Hollow Bones is an American Rinzai Zen School. This school provides a clear, open channel for awakening our body, mind, and spirit. This school is specifically tailored for contemporary Western culture. It is Zen stripped bare and separated from its Japanese cultural identity. It is Zen investigated, understood, and practiced deeply. It is a pragmatic, non-sectarian spiritual discipline and way of life that awakens us and transforms our lives.
A Hollow Bones practitioner experiences a deeper, clearer insight into the real nature of our minds. As insight develops, the student becomes aware of a deep emptiness within mind that is always present. Within this emptiness, consciousness, thoughts, emotions, and sensations – all activities of mind – are arising and passing away like clouds drifting across this empty sky. Ego confusion arises because we attach to the misguided belief that our ego’s dualistic point of view is all that we are. We have learned from our parents and culture to believe this confusion. From this basic ignorance, we unconsciously believe that this conceptual “me,” this “figment of divine imagination” is a permanent separate self rather than a temporary perspective, a momentary reference point within the interplay of self-reflecting mind. As our mind becomes more clear and stable, we realize we are also this deeper purity and not just the “thinking that thinks it’s a thinker.”
Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen is an evolving practice. Beginning with the teaching of Jun Po Roshi, the 83rd patriarch of the Rinzai tradition, Mondo Zen forms the root practice in Hollow Bones.
Jun Po Roshi
Jun Po Denis Kelly, received his Zen Masters recognition in 1992. He was Vice Abbot and head monk as well as resident yoga teacher at Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kong Ji in the Catskill Mountains in New York state from 1987 through 1993. His Inka Zen lineage is in the Rinzai tradition, through Eido Shimano Roshi of the The Zen Studies Society. His yoga lineage is that of BKS Iyengar and Patabi Jois. Jun Po has been practicing, studying and teaching Zen and Yoga for over twenty-five years.
