EP105 - Reflections on Awakening and Maturity for Spiritual Companions - Genjo Marinello

Our latest book release from SDI Press is now available – Reflections on Awakening and Maturity for Spiritual Companions, by Genjo Marinello. Genjo’s fascinating book chronicles his lifelong and ongoing commitment to spiritual growth, through thick and thin, as well as a courageous embrace of many difficulties, shortcomings and flaws.

Genjo composts all of these into assets, establishing them as the building blocks for his own ongoing spiritual growth and evolution. And by extension, for ours.

In the process, he engages with numerous spiritual companions and models, most notably the Buddha, St Teresa of Avila, and the Zen Oxherding pictures. They reveal insights and challenges both easy and joyful, along with some quite difficult and painful.

In this conversation, Genjo and Rev. Seifu Anil Singh-Molares discuss the new book.

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Genjo Marinello Roshi began his Zen training in 1975. He moved to Seattle in 1976 to serve as a VISTA community organizer in the central district of the city. In 1980 Genjo was ordained as a Zen monk, and in 1981-82 trained in Japan at the Zen temple Ryutaku-Ji. In 1999 Genjo succeeded Genki Takabayashi Roshi as the second abbot of the Seattle Zen temple, Chobo-Ji, and became a Dharma Heir in his lineage of Rinzai Zen in 2008. Genjo has been a member of the University Friends Meeting (Quakers) since 1983. In 1989, Genjo completed a certificate program in Spiritual Direction (The Pacific Jubilee Program). For several years Genjo was the volunteer Buddhist pastor of the Twin Rivers Correction Center in Monroe Washington and has served as adjunct faculty at the Seattle campus of Antioch University.