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FACE TO FACE | EASTERN HORIZON 25
Exploring Well-Being through Zen
By Geoff Dawson
on meditation as a primary practice.
At the same time, I also studied for a
degree in psychology and philosophy
which was not just an academic
pursuit for me but a spiritual enquiry
as well. However, as useful as these
studies were, they didn’t really satisfy
what I was looking for.
Geoff Dawson is a Dharma Benny Liow interviewed Geoff
Successor of Charlotte Joko Beck about his experience in teaching I just couldn’t adopt a spiritual
and the teacher of the Ordinary Zen in Australia, the purpose of Zen, practice that required me believing
Mind Zen School, Sydney. He and how Zen practice can help one in anything, whether it was a
began the school in 1998 and achieve well being in life. Christian God, or Yoga ideas of
received Dharma Transmission reincarnation, or even Buddhist
in 2003. He has been studying Benny: You have been practicing ideas of other realms and rebirth.
and practising Zen Buddhism Zen for 50 years now. What first I didn’t believe in believing. I also
got you started in Buddhism, and
since 1975 and was one of the specifically Zen? felt that the Western scientific
founders of Zen in Australia. and philosophical approaches
to truth seeking were deeply
He has also presented at many Geoff: The experience of dhukka, flawed – over-intellectualized and
seminars and conferences in whether it’s acute suffering, or based on reducing everything to
Australia on Buddhism and everyday dissatisfaction, is what materialism. I was only interested
Psychotherapy. brings everyone to practice. I didn’t in first-hand spiritual experience.
have a traumatic childhood or live in A turning point came when I began
Geoff Dawson is also a registered a war-torn country or live in poverty, reading Alan Watts’s books. I was
psychologist. He works in full so the motivation came more from immediately attracted to the down-
time private practice at North the dissatisfaction that arises from to-earth style of Zen, its irreverent
Sydney. He provides adult living a superficial middle-class life sense of humor, (missing from most
psychotherapy, couples therapy, in a first world country. religions), and the aspiration of
family therapy and clinical direct experience of self-realization.
supervision that is integrated My first steps towards spiritual
into a Buddhist perspective. enquiry came through yoga back After I completed my degree and
in the 1960s, when I was about 18. worked for a couple of years to save
Yoga was about the only spiritual some money, I went to Japan to find
alternative to Christianity I could a teacher. After a month or so of
find in Australia back then, and I had traveling around Japan and visiting
rejected the Christianity I had been monasteries, I settled on practicing
exposed to as a child very early on with Nanrei Kobori Roshi at
in my life. There was no Buddhism Daitokuji Temple, Kyoto and studied
established in Australia back then with him for a year.
either, at least Buddhism that focused
