so I went and saw him. Dai Bosatsu Zendo is the most magnificent place.
 
It's in the Catskill Mountains, two mile private roads, 1,600 acres of hard-rock maples and mixed forest, second highest lake in the Catskills, great old Victorian on the lake. And a 25,000 foot monastery built up on the side of a hill. And so that was a place for me to train. So I trained on and off there for 17 years. I spent six years there as the head monk and then the Vice Abbot before I received lineage recognition in 1992. So the path was one of frustration and confusion and then discipline. I drank, I used drugs. The whole traditional path and way, and then came to deciding that I needed a deeper realization and understanding, and Zen fit me quite well, especially the Rinzai style, Koan style with intense Koan concentration practice leading to the insight. So then I...
 
Erik: So Jun Po, I'm curious, before we go into the more recent or what has become your life's path of Zen, many people may have some ideas about psychedelics and spirituality. Some people may think they're bad and dangerous, a distraction. Some people may feel that they're necessary and some people may feel that they're just a doorway, and we are featuring a day in the event where we're looking at psychedelics as a medical treatment for PTSD and other things. I'm curious from somebody with now a discipline in the Zen tradition, what is your view on their value and benefit in general?

​Jun Po: Yes. And my mother had six late-term miscarriages and had nine children successfully. One died at one day, he was only one day old when he died. That was the brother before me. So I'm saying that the physical reality of being in the survival mode in the womb, right, there's a lot of psychologic work trying to get into my shadow states and understanding the nature of my psyche and my ego, and trace it back to childhood and couldn't find it, and couldn't find, and then finally went deeper into it schematically and recognized a source of my, you might say, intensity or basic character, drive in my character.
 
And then I was a Roman Catholic at the time, doing my best to be a Roman Catholic boy, and then I started asking questions because I was very confused, when I was quite young, about Catholicism and some of the things they taught, such as mortal sin or eternal damnation for a finite deed. That confused me a great deal. And the idea of a virgin birth and the mystic, mythopoetic belief structures, I wanted to understand. So the beginning, then the quest was to understand where do I come from, what's life about, who am I? So that began quite early in my search.
 
And then after about 20 years, I ended up in California and discovered psychedelics. I experimented with psychedelics for about a decade, and used them in a spiritual context not in the partying context. I'd set up meditation and do yoga practices, and kept trying to open the door using psychedelics. Discovered it was quite effective at [adjuncting] state experiences, but I didn't have a context, I didn't have a perspective, I didn't have a place to understand and realize those, so that led me to returning and getting more and more interested in and about the discipline of yoga.
 
Then I discovered in the yoga that great yoga school is the Zen school. Zen is how the Japanese say Zen-a or Zen-ah, and that's how the Chinese say Jhana, and Jhana is how the Chinese say dhyana, the second phase in the yogic Indostine Buddhist tradition of the meditative discipline. So first of all, concentration practice leading to deep awareness, realization, and then what I call unreasonable enjoyment or Samādhi, so that whole process. So I got disciplined about it, and then I searched for teachers and the teaching.
 

​Man: This is A Psychology of the Future-The Online Summit, presented by Erik Lenderman. Learn about the principles of practical psychology from leaders in the field of self-development, spirituality, neuroscience, medicine and more. Thank you for joining us.
 
Erik: Hello to everybody listening, and thank you for joining us at A Psychology of the Future-The Online Summit. I'm your host, Erik Lenderman, and today I'm introducing Jun Po Roshi. Jun Po is a fully empowered Rinzai Zen lineage holder, and he studied with the earliest of Japanese Zen teachers to arrive in the U.S. during a time when they still considered us to be too barbaric and uncivilized to train in Zen. And so Jun Po is formerly known in his Western name as Dennis Kelly. And he has published books including "The Heart of Zen" and his biography "A Heart Blown Open." Jun Po is also the leader of the Hollow Bones Society and the developer of The Mondo Zen Process which is an approach to Zen training and enlightenment that incorporates dialogue and neurolinguistic programming. So Jun Po, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the conference.
 
Jun Po: I'm delighted to be here and thanks so much for this opportunity to share this dharma. I'm really looking forward to the event.
 
Erik: Thank you. Thank you. Yes, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you with us. So I'd like to ask a few questions and the first being your back story, your journey. Where did you come from, and how is it that you came to be one of the first Westerners to be a recognized Zen lineage holder?
 
Jun Po: Well, I come from nowhere.
 
Erik: Ah-ha.
 
Jun Po: And what was the second part of the question?
 
Erik: The physical journey of your physical body in this lifetime. How did you come to become Zen lineage holder?
 
Jun Po: Karma. The unfolding of karma and circumstances. I was born in 1942 and my beginning was quite interesting. My mother and father had Rh-negative blood problems. My brother before me lived one day. I was born at seven months with no fingernails, so when I arrived, I arrived being created by the sacred mother and practical physical mother and simultaneously being poisoned and destroyed. So I came out, you might say, with a bit of an attitude.
 
Erik: So, your parents had a blood type that was toxic to your body?

​Erik: Great. Thank you, and if you wanna learn more about MAPS, go to maps.org, M-A-P-S, and we'll have a link to that website beneath the video here that you can click if you wanna learn more.
 
 
Virginia: Thank you, Eric.
 
 
Erik: All right, thank you.
 
 
Virginia: Thanks for including psychedelic researchers and scientists in your larger conference.
 
 
Erik: Absolutely, it's a pleasure. I will be in touch with you just after our call to check in.
 
 
Virginia: Great. Thank you.
 
 

​Erik: Virginia, I think it's really exciting, and I'm also aware that you're on your way to another meeting?
 
 
Virginia: Yes, I am. One minute.
 
 
Erik: So if there's anything else you wanna share with folks to just...well, concluding thoughts?
 
 
Virginia: Yes, I know that's pretty much. I'm coming to the end. I just wanted to let them know. I did have a few things I wanted to say about the future of psychedelics and therapy. And I think I've said them, but I wanted to restate them, which is psychedelics are one of the ways I think that therapists will learn the transpersonal states, states of higher consciousness, states that go beyond a person's immediate intellectual experience, the way that those will be embraced by psychotherapy. I think that there's been a bit of fear about that, at least among traditional therapists.
 
 
And I think that having psychedelics as a tool for therapists will help integrate that back into the work. And Stan Grof, again, in his LSD psychotherapy, in his paper Psychology of the Future, is a really good source for that or to understand that work. Also, I think psychedelics will continue to show promise. I think that psychedelic psychotherapy can be used for treating these kinds of anxieties, addictions, trauma-related conditions, and that they will be used more as they become rescheduled from schedule one to schedule two or three.
 
 
Also, I think that psychedelic research, the importance of it and the using it as a therapy will help end the drug war, which I spoke about earlier. And I think those are my three concluding remarks. I really believe that this is gonna work. The literature is explosive on the subject. The studies are increasing daily, more and more studies are being approved by governments around the world. And I think that many people will be helped. They already have.
 
 
Erik: Wonderful, wonderful. An over 80% success rate so far with the MDMA in treating PTSD is very exciting. So thank you for all of the work that you all are doing at MAPS, and thank you also for joining us at the conference today. And I thank you for helping to promote the conference to your community, and we're looking forward to having folks from other communities learn about your work as well. So thank you so much for joining us, Virginia.
 
 
Virginia: And thank you all out there for listening. 

​And then we have another one in Boulder, which is PTSD from any source using...we always use a male/female therapist team, so that the patient can relate to either a man or a woman. That study, we're doing one experienced therapist paired with an intern, so we can see if that works just as well. And then we have smaller studies in Israel, where they have have a lot of war trauma that they're trying to cure and heal, and then a study in Vancouver.
 
 
All of these will done this year. We will take this phase two data, and we will summarize it and take it to the FDA, and then get permission, we believe, that will be approved. So we will go to phase three and then work with hundreds of subjects. That we hope to be have done by 2021, when we will have MDMA as a prescription. Well, actually, MDMA-assisted psychotherapy as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. That is also something unusual, and it's unusual in this therapy going forward.
 
 
I think with psychedelics, there's a general sense among the therapists that you don't do this without a therapist, or a shaman in the case of an ayahuasca or an ibogaine experience, because they're such powerful drugs. And there's a body of research that supports its safe and beneficial use, so you might as well use that experience in the works that we're doing and others are doing with it now. So we hope to have this as a prescription drug for post-traumatic stress disorder. We also have two smaller studies, one for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for people on the autism spectrum, adults on the autism spectrum, and that is also showing...we just published a paper on that. It's showing also very positive results.
 
 
Because we're trying to address the anxiety, and it seems like the MDMA-assisted psychotherapy addresses trauma, anxiety, depression, these kinds of things. We have another parallel track with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for the fear of death for people with life threatening illnesses, and that's happening in Murin [SP]. That started last week, so it's just begun. We also have four parallel studies using MDMA with people who are in the Veterans Administration in the Department of Defense. We're working in partnership with them. So will MDMA help current therapies?
 
 
And so we have four small studies that are not really part of the phase two drug development plan, but there's parallel studies to help us understand more about post-traumatic stress disorder, and to help people working on post-traumatic stress disorder understand more about MDMA and psychedelic psychotherapy. So there's a real nice relationship beginning there. It started small, but we've done a little bit great about helping with relationships with those people. 

​So the idea was to bring it back into research, number one, and that happened. The first study was completed, and it was found of 20 people that had treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder, primarily from rape, sexual abuse, and early childhood trauma, mostly women, that 83% no longer had post-traumatic stress after taking MDMA with therapy for 2 or 3 times.
 
 
That's the protocol. The protocol only calls for the use of the drugs two to three times, along with therapy prior to the drug experience and in between the drug experiences. So it's a very light touch on the drug and a very light touch on the therapy as well, actually. It's a very hands-off kind of thing, where the therapist acts as guide, based on the therapy that's been done with Stan Grof, the work that has been done for years on psychedelic therapy.
 
 
That the intent going in is important. The setting is important. You do it in comfortable places that are safe, that are quiet, that are more like a living room situation than a doctor's office. And then the therapist is there to make sure to find the inner healer within the person under therapy. Michael Mithoefer, the therapist that has developed the protocol, primarily the lead therapist on the protocol development, has said that it is like penicillin. You use penicillin, and then the body heals itself. The body knows how to heal itself. Well, that's also true with this therapy. The idea is that the individual knows how to heal themselves, and they just need a little bit of a break from the trauma or the wounds that the trauma has caused, so that they can heal themselves.
 
 
So the first study did find incredible results, very, very strong results. Eighty three percent no longer having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is highly unusual. Other drugs, Zoloft and the antidepressants, they get about a 7%, but of course, they've been through the entire phase two and phase three clinical trial process.
 
 
We have only done one completed study, and we have four currently running now. They're all showing similar results. We have a veteran study, a study with only veterans. So the first study was mostly women from sexual abuse and childhood trauma. This second study, we thought, "Well, is it gonna work for veterans as well?" And so the study includes veterans, police officers, and firefighters. And we are enrolling the last couple. It'll be a study of 25 patients, subjects. That's just about over. It'll be over this summer. 

​And then MAPS, that's where I work, MAPS has decided to work with MDMA. Based on the literature, the stories that we heard...and we have an extensive literature review that goes on from the beginning of the use of MDMA to now. We have this incredible library of every study that's ever been done. We have taken that information, so MAPS has looked at the literature on MDMA and found there's a couple of things that we've noticed over time. Not myself, but early on, Rick Doblin, the founder noticed over time. And that is that it's good for treating trauma, and it's good for opening up relationships to people. And so this was just from looking at stories people have told and nonclinical research.
 
 
So he thought, "Well, what is the biggest problem we have right now?" And one of the problems that we have right now is post-traumatic stress disorder. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a disorder that is prevalent in the country, that a third of the people that have treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder do not get better in the current treatments. And as we know from reading the news, 20% of the veterans coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq have post-traumatic stress disorder. And the suicide rate right now with veterans is 20 to a day, so it's really a problem. We really need to address that.
 
 
So Rick Doblin got together with Michael Mithoefer and Annie Mithoefer, and they sat down in one of the famous how to get things going stories on the back of a napkin or something. On a pad of paper, they sketched out what they would do to take MDMA and use it for post-traumatic stress disorder, and what are the clinical trials, and how do you get it passed, and how do you work with the DEA, and how do you work with FDA, and how do you work with the institutional review boards, and all of the processes for getting a drug to market.
 
 
Rick had already founded MAPS, a nonprofit, earlier, and this was the way that he felt getting MDMA back as a prescription medicine, would be the best path. When MDMA was made illegal, the staff of the FDA said, "This really should be not schedule one. This really does look like there's medical benefit." But because of the politics of the times, they decided to make it schedule one, which is unfortunate, because again, it cut it off from research.
 

​You've seen the television programs when they show you the ad for the drug, and then the rest of the ad is about the risks. So all drugs have risks. I don't think we should ignore that fact. But the real way to get over the problem is to deal with it with compassion and with science, not fear. So that's what we're doing here. I wanna talk a little bit about it.
 
 
So as the research comes back around, in the '90s, late '90s and 2000s, some people said, "Enough is enough. We know these drugs from earlier studies have benefits. We know marijuana is not the evil that it has been said that it is. Let's start doing the research and find out." The problem is that the research was funded by the government. Most drug development research is funded by the government, or corporations. And these drugs, psychedelics, they're off patent, so there's no reason for drug companies to develop them. And they're schedule one, meaning that the government has decided that there's no medical benefit and their high potential for abuse.
 
 
So there's no real funding. There's three organizations that said, "Okay, this has got to stop. The benefit is so strong. We've got to research them." MAPS is one of those organizations. The other is Heffter, and another is in the United Kingdom, Beckley Foundation. And so Beckley Foundation, Heffter Institute, and MAPS, all started raising money from individuals and sponsoring clinical research. Heffter has been doing mostly psilocybin. You might have seen some of those stories in the news. They found a lot of benefit with tobacco addiction, stopping addiction to cigarettes. And with OCD, they did a study, obsessive-compulsive disorder, with spirituality, which is not exactly a medical condition, but they've done some work with that as well, measuring the effect of openness in their studies.
 
 
We also study openness with MDMA. And Beckley Foundation is focused more on neuroscience, so they measure brainwaves. They're the people that discovered that psychedelics slow down the processing of the frontal cortex. So that rather than psychedelics enhancing the imagination in some way, they found, during neuroscience, that it actually slows down the part of the brain that organizes information for the individual, that makes structure. It actually dampens that part of the brain, so that's interesting work they're doing. They're doing work now. We work with these organizations.
 

​With any drug, there's risks. If you take a drug day after day after day, and you go out dancing, and you don't drink water, and you dance all night, people have died from this. Primarily, they've died from mixing drugs, because again, on the street, if you don't know what you're taking, you're not taking a pure MDMA, you're not taking the drug that you think you're taking, and you're taking things mixed in with it, then that can be very, very dangerous. So it's a toxic stew of chemicals out there, and part of that is the problem with prohibition, where you can't go and get your drugs tested before you use them. It's really unfortunate.
 
 
It's unfortunate that drugs have been made illegal, because it makes using them a lot more dangerous, and people don't know what they're taking. They think they're buying something on the the street, and it's not that at all. So MAPS, as an organization, and the people that work there really believe in a post-prohibition world. In the same way that alcohol caused gangs to develop, gangsters, they're called, I guess, not gangs, that has happened now in this world. When you make something illegal, all you do is drive it underground and make it more dangerous.
 
 
And drug cartels now exist in the world that are killing thousands of people. And we need to end the drug war. And one of the ways we can do it, there's a lot of people working on that right now, and that's great, if you're interested in this topic more, I would highly suggest going to the Drug Policy Alliance website. They have some of the most compelling evidence about the harms of the drug war. But we are doing it. MAPS does it by research.
 
 
And we take these drugs, and we're working with MDMA now, and we're showing in reality what the drugs do, what they're good for, what the contraindications are. That's also very important with anything you're putting into your body. Whether it's food or alcohol or a drug, you wanna know when you shouldn't take it. And psychedelics have contraindications. There's a general sense, for example, that if you have a personality disorder, if you're not real strong in your personality, that this is probably not the drugs you wanna take. For example, if you have a heart problem, you probably don't wanna take MDMA.