Big Mind/Big Heart

10/27/2026

You can’t pour the absolute into the relative, nor the relative into the absolute, because it is already so.

10/19/2026

To All My Friends, Students, and Those Who Have Responded

Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to read and respond to my recent posts. Some of your responses have been incredibly loving, supportive, and encouraging. Others have been critical, questioning, and even painful to read. I welcome them all.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, understand me, forgive me, or even like me. That’s not why I’m sharing these reflections. I’m simply trying, perhaps more openly than ever before, to be honest about my life, my mistakes, my understanding, and my continuing practice.

After 55 years on this path, I find that I know less than I once thought I knew. And strangely enough, I’m quite comfortable with that. I’m not looking for praise, nor am I trying to defend myself against criticism. I have made mistakes. I have hurt people. I have also devoted much of my life to helping others awaken. Both are true.

I don’t need to be seen as a hero or a villain.

I’m simply a human being, still learning, still practicing, still discovering what it means to live with greater honesty, humility, compassion, and love.

To those who have supported me, thank you.

To those who have challenged me, thank you as well.

And to those whom I have hurt, I know that words alone cannot undo the past.

I cannot possibly respond to everyone individually, but please know that I appreciate your willingness to engage, whether positively or negatively.

Perhaps the most important thing I am learning is that I don’t have to have the last word.

Sometimes it’s enough simply to listen.

With love and gratitude to all,

Genpo Roshi

October 19, 2026

10/16/2026

FREE SITTING WITH ROSHI

Roshi is welcoming you to sit with him twice this weekend.
Ruth Daishi (CC) is our coordinator for this weekend, please contact Ruth if you have questions or need help logging into Zoom

Friday October 16, 10:00pm Hawaii time
(Saturday October 17, 10:00am Central European time / Saturday October 17, 2:00am Mountain time)

Sunday October 18, 7:00am Hawaii time
(Sunday October 18, 7:00pm Central European time / Sunday October 18, 11:00am Mountain time)

Each sitting is 45 minutes.

Please turn your camera on, keep your microphone muted and minimize movement/visual distraction when sitting with Roshi.

Use this same link for both sittings:

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/76488200850?pwd=32RdCmSgawIZgJbRaMychcn3z8bouH.1

Best,
The Kanzeon Team
Best regards/med venlig hilsen,

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise cloud communications.

10/15/2026

My Apology
The Living Genjō Kōan
October 11–12, 2026
The Record of Genpo — Genpo Roshi
So I sat, and I sat once again.
It’s been very, very humbling.
I can see how I went to war with my Zen Master, Maezumi Roshi.
I owe a deep apology to the entire Buddhist world, to both the living Patriarchs and the deceased Ancestors as well, Dogen Zenji and all the masters that preceded us.
I owe the whole planet an apology.
I have undermined faith and trust in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
And I want to set the record straight.
Not for my reputation. Not because I expect anyone to forgive me, change their mind about me, or welcome me back into anything.
I am eighty-two years old. I have practiced Zen for fifty-five years. What matters to me now is the Dharma, The Truth.
I want to leave a record of what this practice actually looks like when it is lived by a human being. Not an idealized Zen Master. Not a perfect Buddha. A human being willing to expose everything—his awakening, his shadows, his abuses of power, his contradictions, his suffering, his joy, and his continuing realization.
Nothing concealed. Nothing excused. Nothing falsified.
Leaving My Teacher
On June 4, 1984, after twelve years at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, I drove away with my wife, Brenda Hobai Liu, our two-year-old son, Tai, and our good friend Jan Chozen Bays, who so kindly drove us LAX.
As soon as we were out of the driveway, I yelled:
“Yippee! I escaped with my spirit intact!”
I meant it.
I felt liberated. I felt that I had survived something. I felt that my spirit was intact.
But there was another side to the story.
I had gone to war with my teacher.
And now, forty-two years later, I can see that war with a clarity that is extraordinarily painful.
Maezumi Roshi was my teacher. I loved him. I respected him. I still have the greatest respect for him.
And we locked horns.
Like two stubborn goats, we kept banging our heads against one another.
I was a young fighter. A green fighter. I had a powerful punch, but I did not yet know how to use it, when to use it, or when not to use it.
He knew what he had in his hands.
He was training me.
There are many ways to use a sword. Many ways to strike. A word can cut as deeply as a stick. And a sword does not always have to be raised.
He was refining me.
I fought back. I challenged him. I pushed him. I was not an easy student.
And yet I learned from him.
I learned more than I could possibly have understood at the time.
Today I can honor him without denying our conflict. I can recognize what he gave me without pretending that either of us was beyond being human.
And I can acknowledge something that has taken me many years to face:
In that struggle, and in the years that followed, I contributed to division within the Sangha.
For that, I am deeply sorry.
My Abuse of Power
During the evening of October 11–12, 2026, I recognized with extreme clarity my abuses of power.
It is absolutely painful.
I must own the fact that I abused my power, both as a young Zen monk in the 1970s and as a teacher from the 1980s until 2011.
Nothing I say changes that fact.
Nothing I say excuses it.
My realization does not excuse it. My years of practice do not excuse it. My understanding of emptiness, prajna, or liberation does not excuse it.
Since January 2011, I have been doing my very best to correct my behavior.
I have continued studying myself, working with my karma, my shadows, and the Precepts—Kai.
I have been learning to live with greater mindfulness and discipline, paying attention to how I conduct myself with body, mind, and spirit.
This is not a claim that I have become perfect.
It is the continuing practice of my life.
My Realization Was Not Wrong
There is something I must make absolutely clear.
My awakening was not wrong.
When body and mind dropped off, what I realized was complete. Absolutely complete.
And it was incomplete.
Not because the realization was false, but because there was more to embody, more to manifest, more to live. There was the other side still to be grown into, matured with life-time.
From the perspective of prajna, nothing is excluded.
When the Buddha raises a finger, that is prajna.
When somebody takes a s**t, that too is prajna.
Everything is prajna.
There is no fixed right and wrong in that realization.
But what is appropriate in one moment may not be appropriate in the next.
Time changes. Circumstances change. People change, positions change. Our understanding changes.
What is appropriate depends upon time, place, position, and degree.
That is not an excuse for my behavior.
It is part of the teaching that I have spent my life discovering and demonstrating.
We cannot freeze wisdom into an idea and then apply that idea mechanically to every situation.
Wisdom must be alive, as living Zen.
Impeccability
Over these past years, and especially during this past year and a half, my understanding of impeccability has continued to deepen.
The Precepts are not merely commandments imposed upon us from outside.
Kai is our true life.
When we receive refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, we are not giving our lives away to something foreign to us.
We are giving our lives to our truest nature.
And what do we receive?
Our own authentic life.
At first, the Precepts may be like crutches supporting a broken leg.
We need guidance. We need mindfulness. We need discipline.
But as our practice matures, something changes.
We do not merely refrain from harming others because a rule tells us not to.
We simply do not want to harm.
We do not want to speak ill of others. We do not want to elevate ourselves by putting others down. We do not want to take what is not given.
It comes from a very deep place.
And yet we are human.
We miss the mark.
Again and again.
Even when we sit perfectly still, we may be causing suffering somewhere else. Our choices affect our families, our students, our communities, and people we may never meet.
That is why mindfulness matters.
That is why discipline matters.
That is why I continue to practice.
Impeccability is not an image of myself as a flawless Zen Master. It is the living practice of being as fully awake, honest, and appropriate as I can in each situation.
And when I fail, I must be willing to recognize it, acknowledge the consequences, and respond.
The Living Genjō Kōan
My teacher asked me to write the record of my life.
I am doing that now.
My life is my koan.
Not a koan separate from everyday existence. Not something I solved in 1971 and then put away.
My everyday life is the koan.
The awakening in the Mojave Desert.
My years with Maezumi Roshi.
My Dharma transmission.
My departure from the Zen Center of Los Angeles.
The communities I helped create.
The divisions I helped create.
The people I taught.
The people I hurt.
The consequences of my conduct.
The years since 2011.
And this very moment, sitting here, drinking my coffee, wanting to call my wife.
All of it.
This is my Genjō Kōan.
And everyone has their own living koan.
I understand my life as a manifestation of Dōgen Zenji’s teaching—not because I am beyond error, but because nothing in this life stands outside the practice.
I want the record to show the whole process.
The awakening and the blindness.
The wisdom and the immaturity.
The liberation and the consequences.
The teacher and the student.
The sword and the hand that holds it.
The apology and the continuing life.
For the Dharma
I know that some people will never agree with my understanding.
That is not why I am writing.
I am not asking anyone to change their opinion of me.
I am not asking anyone to forget what happened.
I am not asking for my place back.
I am leaving this record for posterity, for those who come after us, and for the Dharma.
I want people to see what a life of practice can actually contain.
I want them to understand that realization does not turn a human being into an idealized image of perfection.
And I want them to understand that acknowledging harm does not require denying the truth of awakening.
I have spent fifty-five years living this practice.
I am still living it.
I am still learning.
I am still discovering what it means to embody the Precepts, to manifest prajna, and to meet each moment appropriately.
And I am deeply sorry for the harm I have caused and the divisions I have helped create.
I cannot undo the past.
But I can tell the truth about it as clearly as I am able.
That is what I am attempting here.
Not the final word.
Not the conclusion of the koan.
The living record.
My life is my koan.
And the koan is still unfolding.
Genpo Roshi
October 2026

09/30/2026

The Dharma is not having nothing left to expose. The Dharma having nothing left to hide.

09/14/2026

https://manubazzano.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Transmission-Impossible.pdf

09/12/2026

Last night I saw something very simple and very humbling.

There is an old Zen Koan, it comes at the end of the Momonkan, Mumon’s warnings to all of us:

“To follow the rules and regulations is to tie oneself without even a rope. To act freely and without restraint is the way of the heretics.”

For much of my life, I have emphasized freedom—being spontaneous, not being bound by rules and conventions. And I can see now how one-sided I have been.

For me freedom meant not being bound. But we can also be bound by our need to be free.

The answer is not to swing to the other side and become bound by rules. That is just another trap.

True freedom includes restraint. It includes the Kai (precepts), form, responsibility, and consequences. And it also includes the heretic—the one willing to question and challenge convention.

Neither side is the whole Way.

After eighty-two years, I am still seeing things that have been right in front of my face all along.

Our practice is to keep seeing what we haven’t been willing or able to see, and to own it all.

09/01/2026

We Are Back
The Path of Owning It All

There is a stage on the spiritual path when we discover something much greater than the person we thought we were. We may call it Buddha, Big Mind, the Absolute, the True Self, emptiness, God, the boundless, or simply that which cannot be named. For a time, this realization can become our new identity. We have discovered the apex. And then, sooner or later, life asks us to come down.

The problem is that in transcending the ordinary self, we can begin to disown it. We can disown our fear, vulnerability, anger, ambition, competitiveness, sexuality, confusion, hurt, arrogance, neediness, and doubt. We can even disown the little child who still lives within us. We imagine that awakening means becoming less human. But perhaps the path is exactly the opposite.

Coming Home from the Apex
The mature path is not to abandon the Absolute. It is to bring the Absolute home. The Buddha must become human again. The infinite must include the finite. The immortal must include the mortal. Strength must include vulnerability. Confidence must include uncertainty. The hero must include the frightened child. The Self must include the self. Nothing is thrown away. Nothing is left outside. This is not falling from the apex. It is coming home from the apex.

And when we come home, something extraordinary becomes possible. We can be completely human without losing the Absolute, and completely the Absolute without denying our humanity.

The Open Ensō
This is why the ensō—the Zen circle—is such a beautiful expression of the Way. It is complete. And it is open. Whole and perfect, yet never finished. Our practice is the same.

There is no final state in which we can announce, “Now I have integrated everything. Now there is nothing more to see.” There is always another shadow. Another voice. Another attachment. Another person we have excluded. Another place where we discover that what we thought was “out there” is also in here. The opening in the circle is not a defect. The opening is what keeps the circle alive.

Own It All
Much of our suffering comes from what we refuse to own. We disown fear and encounter frightened people everywhere. We disown anger and find enemies. We disown arrogance and become obsessed with the arrogance of others. We disown weakness and despise weakness. We disown greatness and resent those who shine. What we refuse to own within ourselves, we inevitably meet outside ourselves. So the practice becomes very simple: Own it all.
Own the frightened one, arrogant, vulnerable child. Own the hero. Own the failure. Own the one who needs to win. Own the one who wants to disappear. Own the Buddha. Own the ordinary human being. Even own the one who wants to be finished with all of this. Nothing outside.

Beyond Superiority and Inferiority
When we don’t know who we are, we continually need the world to tell us. Am I good enough? Am I important? Am I respected? Am I better than this person? Do they recognize me? Do they understand who I am?

But when we truly own ourselves, the need to establish ourselves begins to loosen. Someone else can be magnificent without diminishing us. Someone else can be wiser, more talented, more successful, more beautiful, more awakened, or more accomplished in some particular way. We don’t have to become smaller. And we don’t have to make them smaller. Their greatness can become our joy. Because ultimately their greatness is not separate from us. We no longer need to be the greatest person in the room. We can simply be in the room.

The Return
Eventually the path brings back everything we thought spirituality required us to transcend. The body comes back. The personality comes back. The child comes back. The shadow comes back. The world comes back. Other people come back. The self comes back. Even the “me” comes back.

But they return differently. They are no longer required to carry the burden of being our entire identity. They become voices within a much greater whole. And perhaps this is what liberation really means—not escaping any part of ourselves, but becoming spacious enough to include all of it. Then our practice turns naturally outward. The beings within us and the beings around us are no longer two different projects. To liberate the frightened child within is to become less frightened of the frightened person before us. To own our anger is to become capable of meeting anger without immediately creating an enemy. To embrace our own shadow is to stop demanding that the world carry it for us.
Inner liberation becomes outer liberation. Outer service deepens inner liberation. No preference.

We Are Back
At some point we may think the spiritual journey is about leaving ourselves behind. Perhaps the deeper journey is discovering that nobody needed to be left behind in the first place.
Not the Buddha. Not the child. Not the self. Not the shadow. Not the hero. Not the frightened one. Not the confident one. Not the broken one. Not the magnificent one. Not even the one we have spent our whole life trying not to become. Bring them home. Give each one a seat. Listen to them. Own them. Love them. And then allow the whole assembly to serve.

The vow to liberate all sentient beings begins here, because all sentient beings are not merely somewhere “out there.” They are also here. And as the boundary between inner and outer begins to dissolve, the vow becomes one movement:
Own all beings.�Serve all beings.�Liberate all beings.�Exclude nothing.

We do not come back alone.
The Buddha comes back. The child comes back. The self comes back. The shadow comes back. The world comes back.

We are back.
And the circle remains open.

08/30/2026

The Three Faces of Sitting

There are three ways of sitting that have become integral to my daily practice. They are very simple, and they move from turning inward to opening outward, to finally dropping both inward and outward.

1. Turning the Light Inward
At night, when I am preparing for sleep, I sit with my eyes closed and turn the light inward. This is a time for introspection and complete honesty.
I ask myself: Is there anywhere in me that is still afraid? Is there anyone toward whom I feel aversion, anger, jealousy, resentment, or resistance?
Is there something someone has said or done that has hurt me and that I am still holding on to? If there is, I don’t stop with the other person. I turn the light back on myself.

Suppose I believe someone is lying. Instead of remaining upset with them, blaming them, or simply judging them as a liar, I ask to speak to the Liar in me, and I own it. Where am I lying? Where am I not being completely truthful? Where might I even be lying to myself?

Or someone says, “You’re stupid,” and I feel hurt or defensive. Then I ask to speak to the Stupid One. Can I own being stupid? Of course I can. There are plenty of times when I am stupid. Or someone tells me I am too trusting. Instead of immediately defending myself, I look at Trust. Is there truth in what they are saying? Can I own being trusting? Am I lacking appropriate boundaries? There is an old saying: Trust everyone, and tie up your camel.

Whatever I am unable to own can still control me. It can come out indirectly, even as a saboteur. Whatever I reject in myself can appear outside me as something I fear, hate, judge, or resist, so I turn the light inward. This is not about blaming myself. It is not about making the other person right and myself wrong. And it certainly does not mean that harmful behavior is acceptable. Owning the Liar does not mean the other person isn’t lying. Owning the Stupid One does not mean another person’s judgment of me is correct. It means that what someone else says or does no longer prevents me from seeing and owning the corresponding voice within myself. I am willing to look at whatever I have disowned and own it. Nothing excluded. Nothing pushed into shadow. Nothing left outside. Then the introspection ends. I allow mind, body, and spirit to become motionless. Thinking—not-thinking. Beyond thinking. Not even thinking about not-thinking.
I am sleeping and yet wide awake, resting in a deep stillness until, somehow, I pass into a deep and peaceful sleep. Sometimes this transition takes quite a while. There is no need to hurry it. Usually sometime between four and five in the morning, I wake again. I sit upright in a chair with my eyes closed. Now there is no introspection. There is nothing to work on and nothing to examine. I simply sit quietly in a state that feels like deep sleep while wide awake—deeply resting, completely still, and yet awake. And eventually morning comes.

2. Everything Is Just What It Is
In the morning, I do almost the opposite. I open my eyes completely. Rather than looking down, I look straight ahead and somewhat above the horizon. I open completely to what is before me. Now I don’t introspect. I don’t analyze. I don’t try to understand myself. I don’t try to improve myself. I don’t even meditate. That is important: Don’t meditate.

The moment I try to meditate correctly, I have already divided the world into good meditation and bad meditation, right and wrong, success and failure. So forget meditation. Just sit. Eyes wide open. Everything is simply what it is. Nothing needs to be grasped. Nothing needs to be rejected. Nothing needs to be changed. Nothing needs to be improved. Nothing needs to be made spiritual. The bird is the bird. The sound is the sound. The sky is the sky. The thought is the thought. The body is the body. Everything is just what it is.
I sit completely still and allow the whole world to be exactly as it is. Usually I can sit this way for perhaps half an hour. Eventually my eyes begin to burn or become tired. Then I naturally move into the third face of sitting.

3. Just Sitting
I lower my gaze approximately forty-five degrees. The eyes are neither completely open nor completely closed. Now there is no particular turning inward and no particular looking outward. There is nothing to examine. Nothing to own. Nothing to understand. Nothing to accomplish. Nothing to attain. Thoughts may arise. Let them arise. Thoughts disappear. Let them disappear. Don’t follow them. Don’t fight them. Don’t even make not-thinking into another achievement. Just sit. No inside. No outside. No meditator. No meditation. Just sitting.

These three faces of sitting form one very simple movement.
First, turn the light inward. Look honestly at what remains unowned, feared, rejected, or resisted. Second, open your eyes completely. Let everything be exactly what it is. Third, drop even that. Just sit. The first is introspection. The second is everything just as it is. The third is just sitting.
In the first, I take responsibility for what I have excluded. In the second, nothing is excluded. In the third, there is no longer anyone who needs to include or exclude anything.

Turn the light inward. Open completely to what is. Then just sit.
Nothing left out. Nothing to fix. Nothing to attain. Just this.

08/24/2026

Abide in non-duality.