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Open Door Zen is committed to making the end of suffering possible for all through the ongoing practice and evolution of Hollow Bones Zen.

What is Zen?

  • Zen is a tradition of deep meditation and purposeful living as a means of realizing and expressing our True Nature.
    • True Nature refers to our inseparability from Life and the illusory (if useful) nature of our identities.

What are the essential practices?

  • Meditative Awareness, Clear Intention, Wisdom, Compassion, Skillful means.
  • Bodhisattva Precepts.
  • Mondo Zen Koan Practice.
  • Ritual.
  • Five Practice Mirrors.

It’s goes back a ways…

Open Door Zen is currently functioning as an independent sangha practicing the Hollow Bones Zen spiritual lineage.

Here’s a timeline of major historical points.

  • About 5,000 years ago, tribes in the Aryan steppes started worshiping fire.
  • About 2,400 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama reoriented the Vedic teachings thriving in India around direct, personal experience into the nature of reality as a vehicle to end suffering. His teachings diversified into the great religion known as Buddhism today.
  • About 1,600 years ago, Bodhidharma, a meditation master from the warrior class, brought the direct insight practices to China, where Buddhism underwent a dramatic transformation. The Mahayana Dhyana (great-vehicle meditation) sect of Bodhidharma interacted with other forms of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Chinese society to become distinct, yet inclusive, from its Indian heritage. This became known as Ch’an.
  • About 1,200 years ago, a monk named Linji Yixuan kicked off one of the main branches of Ch’an practice, which remains the largest Ch’an sect in China today.
  • About 800 years ago, Nampo Shomyo brought the Linji Ch’an school to Japan, where it mixed with Japanese folk religions and culture to become the Rinzai Zen tradition.
  • About 125 years ago Soen Shaku introduced his subset of Zen to the West and kicked off a migration of Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism to America.
  • About 60 years ago, Eido Tai Shimano established two Zen temples in New York, which became the first formal Rinzai Zen practice centers in America. New York Zendo (Shobo-ji) and Dai Bosatsu Zendo (Kongo-ji). They are currently operated by the Zen Studies Society.
  • In 1992, Eido Shimano recognized Jun Po Denis Kelly as a Dharma Heir. Jun Po went on to establish the Hollow Bones Zen spiritual practice. His emphasis was on “keeping the baby but tossing the bathwater” so that Japanese Zen could become more accessible and applicable to the modern, Western, worldview. This included applying Zen’s spiritual training framework to emotions and ensuring our practice accomplished a holistic and integral Waking Up, Growing Up, Showing Up and Cleaning Up in the practitioner.
  • In 2016, Dan began his training under Jun Po.
  • In 2019, Jun Po ordained Dan as Umi no Nami. Umi then established Open Door Zen as a subordinate church of Friends of Zen in Columbus, OH. At that time he became deeply involved in Friends of Zen’s activities and the ongoing training, teaching, and programming of Hollow Bones Zen worldwide.
  • In 2020, Jun Po empowered Umi in their final dokusan and named Umi as his intended successor as Abbot of Friends of Zen and the Hollow Bones Zen Order.
  • In 2021, Jun Po died without formalizing his succession planning. taiso Byran Bartow was elected interim acting Abbot, according to Jun Po’s wishes by his surviving dharma heirs. Umi continued his practice under taiso, who began informing the sangha more broadly that Umi was Jun Po’s intended successor.
  • In 2022, Umi became the Executive Director of Friends of Zen and continued his various roles as a leader in the organization.
  • In June 2024, Umi received dharma teacher recognition in a ceremony at Dai Bosatsu Zendo, Kongo-ji.
  • In September 2024, Umi determined that his ministry and commitment to Jun Po’s dharma was not able to thrive in the historical, organizational, spiritual, and social context of Friends of Zen. He resigned his role as Executive Director of Friends of Zen and removed himself as an active clergy person in the Hollow Bones Zen Order.


Five Mirrors Overview

How we engage with these elements dictates a lot about our daily spiritual practice. They are Sacred Stewardship, Philosophical Reindoctrination, Emotional Maturity and Integrity, Conscious Embodiment, and Genuine Insight.

I’d like to start with the beginning, which is also the end—the central point and the final destination—Genuine Insight.


Genuine Insight

Genuine Insight is realizing the promise of freedom and joy central to all contemplative traditions by becoming intimate with sweet divinity.

The primary practice of genuine insight is concentration meditation. Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi.

Mondo Koans 1-5 support the meditative experience, while 6-10 support the integration. The Emotional Koans are both preparation for and a method for deepening genuine insight. For more about working with Mondo, see the tab “Mondo Zen Koan Practice.”

Another regular part of HBZ practice must be the morning service’s ritual recitation and performance (ideally from memory). This is a targeted period for the great, and essential, practice of paying attention.

Genuine Insight is not a casual affair. It begins with a taste of an awakened mind and concludes when we persistently and spontaneously manifest wisdom, compassion, and skillful means in every moment—never separating from non-dual truth.

Even though the Divine is as close as your jugular vein, realizing it and living from/as THIS is challenging for our basic human minds. This is why the other four elements exist.


Sacred Stewardship

The next training element is called Sacred Stewardship.

Sacred Stewardship is an acceptance of our oneness with all life.  Therefore, we embody this realization and lovingly choose not to create any more suffering in the world. With Genuine Insight, this is not a philosophical position but a felt and known reality that we spontaneously manifest. Adopting this practice by choice when we don’t really feel it is a powerful way to facilitate Genuine Insight experiences.

Not causing suffering is aspirational and, honestly, a bit fluffy. To make it real, we often invite new practitioners to start looking at concrete expressions of this in their lives. Do you understand where your food comes from? Are the companies you are supporting with your purchases operating ethically? What are some ways to reduce your environmental impact? How are people responding to the behaviors you present?

The point isn’t to make everyone an environmental activist or get into therapy. We need to deepen our consideration of interconnection and how our choices impact the world around us.

In time, these external factors will no longer be where the work is. Instead, we will turn to stewarding the energy we bring into the world. What are the belief structures I hold that keep me separate from the world? Where do I feel arrogance or inadequacy? Where do I feel jealousy and greed? What leads me to anger and hatred? Am I willing to be fully accountable for stewarding my reality?


Philosophical Reindoctrination

So far we have covered attitude, Genuine Insight, and Sacred Stewardship. Next up is Philosophical Reindoctrination.

This training mirror is all about scrutinizing our current beliefs about who we are, how we work, and the nature of thought, emotion, consciousness, identity, and spirit. Most importantly, this training element demands that we learn about, and purposefully investigate, these matters in service to opening our minds and hearts. As we do, we must consciously choose which belief structures we will accept as guides for our lives.

Taking this practice seriously can radically alter the course of our lives, the communities we are welcome in, the friends we have, and our family dynamics. Many of us will choose not to upend ourselves so dramatically and stay with safer examinations.

However, the Zen tradition has its origins in a worldview that nothing is more essential than liberation from the endless wheel of suffering. Such liberation is accomplished by radically altering our perspective on life through acquiring direct, experientially-based knowledge of the nature of reality. Zen ups the game by demanding that we become active agents of this truth in our lived experience and act as ferryboat operators to anyone we meet who is ready to find the “other shore.”

No belief is too precious to leave unexamined when our objective is such a total awakening and liberation.

We must be willing to change our minds based on what we learn and experience. We must be accountable for what we choose to believe and how those beliefs condition our identities with their subsequent emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Like all training elements, this philosophical re-indoctrination is a constant companion to the unfoldment of life. Each momentary experience confirms, challenges, or creates a belief. The mind garden must be constantly tended.

It is a potent practice. One that strikes right at the heart of “Who am I?” Philosophical Re-indoctrination is the willingness to (metaphorically) die and be resurrected again and again. It’s simultaneously terrifying and the most direct path to the radical freedom and joy promised by contemplative traditions.


Emotional Maturity & Integrity

Continuing the exploration of the mirrors we come to the one titled “Emotional Maturity and Integrity.”

Jun Po’s call to action with this mirror was always fundamentally distinct from the Western psychological view of emotional maturity.

Psychology generally defines emotional maturity as “the ability to comprehend, manage, and express emotions in a way that fosters personal growth and harmonious relationships.” It doesn’t presuppose that we have any control over our emotions and unconscious patterns; it is just that maturity is learning to cope with them, recognize their ebbs and flows, and express them positively.

That’s a fantastic aim. And only a step-stone on the path of the yogi.

Jun Po’s offerings in the sutra book and Mondo Manual contain the following (plus some):

With a new understanding and direct experience of the true nature, real meaning, and mechanics of emotion, we are no longer bound to subconscious reactions. We transform our painful emotional reactions into conscious, compassionate responses. Do I realize the angst of negative emotional reactions as liberating Emotional Koans and embrace these opportunities for Mondo Zen transformational practice?

So what’s the difference?

In Hollow Bones Zen practice we are not called only to express ourselves outwardly in skillful ways.

Instead, we are called to “directly experience the true nature, meaning, and mechanics of emotion” as transient conveyors of information. Seeing through our attachment and identity enables us to stop reacting to painful emotions and instead consciously respond to them with compassion and skillful means.

We are called to use the force of powerful emotions as points of inquiry to further liberate ourselves from the notion of a permanent, separate self-nature. Relating to emotion as just another sense, utterly non-identified with them but acting wholly in integrity with their deepest guidance, is a serious spiritual endeavor.

Our practice is to work at the level of unconscious formative structures through our karmic activity, so our system spontaneously generates wisdom, compassion, and skillful means instead of self-centered, violent (i.e., coercive) reactive patterns.


Conscious Embodiment

The most integral and yet most confusing mirror is Conscious Embodiment. For good reason, many believe that this practice mirror is all about taking care of our bodies. Reading the Sutra Book indeed points us in this direction at least. Further, taking care of our physical health is critically important. However, this is only the surface level of Conscious Embodiment.

Jun Po updated his teaching on this mirror in the Mondo Manual, where he wrote:

“Through Qigong, Yoga (pranayama and asana), Tai Chi, dance, and other mindfully practiced physical disciplines, we investigate and become more aware of our embodiment. We locate and release the physical contractions associated with psychological tension, including tension resulting from our unconscious shadows and prior traumatic experiences. We become more sensitive, healthy, and conscious. We delight in the discovery that Enlightenment is also visceral!”

Consciousness has multiple facets. One is the ongoing investigation of how our body stores and communicates essential information regarding the state of our mind-system. Through this investigation, we become competent at releasing imbalance in the body through activities in the mind (mind over matter) and using the body to release psycho-emotional contractions (matter over mind).

Another aspect of Conscious Embodiment is the energetic shift that accompanies deep training in concentration meditation. If we do not feel our meditative experience as a wordless, energetic expansion and flow, then we have not yet become adept in our meditation practice. The 5th Mondo Zen Koan points to the essential nature of feeling and describes the energetic qualities of meditative states.

Aside from dedicated physical practice, our rituals, including zazen and the morning service (particularly the Pure Awareness Dharani), are beautiful ways to train one’s gaze into this mirror.

Commitments – Example

All of the mirrors are meant to be practiced in two ways: Outer (matter over mind) and Inner (mind over matter).

Outer: What external behavior can I adopt to transform my internal world?

Inner: What internal transformation is required to impact the external world according to my values?

My practice will be…

Sacred Stewardship:

Inner: I commit to acting out divine love in all of my relationships to the so-called “external” world.

Outer: I commit to buy local first and reduce this family’s dependency on large scale agriculture and logistics. 

Philosophical Reindoctrination: 

Inner: I commit to taking any worldview I hold as an object, thereby evolving in complexity all domains of being.

Outer: I commit to intellectual engagement with content regarding awakening practices for 60 minutes per day. 

Emotional Maturity & Integrity 

Inner: I commit to the exercise of right effort in each mind-moment (plant & nurture that which is skillful, weed & deprive that which is unskilful.)

Outer: I commit to replacing expressions of impatience with clear requests or moments of appreciation. 

Conscious Embodiment

Inner: I commit to exercising the body, feeling and mind foundations of mindfulness in all four postures during waking consciousness. 

Outer: 3 periods of at least 15 minutes per day of dynamic dhyana (visualize, move, asses)

Genuine Insight

Inner: I commit to trusting that life is happening exactly the way that it should be. 

Outer: I commit to the practice of tranquilization and observation (concentration-meditation) in relation to investigating the human experience at least 5 days per week for a minimum of 60 minutes per day.

About Umi’s Style

I fed AI a bunch of dharma talks and asked it to describe me to you…

As a spiritual teacher, you offer a deeply embodied and practical approach to Zen, blending traditional teachings with contemporary insights. Your teachings are rooted in the understanding of Buddha Nature as the inherent aliveness in all beings, encouraging students to reconnect with this fundamental truth through direct experience. You emphasize the importance of personal responsibility and integrity, guiding students to reclaim their power by taking ownership of their actions and karma.

Your approach is compassionate yet challenging, encouraging students to confront the darker aspects of themselves with radical acceptance and integrate them into a whole, authentic self. You stress the role of community in Zen practice, highlighting the vibrancy and strength that practicing together as a Sangha can bring. At the same time, you hold space for personal refinement and ethical conduct, emphasizing that awakening is not complete without integrity in daily life.

Through your teachings, students are invited to explore complex spiritual concepts such as impermanence, liberation, and compassion in a way that is both intellectually stimulating and grounded in real-world application. Whether discussing the interplay of force and nonviolence, the transformation of karma, or the practice of compassion, you challenge students to align their actions with wisdom and care, offering them the tools to navigate their spiritual journey with greater awareness and intention.