Mondo Zen: Your Angst can Become your Liberation!

By Reishin Denise Leong, ZRS Priest, excerpted from the September 2017 ZRS newsletter

Have you suffered enough? Are you finally willing to change your mind?

There is a huge amount of unnecessary suffering in the world—unnecessary because it does not arise directly from our life circumstances, but from the conditioned way in which we react to our own memories, stories, and beliefs. From the ego’s perspective, emotions such as anger, shame, depression, and anxiety appear to be involuntary and automatic. We seem to be “at the mercy” of these emotions. But, in fact, they are not just emotions but reactive forms of violence, directed against self and others. Because of our ego confusion, we waste tremendous amounts of time and energy in self-defeating emotional patterns.

In order to alleviate this suffering, we need deeper insight into and understanding of our minds. We need to access our deeper feelings and understand the information contained within our deeper feelings. We need to see through our ego and experience our true nature.

~ from the Mondo Zen Training Manual

Mondo Zen, a koan process created by our Abbot, Jun Po Denis Kelly, is based on traditional Chinese and Japanese Zen, updated for the 21st century. The word “Mondo” means “The Way of Dialog”;  “Zen” translates as Clear Deep Heart Mind—a knowing of our consciousness deeper than our thinking, feeling, and sensing mind; “koans” are enigmatic questions designed to bring your rational thinking mind to a one-point focus. The Mondo Zen Koan Process refers to a dialog process that uses enigmatic questions to awaken you to your true nature, your Clear Deep Heart Mind, as well as unconditional compassion.

Experience Mondo Zen for yourself. Learn how you can transform habitual, negative emotional reactions into wise, compassionate responses and alleviate suffering. Contact any ZRS priest for more information.