I am a Zen practitioner, specifically a student of Genpo Roshi (the guy who started Big Mind), who is in the process of becoming a monk within the White Plum Sangha. My three greatest influences, in terms of teachers, have just formed a company together called Vast Sky. Those three men are my Roshi, Genpo, the pandit Ken Wilber and the grand old master of American Zen, Roshi Bernie Glassman. From what Genpo Roshi says, their primary goal is to raise global consciousness by 10%.

So, how do I personally manifest this lofty goal? I have taken a queue from both Genpo Roshi and his Big Mind work as a simple means of giving people a taste of non-dual voices in order to raise consciousness and Roshi Bernie with his Zen Peacemakers work that emphasizes bearing witness to the suffering around you and being open to it as means of ending that suffering. I am working with “the inner city youth of Phoenix, Arizona” (I love trigger phrases like that) at night in reading and writing workshops as a means of fostering their voices.

I believe that writing is a mirror of what is inside us and reading is the reflection of that mirror. In going against every current education model of teaching writing in order to get them to pass state tests created for no child left behind legislation, I am attempting to make life long readers, writers and thinkers out of kids who generally test as illiterate in not one but two or more languages.

Simply put, I think you need a certain level of reflective consciousness before you can raise it. Thus, my personal goal right now is to help foster the voice within a specific demographic that seems to suffer from chronic laryngitis. I am also starting a pod here on Zaadz that has to do with all things Big Mind. If your interested, check it out and join us, it's called Big Mind Big Heart. http://pods.zaadz.com/bigmind Or check out Genpo Roshi’s site http://www.bigmind.org/

In honor of my Dharma name Ho-en or Phoenix Flame I ordered a pair of Lucchese boots from Texas last April that would fit the title. Finally, they finished making them and when I came home yesterday the nice UPS man gave them to me. They're garish, I know, but then so am I. Poor H. I wanted to wear them to bed last night.