Keith Martin-Smith is a freelance writer in Boulder, CO, where
he teaches Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, Buddhism, and writing.
Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi is founder of the internationally
recognized Hollow Bones order of the American Rinzai Zen tradition
and creator of Mondo Zen, a unique contribution to a 1,500-year-old
wisdom lineage that unites emotional maturity and spiritual
awareness, creating a powerful synthesis of Eastern contemplative
wisdom and Western psychological insight. Jun Po received his Zen
Master recognition in 1992. Interested in bringing his Zen lineage
into American culture without the Japanese cultural bindings, Jun
Po left the monastery and founded the lay Buddhist Hollow Bones
order, of which he is abbot. A yoga instructor as well, he traces
his lineage to BKS Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois. Jun Po travels
internationally offering Mondo Zen retreats.
A HEART BLOWN OPEN: THE LIFE AND PRACTICE OF ZEN MASTER JUN PO
DENIS KELLY ROSHI
ForeWord Review
"Kelly came back to the question again and again: what did it mean
to be an American Zen Roshi nearing the twenty-first century?"
If Denis Kelly's life was made into a novel, no one would believe
it, so the truth, told here as accurately as possible by author and
fellow Zen Buddhist Keith Martin-Smith, must suffice: Kelly crossed
every inner river, climbed every emotional mountain, slayed every
psychological dragon, to arrive at a place of peacefulness.
Most of us imagine that a spiritual master would be a person of
high moral integrity, likely celibate, and definitely vegetarian,
someone who speaks in terse mysterious phrases and smiles a lot.
Someone rather like the Dalai Lama, whom Kelly has met. Kelly had a
habit, begun in grade school, of telling people in authority that
what they said was "bull--" and he didn't spare the Dalai Lama that
assessment. The assertion generally resulted in shock and
expulsion, but not in the case of the Dalai Lama, who just smiled
and told Kelly that his spiritual insight wasn't deep enough yet.
Oddly, it was his tendency to blow up at authority that led to
Kelly's heart being blown open, and to his becoming a spiritual
master himself.
Kelly grew up with an abusive alcoholic father who savagely beat
his sons while his mother turned a blind eye. This gave the boy a
hatred of men in authority and a mistrust of all women that took
him years to overcome. The only saving grace in his youth was a
memory from infancy, of finding solace in a "sense of pervasive
peace ... a silence out of which everything arose." Because of that
fleeting but seemingly endless moment, despite all the self-ruining
experiences Kelly had to go through, he was drawn to meditation and
to Buddhism.
Along the way to becoming a Zen adept, he was a wealthy drug
dealer, a founding member of the California "family" that in the
1970s
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