I recently attended a conference on Buddhist Leadership sponsored by the Frederick Lenz Foundation. During the conference, I came up with three great ideas, or projects I should say, that I will be sharing in detail with you in the near future. For now, let me give you a small summary:

1. I’m the process of cleaning up my websites and making them more in tune with American Buddhism.
2. A few of the people in attendance were authors who were not satisfied with the current self-publishing services available or with their current publishers. So I came up with the idea of creating the American Buddhism Publishing House. This organization will be dedicated to publishing books about Rama Dr. Frederick Lenz and/or about Buddhism in America. The idea is still rolling around in my mind, but soon I will send everyone the full idea and plan of action.
3. I would like to open an American Buddhism Study Center dedicated to preserve and expand Buddhism in America. More details on that later…

Notes from the Buddhist Leadership Conference

I would like to share with you a few on the experiences from the conference. There were three presentations made by Lenz Foundation grant recipients that are made an impact on me. The first one was made by Gerry Shishin Wick and Ilia Shinko Perez. They wrote book called, The Great Heart Way: How to Heal Your Life and Find Self-Fulfillment. During their presentation they asked us to turn around look around the room, and see the people sitting around us. Then, they asked us to close our eyes and focus on the heart chakra. After a moment we were instructed to open our eyes, and look around the room again. It was amazing to see the difference. People looked “softer” somehow and more compassionate. Looking through the heart is definitely a better way to look at life.

In their book, experienced practitioners Gerry Shishin Wick and Ilia Shinko Perez have drawn from a wide array of disciplines to create the Great Heart Method. This method uses meditation as an effective means of identifying and working through mental blockages. The book focuses on restoring a heart-mind connection; compassionately healing one's wounded inner self, and fully experiencing difficult emotions with non-judgmental awareness in order to fully transform them. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to looks at feelings and emotions from a Buddhist perspective.

Another great presentation was made by Dennis Genpo Merzel. He is recognized in both the Soto and Rinzai Zen traditions as a Zen Teacher. In 1999, Genpo Roshi combined western psychology and Zen to create Big Mind, a self-discovery process that's been presented to thousands of people across America. During this session, he instructed us to communicate with every voice within our head. We all have different voices inside, like the protector, the skeptic, the ego, etc. The purpose of the session was to give each voice a chance to be recognized and a chance to speak. At the end, we came to terms with all of the voices within our mind and created a higher balance within our selves. This was a very powerful presentation. I highly recommend for people to attend his Big Mind retreats and read his book: Big Mind - Big Heart: Finding Your Way.

This book presents a highly original and accessible pathway to self-discovery and personal liberation. Big Mind employs a Jungian voice dialogue technique that enables people to step out of limited self-concepts into awareness of their many different sub-selves (emotions/mental states). In addition to exploration of the more familiar sub-voices like anger and fear, Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel uses this technique to help people access the ever-present Big Mind/Big Heart awareness - the clear, "just being" awareness and the unconditional compassion that we all can experience.

There was another presentation that really touched my life. Bernie Glassman talked about his book, Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life That Matters. In a nutshell, Bernie said that life is like looking in the refrigerator. Sometimes we have a lot of ingredients, but we don’t know what do with them. For example, we spend our live thinking, “I don’t have enough money, I don’t have enough time, etc.” When you look in the refrigerator and you want to make a gourmet meal, but don’t have all the ingredients, you should improvise – take what you have and make the best of it! You might end up with your own masterpiece.

About his book: Based on a 13th-century Japanese manual of the same title, this guide to modern-day Zen practice also details the history of Glassman's work in the world. An abbot of Zen communities in New York City and Los Angeles, Glassman is also the founder of the Greyston Mandala, a network that includes a commercial bakery, apartments for the homeless and other not-for-profit community development projects in Yonkers, a suburb of New York City. In Zen Buddhist tradition, the preparation of a meal is used as a metaphor for leading a meaningful life. Glassman and Fields (coauthor of Chop Wood, Carry Water) detail the five main "courses" of life: spirituality, study, livelihood, social action, and relationship and community. Most widely recognized of the Greyston ventures is the successful bakery. Besides being a teacher of Zen and a noted social activist, Glassman is a pragmatic businessman. His description of how he and others who work with and for the jobless and homeless of Yonkers dealt with government agencies, banks, suspicious residents and the vagaries of the marketplace will satisfy the appetites of readers whose interest is as much in business practice as in Zen practice.

There were other presenters who provided great inspiration and enlightenment for the rest of us. In particular, Stan Koehler: Executive Director of Peace on the Street. (www.peaceonthestreet.com). His organization is dedicated to teaching martial arts, psychic self-defense, and discipline to kids in the inner city. I have a lot of respect for the work Stan is doing.

The panels of students of Rama Dr. Frederick Lenz were also very inspiring. I truly thank everyone who participated in the conference.

Finally, I would like to thank Norman Marcus and Norman Oberstein for putting this conference together. Their work and dedication to the Lenz Foundation is truly admirable.

For more information about the Frederick Lenz Foundation, please go to: http://fredericklenzfoundation.org/