Don't distract me from my important spiritual practice! - with Matt Shinkai Kane

Matt Shinkai Kane Roshi is head of the Blue Cliff Zen Centre in Eugene, Oregon, USA. Before that he spent 7 years as a monk in Japan under Zen master Shinzan Miyamae in Gyokuryiji, becoming a teacher in 2012 and given transmission in 2017. He’s also a Zen Yoga teacher and is on the faculty in the University of Oregon’s PE mind-body department.

In this interview, Shinkai talks about his time as a young monk in Japan training under Shinzan Roshi. He describes how Shinzan had a special knack of creating a temple environment full of difficult people and situations and discusses how he dealt with that. In particular he talks very honestly how he got caught up in perceiving these difficulties as “distracting from his important spiritual practice” and how long it took for him to realise how trapped he had got in that mindset. Also goes on to discuss how he works to bring some of Shinzan Roshi’s teachings about dealing with difficult people into his own sangha and teaching.