There's a Buddha Inside of You
Kenshin Cian Whalley
Kenshin continues to settle back into a stable life in Vancouver, BC. He is an active clergy member of Shining Bright Lotus. He begins to offer a regular practice period starting October 6th bringing our weekly practice periods up to four each week. I caught up with Kenshin this summer to find out a bit more about how he got to this point in his life.
Ekai: Hi, this is Ekai Joel Kreisberg. And I'm with Kenshin Cian Wally, an ordained Hollow Bones priest. He's been participating in Shining Bright Lotus programs since our inception. Welcome Kenshin.
Kenshin: Happy to be here. I'm super excited to chat with you today.
Ekai: I'm interested in finding out a little bit about you and how you got here. I know a little bit about your history like that your parents were into Buddhism and Zen. Is that true?
Kenshin: Yeah, I'm one of those weirdos with Buddhist parents. My mom was a Zen practitioner and so was my dad. My mom's Elaine. My dad is Jerry. They were both students and friends with Emyo Darlene Tataryn. So Emyo technically knows me since before I was born! My dad was also a student of Namgyal Rinpoche.
Ekai: Does that mean that is how you were raised?
Kenshin: Yeah, I've got a picture from when I was four years old in full lotus position, with a carefully placed heel because I'm totally naked.
Ekai: Somewhere along the way you got into it yourself. In other words, you started to really study this stuff. So when did that happen?
Kenshin: Like any good teenager, I kind of ran away from everything my parents taught me. Buddhism included, and I ran towards money, prosperity and business and all that. Because I felt like that would fix my life. But eventually I came across yoga in my mid 20s, and I started doing that. I guess it kind of sucked me in a little bit. But then the yoga studio closed. I didn't really get into serious practice until my early 30s. I was given two powers in my 20s. Somebody told me, as you grow older, you either get a good friendship with a good tailor, or really familiar with the inside of a gym. And I chose the former. I didn't look overweight, but I remember waking up in this doctor's office, and he's telling me that I'm going to have to wear this machine on my face for the rest of my life, a CPAP machine. Obstructive Sleep Apnea is what he said I had, and I was like, hey, so what do I got to do? Work out, lose some weight? And he stared at me and said, dude, you couldn't lose enough weight. You're just gonna have to wear this for the rest of your life. I stared back at him. I said, no. That was the pivotal moment that drove me back into the whole realm of Buddhism and practice. It still took me some time to re-encounter it. But that was the moment that really created the motivation for something good for me.
Ekai: I appreciate that because between 30 and 45, the average person will face their first real issue and what they do at that point in time can change the direction of their life. Sounds like you chose to create your own wellness. It was physical, but it was also spiritual.
Kenshin: Yeah, actually, I got into sleep hacking. And I was like, I'm gonna figure out the sleep thing because I actually didn't think my sleep was bad. I figured out when I eat this kind of food, I snore. When I don't eat these kinds of foods, I don't snore. Okay, that's interesting. So there's a relationship with food between food and sleep.
Ekai: My wife can tell what I've been eating each night. Anyway, moving along, somehow you ended up back at Buddhism.
Kenshin: Well first I had to figure things out. I had to start being really introspective. What is it that I'm doing that makes me successful. I stare out the window and let my mind clear. I allow the solutions to problems come to me. As I was researching these things the term Buddhism kept coming. It seemed like all these things that I just naturally did, that I just considered a part of who I am, were actually Buddhist. Wow. And they're the reason I'm different from these kids that I'm training. Maybe there's something to this. I had forgotten so much since I got trained to meditate before I was conscious. So this is just the literally the way I am. And I didn't even know it.
Ekai: Interesting, you woke up and discovered yourself. And so then you decided you better learn something about it?
Kenshin: I started with a book Rebel Buddha, by Dzogchen Ponlop. The premise of the book is perfect for where I was at. It said if you feel like something's off, something needs to change. That feeling comes from the fact that there's a Buddha inside of you. And he's pissed off and he wants out. I was like I want to get this Buddha out. His recommendation was just start meditating 10 minutes a day. So I did that. And I was committed, because I had a lot of motivation with the health thing and the with the realization about my history. I was thinking maybe I can get even more proficient at life.
Three months later. I am sitting in my home office staring at the wall, because I do that, just stare at the wall and meditate. It's just another day meditating. All of a sudden the office is gone, I'm gone. There's just awareness. And then in front of this awareness is this big, bald, blue Buddha dude staring back at me with goggles coming out of his head. He’s actually more real than you are sitting on the screen. He’s literally, vibrant, hyper real, three dimensional projection where my office walls should have been. I'm like, I don't remember taking drugs.
Ekai: So what happened?
Kenshin: I realized he was looking at me and then he’s gone. And I'm staring at the wall and I'm like, that was weird. But something feels different. I'm walking down the hallway to my kitchen and there's this drop of water forming on the tap. And the sunlight catches the drop of water and this catches me in the eye and it's like my vision just zooms in to this drop of water and I'm completely captivated in this drop of water forming on the tap. I shake my head and I walk outside and look at my 120 foot silver maple in my backyard and I get the distinct impression that I've never really looked at this tree before. I've seen it 1000 times and I've never really looked at it. This state stuck around for about a week. I didn't get much done. Work just started piling up and people started wondering what the hell was wrong with me. So I had to consciously push it away. And the moment it was gone. Then I was like, how do I get that back? So I started asking anyone who knew anything about anything.
I had no framework for it. One of Dalai Lama's guys came to Winnipeg and he was doing a talk on happiness. I asked him about this experience and he just said “nice.” He told me I need to get a teacher. So while chatting with Doug Tataryn, he’s says “you know, my wife, Darlene is a Buddhist teacher.”
Ekai: Okay, that worked out. At that point, was she involved with Jun Po Roshi?
Kenshin: It was about a year later that she invited me over and I've been really training hard. We'd gone to India for a month. Anyway, she invited me over and didn't tell me what was going to happen. She was doing the Mondo Zen teacher training is what I figured out. So I was one of her victims. I had very stable concentration and pacified mind. And I didn't really get what she was doing at first, which I guess is kind of the point. We just did the first ten koans. That fist opening and closing exercise was like holy shit. She speaks, I speak, and there's no thought. There's something beyond this concentration that is different. And it feels pretty expansive. I literally went home and played with it. I started using it every day. What does that feel like? Like, I just started diving into the psychophysiological sort of pathways that it was pointing at on my own. I think it was couple months before she even invited me back to do the second half.
Ekai: What I love about that story is that you worked with a koan. This is the fourth koan of Mondo Zen. “What is the difference between I don’t know and not-knowing.And if you go home and you just work with it, that’s working with the koan.
Kenshin: Yeah, I think that's what it takes, honestly, to really ground it. Like if you look at how habits change it’s the application of force times dedication and the persistence of time and repetition. That's how things change.
Ekai: You're describing the real depth of work that happens if you take your time and you actually sit with koans. At some point after this, you went and sat with Jun Po Roshi.
Kenshin: Yeah. Emyo’s daughter Hoji Ally Tataryn gets really excited calls me and says she’s going to this Zen retreat in the US somewhere. It was the teacher training you did with me.
Ekai: That was the Green River training we did in 2018. That was your first time?
Kenshin: I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn't have access to any of the materials. I just paid money in. I feel like I really got that teacher training.
Ekai: That was a good one because rather than just doing receiving Mondo you actually had to do it with each other. Umi Dan Rotnem and Koto Washi Dallas Chief Eagle were there too. It was a lovely event and the last teacher training before we went into the new style, the Mondo Zen Facilitator Program. Anyway, somewhere along the way, you took Jukai.
Kenshin: After the teacher training. I found out all the things that people were doing. Hoji had taken Jukai and she did a social media post about what it meant to her, which planted the seed in me - take a formal step into this thing. And so I said, Hey, Emyo, I'd like to take Jukai with you.
Ekai: So she had to learn how to do it and gave you the name Kenshin. So what does Kenshin mean?
Kenshin: Humility, courage and trust. Which are all things that I aspire to have.
Ekai. Much later, you wanted to go through the priest training and Mondo Zen Facilitation.
Kenshin: I don't know if I'd say I wanted to do it.
Ekai: Okay, so how would you describe it?
Kenshin: I'd say there were certain individuals who were suggesting that it would be good for me. After a certain amount of prompting, I thought maybe this is something I could do. And I'm really glad I did.
Ekai: Meanwhile, you also have studied lots of other spiritual and mystical traditions. We could probably spend another hour having you tell us all the different things you've studied, but maybe you can just tell us what's your favorite or what do you feel most at home with in terms of other types of practices that you do?
Kenshin: Yeah, the most active I'd say is Dzogchen which is similar to Zen, but obviously it has the tantric and Tibetan Bon tradition elements mixed in with the Buddhism. I got initiated in that on Galileono Island, just been doing or not doing in a lot of cases 100,000 prostrations and 100,000 Vajrasatvas and 100,000 Guru Yoga. I was that with Lama Mark, who is a student of Namgyal Rinpoche.
Ekai: That's, that's a lovely tradition. It's a good pairing with the Zen actually.
Kenshin: I didn't realize how really profound it was until I went into like the Rosocrucian and hermetic lineages and did some study there. And found out how magic works. Manifestation works and how changing the mind and the field around us works. And then looking back at that tantric Buddhist tradition, I recognized that the initiatory practices are the path. If you break down all of the facets of the prostration it really is a magical practice meant to transform your mind into the mind of a Buddha.
Ekai: That makes sense. You are generally interested in the hermetic traditions and the magical traditions and blending them. So it goes back to the beginning of your story. This allows you to understand what you are naturally doing in the way that you are living in the world.
Kenshin: Yeah, I think that's the whole point of wisdom. It is understanding what we're already doing right? And then figuring out how to do it better. I still study a lot of classical Zen and to some extent Zen really is just whatever is here is here. I don't see what the point of not learning how to set clear intentions. One of the reasons why Mondo Zen is such an interesting practices because it does have intentions. Right? Atta Dipa, clear intentions, activingh compassionately are this practice. you're actively are using it and finding your way
Ekai: Then you ended up traveling around the world?
Kenshin: Yeah, I actually think the combination of the Zen and then encountering the tantric practices during the prostrations gave a great motivation to break free of the tethers and constraints of my past life. The past life be in the sight of the scientific materialist mindset. Everything that I had constructed in my life seemed like an obstacle at that point. And COVID happened. I took myself and my new partner and we went to Mexico. And that started the whole, a whole spiritual journey around the world. You know, we went to Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Bali, Thailand, for over three years.
It was really fortunate having this coaching business that I had started, which used a lot of the Mondo Zen stuff. Because it afforded us this lifestyle where we could travel around the world could be anywhere we want it to be put on a whim. Just go and do a month long retreat in the jungles of Peru and work with the shamans of the Shipibo tribe down there. Or subsequently to that, like a year and a half later do a month long Osho tantric retreat in in India.
It was an eye opening experience traveling the world and seeing sort of spiritual technologies and spiritual commercialism and then more traditional sort of spiritual stuff.
Ekai: What did you came back with? What was your takeaways?
Kenshin: I got back from that retreat in India, and I just shut my business down, I fired all my staff, I shut my business down. I'm creating a monster here. It's not bad yet, but I can just see where it's going. There's subtle forces in the marketplace that like pressure if you want to grow your business. You must speak to the market because the market will not help you grow your business unless you're behaving a certain way and that subtly corrupts all of the teachings.
Ekai: So you landed back in Vancouver.
Kenshin: I came back to Vancouver and I tried applying for some jobs, but my heart wasn't really in it. So I've kind of pivoted. I'm still doing spiritual service, but it's, I'm trying to construct my life in a way where I'm not relying on it entirely for my livelihood so that I can disconnect, that sort of the lower chakra impulses from the part of the creates and transmits the teachings. And I feel like if I can keep those two energies somewhat insulated or satisfied from different things, then I can keep the teachings a lot more pure.
Ekai: So and so then at this stage of the game you are an ordained priest. You have a spiritual practice, and there's a way in which you're finding your way professionally, that includes a bunch of spiritual intelligences is a nice way of saying it. And so as a priest, what are you seeing in your future?
Kenshin: I'm just rebuilding it. I'm doing a lot more healing and helping people. One of the things I found about Mondo Zan that was erased in subsequent versions is the idea of the transpersonal nature of the self, and how you can deal with all the parts of the self and the characters that arise just in going into the subconscious. I found that quite helpful for myself and many people. So I'm still I'm doing that. I think I'm going to build on the foundation. I've always had a knack with mystical healing. Being a priest is about helping people. I'm exploring how and what format that I want to do. I'm also writing my blog, mind hacker.com. I'm going to be turning it towards just pure teachings, and less commercial.
Ekai: And you're actively participating in our Sangha Shining Bright Lotus Meditation Society. So I look forward to sitting with you again. It's been for us to chat and I appreciate you taking the time. So thank
Kenshin: Thank you.