13:04:31:07 	[Eric Darling]: Let's let Mickey settle and we can go. Tom, ready when you are you good, Mickey? Yeah, I'm rolling. Just wanted to make sure. Okay. Anytime you're ready.  
13:04:49:20 	[Tom Kohler]: Thanks for being with us today.  
13:04:51:18 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: It's a pleasure  
13:04:52:22 	[Tom Kohler]: And I hope it'll feel that way when we finish up.  
13:04:55:12 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: We'll see.  
13:04:57:18 	[Tom Kohler]: That's right. If you would, would you share your full name and include the spelling as you share your full name please.  
13:05:04:16 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: My name is Paul Wyant Khan. That's my formal American name. In the Buddhist world I'm known as Roshi Paul Genki Khan. My full Buddhist name is Kuzan Genki. The Kuzan - "Ku" is empty, "zan" is mountain. Genki is again, mysterious or subtle. And the "ki" is energy like "prana-chi" or "ki". Sanskrit-Chinese-Japanese spelling of my 
13:05:37:13 	name. Paul, P-A-U-L, Wyant, W-Y-A-N-T, Kahn, K-A-H-N, Kuzan Genki. K-U-Z-A-N-G-E-N-K-I.  
13:05:50:23 	[Tom Kohler]: Thank you. Would you mind telling us your what? What are, what are your pronouns of record?  
13:05:59:05 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: My pronouns are I and me when I'm being selfish and an answer to you, but he and him are fine.  
13:06:10:17 	[Tom Kohler]: Thank you. And then we would be interested in your journey and your personal journey to how you wound up sort of in front of us today. You know, is a here in Savannah. And so that's the personal journey, your faith journey as well. And then we'll also be interested in how your faith journey has influenced the way you show up in the world and how other people that are involved in your faith, particularly here in Savannah, show up in the world. Hmm. So could we just find out from you kinda where you were born and how you sort of have journeyed into the world 
13:06:43:15 	and sit with, hear us today?  
13:06:45:12 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Hmm. I was born in 1947. I'm 76. I was born in Newark, New Jersey. Lived first couple of years with my parents in an apartment in New York. My father was an MIT engineer graduate, and spent five years in the Navy fighting the war and the major fields, the landing in Italy and fighting Rommel in South Africa. And at the end in the 
13:07:18:23 	Pacific. My mother was a concert pianist. Her family owned a music school in New Haven and she did her later graduate work in music in, in England. She spied for the British on a tour in Europe in the late thirties where she met Goering at a concert that she and Charles Colburn gave. He was a singer and she was a pianist and she was to find out anything she could 
13:07:48:12 	about some plans that Goering had. She later was involved with Moe Berg. She was Moe Berg's lover and a movie was made about that. Moe Berg was a baseball player, a catcher for the Boston Red Sox, and graduated from Princeton as a linguist. The joke about Mo was that he could speak 12 languages and couldn't hit in any of 'em, but he was sent with the 
13:08:21:07 	baseball all-star team to Japan before the war and took secret photographs of Tokyo that Doolittle used in his raid. Later he was sent to Switzerland to assassinate Heisenberg. If Heisenberg knew how to detonate the atom bomb. So a movie was made about Moe Berg and included his relationship with 
13:08:42:10 	my mother called, "Dispatch. The Catcher Was a Spy."  
13:08:49:18 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Anyway, that's, I was raised by these two rather interesting and very difficult people who make much better stories than they did parents. Anyway,.  
13:09:02:17 	[Tom Kohler]: How did that show up?  
13:09:05:02 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: My home, my parents after a few years did not get along. They were very, very different. My mother had been used to being a doyenne of the British aristocracy and was, had been a very beautiful woman, was painted several times and she was very frustrated. They drank quite a bit and fought quite a bit. So it was an unhappy home, I would have to say. And I myself had difficulties. I was very ADHD as a kid 
13:09:39:13 	and very given to imagination. Spent a lot of time in imaginative play and in my own mind I was very happy there, very unhappy in trying to relate to the world in things like school. So I think that that later foundation, I was sent away about 12 to private schools and was a pretty wild character and thrown out of Choate in Connecticut and later had to leave a wonderful 
13:10:13:23 	school in New Hampshire, Newhampton private school. So, I dunno, I was wild and somewhat unhappy youth, but wrote well and would be the editor of the literary magazine and editor of the newspaper and that kind of thing. Loved 
13:10:32:20 	English and nature and, and trouble. Now if you wanna really know about my spiritual journey at, at that early period in my life, I was a devout atheist. I interpreted the world from a Christian perspective that I was raised in. My interpretation of Christianity was God created the world and human beings as a test and we could pass a test or fail a test. And if you failed, you went to hell. If you passed the test, you went to heaven. I was bad at tests, so I decided 
13:11:10:06 	I'd better fail on purpose, the hell with trying to succeed. 'cause I, I didn't believe I could succeed at tests. So gradually I just ignored God and religion and was a devout atheist gave talks about atheism 15-16 when there'd be like interfaith meetings at the private schools that the local church would have it, I'd be your resident atheist. Everybody tried to be 
13:11:37:13 	very liberal with the Black Baptists and with the Jews, but the atheists man (laughs), they didn't, that was a step... One bridge too far for the, the New England Christians. So I was a little lonely at those conferences, which didn't bother me a lot.  
13:11:57:09 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: But to give the next phase of my life and certainly my spiritual life, I would have to credit it to Dr. Timothy Leary and LSD. That truly opened my eyes to much deeper dimensions of, for me, this very world, not some other world. And like many people, I enjoyed that a lot and wanted to stay high and quickly found that drugs were not 
13:12:31:08 	the answer to staying high. And moved first into pretty intense yoga practices for many years at a fairly high level. And then when I returned to college, I met some Buddhist scholars and started to be interested in Buddhism and then especially appreciated the purity of Zen Buddhism, which I'll talk about when we get into that. My journey, I spent two years in 
13:13:03:17 	Hawaii on my way to Japan to become a zen Buddhist monk. And was warned that the Buddhism in Japan was not my fantasy of a bunch of hermits running around being crazy together. It was very much a bureaucracy. And so I stayed with a teacher in Hawaii named Robert Aiken Roshi, who brought responsible teachers from Japan to teach there. He was one of the first 
13:13:30:05 	teaching centers in the United States larger area. And I spent two years in his center. And then I went to the center in Los Angeles, Zen Center of Los Angeles to study with Taizan Maezumi Roshi who was a very profound master in both Soto Zen Buddhism and Rinzai Buddhism, and had a very thriving community. Gradually they owned a whole block of 
13:14:04:05 	Los Angeles close to the Wilshire Hotel. And we had a community of about 150 people living together and a larger, of course, larger extended community. I became a, we called it a monk, but we were allowed to marry that in the Japanese Zen Buddhist traditions, one of the few Buddhist 
13:14:28:00 	traditions that allow marriage in their so-called priesthood. And that priesthood is closer to what we understand in sort of not Catholic, but Protestant and, and Jewish priesthoods that you can be more immersed in in daily life. The Japanese tradition did not adopt that until the Maji restoration in the late 18 hundreds. So from the 12 hundreds till the 18 hundreds, late 18 hundreds, they were strict Buddhists that you'd be 
13:15:01:11 	celibate, could wouldn't eat meat, have to dress in your formal unit, you know, formal monk robes and things you couldn't dress in lay attire and so on. You had to have your head shaved all the time and and so on. They have very strict roles.  
13:15:19:06 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: So I, I spent years with Maezumi Roshi. A decade. And then was sent with Roshi Bernie Glassman to establish the zen community of New York. Spent several years with him establishing that and then kind of had a breakdown for a while where I somehow just felt that I wasn't doing this thoroughly enough and was uncertain about it. And, and went into studying psychology and completed degrees in that and became a 
13:15:54:15 	therapist, a psychotherapist. And I ran both freestanding and hospital-based psychotherapy programs. Gradually had a kind of coming to myself in my forties when I had kids and what did I really wanna leave behind me? One of those moments. And the three things, the three things 
13:16:22:11 	that have really influenced my life were zen, yoga and psychotherapy. And at that I kind of jumped back in and in my day I'd been fairly famous in, in the pioneer days. So it wasn't so hard to find my way back in and completed my studies and became a lineage holding teacher and have been creating a center that preserves both the traditions of Zen, working to 
13:16:53:20 	bring people to awakening, but is engaged in social service and includes psychotherapy and embodiment practices. So I brought those three threads together and manifested them with my lifelong interest in social service.  
13:17:13:10 	[Tom Kohler]: How did Savannah manage to capture you?  
13:17:19:12 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: For a while we had a residential center in Airmont, New York. And that area was we, we had five acres and a residential center there for people to come and study. But the town was sort of fighting us because they were battling the Hasidic community that was taking over the town. They eventually lost to the Hasidics, but in the process they put us through so many problems in building a large, turning a 
13:17:50:11 	barn into a really great big meditation hall that they bankrupted us basically. So we had to sell there. We went to Arizona, which was an area that my wife, who's Swiss from Switzerland had enjoyed in her youth. And we lived outside Sedona in a place called Cornville. There's no corn in Cornville. The bureaucracy in Washington misunderstood that Cornelia, the 
13:18:19:16 	postmaster's wife was supposed to be the name of the town. They were sure it was Cornville. Anyway, so we were there in Cornville enjoying the red rocks and, and hiking when COVID occurred. And we had built a three car garage into a large zendo, which became sort of our private retreat center.  
13:18:41:13 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: And we really couldn't get zen going off the ground there. Also, it was a little crazy out there. Everybody was sort of, the yoga center seemed to be preparing for the aliens who they argued whether they'd taken over already or were going to take over. So we didn't find it so hospitable to our kind of spirituality. We spent the COVID era there, had a wonderful time, could hike 50 miles in any direction, not see anybody. My wife was an alpine mountain climber, climbed most of the major 
13:19:14:19 	peaks in the Swiss Alps and some other places and ran schools for the government Switzer in Switzerland for 24 years. So we came to Savannah to work for War... Or Ossoff and Warnock in their effort for the election. It seemed like a good thing right thing to do. I'd had a background in my 
13:19:43:11 	youth in the civil rights movement and then the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era and different social service projects. The two of us had been engaged in disaster mental health for the Red Cross for quite a while. We would fly in, live in big shelters and work trying to pull communities back together. In addition to that, at that point I was a psychotherapist and had a private practice, but Savannah was political. We came here to 
13:20:14:12 	work politically for Ossoff and Warnock and were under the impression that Savannah was a one marvelously, integrated, interracial place, totally progressive. It does not turn out to be quite that all that we had hoped in that realm.  
13:20:38:11 	[Tom Kohler]: How ha well let's talk about that for a minute. So you're here in Savannah. It turns out to be not as progressive as you had imagined, and you still hold your beliefs. And from what I can tell, part of your beliefs is to be in the world?  
13:20:54:05 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Mm. Very much.  
13:20:55:19 	[Tom Kohler]: So how, how's that gone for you?  
13:20:58:02 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Right, right. Well, my wife and I have created an international association called the Zen Garland Order, and that's kind of the overarching training and curriculum source and, and liturgy for a number of centers in the United States, Germany and South Africa. We're a growing organization, but it takes a long time to cook zen teachers. So it's slow going. So we started a new center here in 
13:21:30:09 	Savannah. When we decided to live here, we, we did fall in love with the place. It is beautiful. It's more like a village than a, than a city or town, and yet has some of the advantages of a city or town. And we were 30 minutes from the ocean, which after being in the desert has some very magnetic attraction. We love being 30 minutes from Tybee, but how's it 
13:21:58:16 	going for us? Well, we have not been able to attract the kind of interfa, interracial community that we had hoped, but we're working on that. I think we have to be more proactive, maybe advertising in, in some the local newspaper that's more Black-owned newspaper. We are in the Black community, we're on Montgomery Street and East 61st Street.  
13:22:27:05 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: But I think it takes some work for us to jump the hurdle. 'cause I do think we have a lot to offer youth and, and, and people. The way that martial arts, for example, martial arts centers have done so much to help youth learn discipline, all kinds of youth learn discipline and find a life even if they've come from very broken homes and difficult circumstances. I myself have worked in the psychotherapy world in very impoverished places like the South Bronx, Patterson, New Jersey. My 
13:23:03:04 	specialty has been to create quality mental health centers in very marginalized communities. But anyway, in Savannah, what we've done, we adopted a Afghan family. That was one thing that we've done and in our community as we built it here, all participated in supporting them and, and raising money to help them provide an apartment for them. And, and that 
13:23:35:21 	went, that went very well. Some of our other centers have worked with Guatemalan refugees and our center in Poland and Germany directly did help with Ukrainians when they had to flee Ukraine, bringing them into Germany and Poland and helping create places for them to, to be and resources 
13:24:04:23 	there. So our whole organization as a whole is active even though our center here, Ancient Oaks in Savannah is a small new community, I'd say with about 20 members currently 20 active members.  
13:24:23:18 	[Tom Kohler]: And you have to, I have to apologize my ignorance, I don't know really. I know nothing about kind of the routine and rhythm of this type of community. I mean, do you have an organ? Do you meet on Sundays? I mean, how, how does it all tie together?  
13:24:42:18 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Right. So let me just sketch what a Buddhist service and, and practice looks like. The core practice is meditation and not guided meditation. Silent meditation in silence. There is not one type of zen meditation. I, I always laugh when they're trying to sell a zen moment or a zen water or a zen perfume. I don't know what those things really are. Zen moment is when it's going bad or when it's going good or like it's every moment. It's really how you are addressing the 
13:25:16:23 	moment as interaction rather than me here and the moment and the people and the world out there. We are trying to experience a non-dual perspective of interaction and co-creation. And I think that's a more core place in human nature. It is not a special state of consciousness. It is really the way 
13:25:44:19 	things are. But we are so prone for I think, evolutionary defensive purposes to build an imaginary fence between ourselves and the world, psychologically, physically, and and so on. So in zen our, our primary practice is meditation. So if you walk in a zen center, you, you see mats on the floor and cushions to sit on... Chairs. People can come and sit in a 
13:26:14:07 	chair. If someone has a severe back problem, they're welcome to lie down during our meditation period, we're not rigid, but the core practice is meditation, seated and walking. And it's different types of meditation. I think I'll jump to that a little later when we get a little deeper into maybe philosophy and and belief.  
13:26:39:00 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: We, we do have things that we chant. Usually it's reminders of characterological virtues or sutras that speak truth, dharma we call it. But speak to kind of the way of seeing the world and seeing ourselves in the world. So on a daily basis we have a couple of chants. One's called a Return to Presence, which is to recall us to the 
13:27:13:23 	moment and then Putting on the Robe. So our lay people take vows and have a little sort of bib that's a mini robe. And our priests have a kasaya or outer robe and we put it on our heads and chant that the robe is the teachings of the Buddha and wearing it, we're taking on the teachings. So we do those two chants and then this three bells to begin, two bells to 
13:27:41:01 	end. This was not adopted from Paul Revere, but it works. And during that we have maybe two 25 minute sittings or sometimes two 40 minute meditation periods with walking meditation in between. During the walking meditation you can use the bathroom. Our one form of our core training is private individual interviews with the teacher. And we have 
13:28:10:02 	several teachers here. The teachers are fully completed a, a multi-decade training in, in Zen and Buddhism and character development. But different people will be attracted to one teacher or another and study with them. And there's these private meetings in a room separate from the meditation room during the meditation. They're usually short meetings. Sometimes we'll meet 
13:28:41:15 	with them outside the meditation to have a longer conference or discussion. On Sunday we have our big gathering and we have a half-hour service break broken into four elements. One is to kind of honor the way we see the universe. Another is the lineage of teachers, enlightened teachers.  
13:29:05:04 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: The third service is a service of compassion to send good wishes for people who are ill or who've passed away. And the fourth service is a service of protection. And in that service, instead of asking so much for protection and safety, we remind ourselves that we are the caretakers and we need to provide care and safety. And we remind ourselves that we are the child without food, the family driven from home and native land. And that we are the elements and 
13:29:38:17 	we are the animals and the, and nature. So that we take on the role of protectors, guardians of the galaxy, so to speak.  
13:29:50:13 	[Tom Kohler]: You mentioned seeing, sort of seeing ourselves out in the world.  
13:29:56:04 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Yes. Yeah.  
13:29:57:20 	[Tom Kohler]: Could you offer a few examples maybe of ways folks sort are part of your 20 do see themselves out in the world and particularly if it ties in some way to their, their faith life? I'd be interested in that.  
13:30:16:08 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Our whole practice does not separate the sacred and the, and the and the normal. We see the practice is human development. That everybody has this capacity to be more than just an isolated self. But it is not self-abdication or annihilation of self. It's an expanded notion of self as including everything, in terms of identity 
13:30:49:18 	and an interaction. So our core practice is to really be with each situation, seeing what is called forth by the situation and by our own needs to be the best harmonizing influence in this moment. So we don't see service necessarily as when we go to do disaster relief or when we go to 
13:31:17:10 	comfort somebody in hospice. It doesn't matter whether it's we're a checkout girl or whether we're an accountant or whether we're a ditch digger. We try and bring the spirit of this unity to whatever we're doing and bring full wholehearted attention and presence to whatever we're doing. So the sacred act and the sacred moment, if we want to use that terminology, is the ordinary moment. So while we do try and dedicate 
13:31:49:13 	ourselves to social service and definitely in everything we do, we see as a social component or the milieu, not just our needs in the situation, but our needs are included. It's not asceticism.  
13:32:09:00 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Okay. Is that helpful?  
13:32:10:23 	[Tom Kohler]: It is.  
13:32:11:04 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Okay.  
13:32:12:04 	[Tom Kohler]: Would there be, I'm still, and I may be trapped in my own...  
13:32:15:17 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: That's fine.  
13:32:16:09 	[Tom Kohler]: I may be trapped in my own mind here and also may be trapped a little bit. In the stories we've heard through the past couple of sessions, would there be examples of folks that are active? Congregationally will not be the right word.  
13:32:32:01 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Yeah. I mean, people who belong to our congregation and we can call it con, it doesn't matter, we call it a songha, but a rose, by any other songha... is a community.+  
13:32:41:10 	[Tom Kohler]: Would there be examples of those folks who, to your knowledge actively participate in civic life com? Broader community life? Possibly political life?  
13:32:51:20 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: We have a doctor who works at Memorial. You know, we, we have many professors teaching different things. The university, not necessarily Buddhism, teaching, acting at SCAD, teaching psychotherapy at Georgia Southern, teaching history at University of Georgia. We have a nurse, we have a dance... or somebody who runs a dance 
13:33:24:12 	company and studio. So these are very ordinary people. I think... You don't, I would imagine you find that in every church that you have people from all walks of life. So no, we, it's not, our practice does not only draw a certain kind of person, but it does draw a more mature person. 'cause there's not a lot of entertainment in our practice. There's a lot of 
13:33:55:01 	emptiness and silence and un... And we push people into the unknown over and over in different ways to, to find deeper answers within themselves. So generally the people who come to us have been... Tried a lot of things in life and have a lot of life experience. So they're mature people. And I would say in general, they're more progressive people politically. I think 
13:34:27:08 	that's unfair sometimes because I think people are more conservative. I'm not talking about the radically conservative, but people who have solid conservative values don't always find our communities as welcoming be, because I think our culture is more organized around progressive action, especially when we take action.  
13:34:54:18 	[Tom Kohler]: When you said take action, is that, are you suggesting that collectively you would collectively take action in terms of, of making a protest about something publicly or take action in terms of showing up for a volunteer day collectively?  
13:35:11:15 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: We encourage our people to be politically active. We don't tell 'em who to vote for, but taking action, I'm thinking of like supporting immigrants now. I mean, I should not necessarily be a political position, but unfortunately it's become like everything else, a political position. And, and so not everybody wants to 
13:35:41:15 	be involved in that or wants to be part of an organization doing that. So that's something organizationally based that has, has taken on a political tone. Even the war in Ukraine has become a political issue now. So there are people who might wanna practice zen but not be part of a zen center that was actively helping support the Ukraine's Ukrainians immigrants and 
13:36:12:03 	the Ukrainian war with, with donations. So no, we do not so far, you know, in terms of the natural world, we've had, I don't know if I'd call 'em protests, but certainly been part of a petitioning and things to save natural areas that are, are in danger of being turned over to strip mining. We've had people working at the border within our larger parent org... 
13:36:46:07 	Grandparent organization that have done a lot of work support, support there.  
13:36:56:08 	[Tom Kohler]: Do you, did you connect with what is called the interfaith community here?  
13:37:00:15 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Yes. Yeah. We've always been very interfaith. We've always, always had, there are Jesuit priests who are zen masters. We have a former Catholic priest who's one of our teachers. My wife's Dharma successor. He combines aspects of Christianity. I've been working for 11 years with a Presbyterian priest in Germany who teaches theology and is retiring July 5th. He's gonna open a center in Germany that will have Christian elements as well as zen Buddhist elements. He probably, 
13:37:36:08 	the former Catholic priest has ordained as a Buddhist priest. I don't know that the Presbyterian minister will ordain as a Buddhist priest. We, we have not yet begun really discussing how this will all work for us, but it doesn't make sense necessarily to ask him to do that. But this is not all 
13:38:01:18 	our board members feel the same. So it'll be an interesting stretch for us how to honor who he is and, and, and both traditions. There's a, he's writing a book about a famous Catholic theologian, Paul Knitter, who is part of the big world interfaith movement with Hindus and, and Buddhists. And Paul Knitter is within the Catholic church, one of the main architects of Catholic, Catholic interfaith movement. And he has written a book called 
13:38:32:00 	"Without Buddha, I could not be a Christian". So there's a lot of interesting interspace. Many Jewish people. My own, one of my American teachers, Bernie Glassman Roshi, did the Shabbat every Friday night and, and very much saw himself as Jewish and brought in a lot 
13:39:01:05 	of, for a while we had some work with the Hasidic community and some interaction and there was a, well-known WBAI was a radio station in a radical radio station in New York. And Lex Hixon ran a show in the sixties through the seventies interviewing different spiritual teachers from all sorts of traditions. And he was a great supporter of our particular school 
13:39:32:19 	from Maezumi Roshi.  
13:39:34:11 	[Tom Kohler]: If you got a call, say for example, the, from the Martin Luther King Parade Committee, an invitation to participate in the parade by marching, would that be something, is that the kind of thing that you would bring to the board?  
13:39:48:13 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Absolutely, yeah.  
13:39:49:15 	[Tom Kohler]: And there'd be a conversation and you might show up and...  
13:39:52:13 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: I don't think I would have to bring that to the board, if that gives you a feeling. Yeah, got it. Yeah. To march in the Martin Luther, you know, support Martin Luther King would be something that would be natural. To take a position, for example, on a choice and to be part of a protest to support, let's say a, an abortion center would be more of a board kind of issue and a tricky, you know, we have to find our 
13:40:26:07 	way through that. We have not taken a public position on that political position, but, you know, there is a moral issue there and people have different morals and none of them are right. Everyone in a way is wrong. So our belief is there's no exact right, but you have to make choices, but you 
13:40:53:06 	have to have the humility in your choices to know that your truth is contextual and situational and not absolute. So we walk a fine line and that's very important.  
13:41:08:04 	[Tom Kohler]: That's really interesting. So dogma is not your thing?  
13:41:14:15 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Nope. Dogma ain't our thing. We have some dogma, but it's to be deconstructed. But to help us more live metaphysics and dogma in experience as experience, not as theory or principle. I could say we have a principle that we are, we are the world, we are everything and everything am us. So therefore you don't debate whether to pull your hand outta fire. If somebody's in trouble, you help 
13:41:46:03 	'em. But as always, the devil's in the details. So we have a principle, a vow to use discernment choices from a perspective of unity. To use discernment from a perspective of unity does not mean pacifism or not making hard choices. Again, it just means knowing we do have to make 
13:42:14:20 	choices, but that they are limited and not right. And that no choice will be absolute and perfect. There'll always be collateral damage and more to do and that's the rest of life.  
13:42:30:00 	[Tom Kohler]: Where do you think y'all, where do you think y'all fit on the good cooking scale of religion?  
13:42:39:08 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: What is the good cooking school of religion?  
13:42:42:04 	[Tom Kohler]: The good cooking scale of religion? There's great debate among the various faiths in the American South about who has the best Wednesday night suppers.  
13:42:49:12 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Oh, I, I would definitely be going to a, a Baptist church or I would not be going to a Zen vegetarian meal necessarily, if I could help it. Yeah, we have all sorts of cooks and we don't prescribe vegetarianism and certainly not veganism, but many of our people are vegetarian and vegan. But I certainly would love to indulge in 
13:43:18:22 	some other cuisines.  
13:43:21:19 	[Tom Kohler]: And it sounds like you have influence in Savannah, but also all over the world?  
13:43:28:23 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Well, we haven't taken over the world as much as I'd like. But we're, we, I very much would like to plant seeds because I feel that the way we are approaching spiritual development is very holistic and healthy, has good psychology to it, is very open. And I think in accord with modern science, much more than other traditions... can handle some of the uncertainty that people are finding in physics. Both 
13:44:02:22 	cosmic physics as well as, you know, the physical universe that we're in and I think can help people deal with the, the severity of change, the speed of change, and the radical nature. That change is just happening so fast. So how to live in such an uncertain world where things are indeterminate and there are not absolute truths. Part of the division I see 
13:44:34:09 	in our country right now is that people are falling back into absolutes and wanting certainties, and that's aggravating the clashes rather than trying to find workable solutions in a changing that, that may change.  
13:45:03:15 	[Tom Kohler]: Who is among the people in Savannah that are that part of the, or I'll say congregation, who's the oldest person?  
13:45:15:08 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Ah, that's lovely. You asked that. You become an elder in our community when you turn 80. And the empowerment is you can do whatever the hell you want. Now, luckily not everybody's taken that totally seriously, but our senior elder, who's been with me for about 30 years is Joan Nogay Ackerman. Nogay means wild flower. And she is, she's 94 and lives at, oh, she was at Savannah Crossroads and now she's at 
13:45:52:05 	Harmony. And in, she was in an independent living in Savannah. Before that she was in independent living in New Jersey. But we brought her down to really provide more care for her. She has no family left and, and few friends. When you get that age, you've outlasted your friends as well as 
13:46:13:14 	your family. Yeah, so she's the oldest. She will come occasionally for major events, but she can't really come weekly anymore. It's too much for her weekly. But we're very involved with her and the community helps pitch in. And when we're away, we were recently in Germany for some, a retreat and some empowerments for our people there. Gone for two weeks. And other community members, you know, visited her regularly and made sure she had groceries and that everything was running 
13:46:49:22 	well. And she had people to talk to and, but she's very active. I mean, she, she's a person who's still doing, wants physical therapy to get stronger for a while she had a walker, she tried to do more physical therapy so she could walk without her walker. She's a member of her reading club and she calls us and my book didn't get here. We'd see what's going on with my book. So she's very active. I, I think again, this practice appeals 
13:47:22:02 	to people who are very self-reliant and body-mind, physically and mentally oriented.  
13:47:30:18 	[Tom Kohler]: You, you are, would you are now her family? Would that be for statement?  
13:47:35:14 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Yeah. That that's the way, yeah. She's part of our...  
13:47:38:10 	[Tom Kohler]: I mean literally at this point almost.  
13:47:40:04 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: I mean, well we certainly adopted her and she's adopted us. And like any family these days, you wonder about what you've given rise to your progeny are not easy. But...  
13:47:53:06 	[Tom Kohler]: Would I find children?  
13:47:55:10 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: I have two grown children. My daughter has one child so far. My first grandchild is one year and four months old.  
13:48:05:08 	[Tom Kohler]: Congratulations.  
13:48:06:11 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Thank you. And the, the clan just spent a week with us, last week and we called it Father's Week for Father's Day, stretched out. And it was fabulous. We had fun. Everybody was camped out at our house. My niece came, I have three nieces. One of them was able to come. We tried to get everybody here, but another time we'll do that.  
13:48:28:10 	[Tom Kohler]: And would there be children, congregationally? Would there be children running around?  
13:48:33:08 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Not during, not generally during the service, no. And we don't have a, a school for the kids. One of our members runs a Waldorf school, private home-based Waldorf school. She's fully trained in that very thorough, marvelous tradition. Montessori came out of the Waldorf tradition. It's kind of that hands-on teaching kids skills, but also integrated with nature and trying to learn by doing more, not just 
13:49:04:12 	book and number learning. So we look forward to having some kind of school, but again, because we're not so interested in dogma, almost the Waldorf School she runs is an expression of zen, the way zen might approach education. We do have quiet periods. She has quite quiet periods for the kids. And, but meditation with the kids, if you can get 'em to do an 
13:49:34:18 	exercise or cook or dress themselves, again, very practical presence. The meditation is the practice of presence. It doesn't have to be just sitting still like a stone.  
13:49:48:02 	[Tom Kohler]: Would you, are there, are there, are there other folks who are lead congregations here, be they rabbis or preachers or whatever, are there other folks that lead congregations here that you personally have connections with that have sort of built some sort of a, you know, some sort of interfaith trust network almost. Mm. How does that work?  
13:50:15:07 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Right now? It is, we have not done as much outreach. I'm, as I said, 76. I'm working full-time as a psychotherapist. I see 35 patients a week. I see 15 seniors and students each, the patients are an hour, each of the zen students is an hour. So I'm not doing a lot of outreach. Luckily my psychotherapy practice is established enough. I don't have to worry about references. So I haven't networked. I have plenty, I have to turn people away from my psychotherapy 
13:50:49:17 	practice. I was asked to speak at a church here. It was a lovely experience. There are a group of, I think, very progressive religious leaders here. I would like to be more involved in that network. I heard one of the people you interviewed, I've forgotten his name right now, but he's done more of a street ministry and I, I hear that he's doing a, a show or 
13:51:15:16 	something and I know that I was referred, my name was given to him as a possible guest more than being a guest on a show. I'd be more interested in, in getting involved in supporting some of the things he's doing with the homeless here locally.  
13:51:31:22 	[Tom Kohler]: Might be Michael Chaney, maybe?  
13:51:33:03 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Maybe. Yes, I think that's the name. Right? Thank you. Yes. Yeah, Reverend Cheney. So, so we, we haven't done a lot of this's, been exhausting just trying to get the new center going, deal with the existing international center and earn a living. As I said, this practice, the, the zen thing has been a great path of downward mobility. So although I don't have a vow of poverty, I have achieved it.  
13:52:04:02 	[Tom Kohler]: Well said. Alright. And if we were to come to the, to the center, to the physical space, describe, I pull up into the parking lot?  
13:52:16:11 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Yeah. We're in a strip mall right now. Okay. We were forced by the landlord to get a neon sign. We are the only people in Amer North America who have a neon sign saying Zen. As far as I know, the only Zen center with a neon sign. We've never turned it on. But it's there. It is there. And it has a potential. I would like my photograph at night with that neon sign and maybe a torch. We'll, we'll work on that. But you would pull up around the back of the building and you would come in 
13:52:49:00 	the back and it's, there's a sort of sitting room area with couches and little coffee tea. There's a bathroom and then there's the main hall connected to it. No, no doorway where there's about 20 meditation mats on the floor. And a gorgeous wooden carved Chinese altar that's about 250 years old. There's three statues on it that kind of embody characteristics 
13:53:17:11 	we wanna cultivate. Two figures that are more compassion and one that's wisdom. There's a... Things on the wall, various things on the wall. A gorgeous painting of herons, Japanese brushstroke, painting of herons, pictures of our members of our lineage. More immediate, my teacher, his and my teacher, his teachers. Some other key pictures of people from the 
13:53:54:17 	history of zen, a Bodhi leaf from the actual bodhi tree or the grandson, Bodhi tree of the tree the Buddha got enlightened under.  
13:54:06:07 	[Tom Kohler]: And what, what would happen if a curious but clueless Jew showed up at that door?  
13:54:14:02 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: They'd be welcomed to ask how they got here. Were they interested in meditation or were they looking for the Gestalt therapy center? If they're interested in meditation, they'd be told, we have a free meditation class every Tuesday night. And an ongoing class that's free Thursday nights. If they want to go further and learn more about how to apply meditation to daily life and, and what zen practice 
13:54:44:16 	is. And they, we'd answer any questions they might have,  
13:54:51:14 	[Tom Kohler]: But people would be, would be made to feel welcome?  
13:54:54:19 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Absolutely.  
13:54:55:23 	[Tom Kohler]: And you're on Montgomery and?  
13:54:59:00 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: 61st Street East. East 61st Street, there's Thackery, and then West 61st Street. So we're just, we're just west of Bull.  
13:55:12:11 	[Tom Kohler]: So would... If I said oxtail pizza?  
13:55:16:16 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: There is a pizza parlor in our strip mall. Yes. I don't know if it's oxtail. That's interesting.  
13:55:21:20 	[Tom Kohler]: I do.  
13:55:22:10 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Ah, you do. Okay. is. How's the pizza?  
13:55:26:07 	[Tom Kohler]: Excellent.  
13:55:27:03 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Oh, good to know.  
13:55:28:18 	[Tom Kohler]: Good. I think we'll end on that note.  
13:55:30:16 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Okay. Still keeps up. Ah,  
13:55:32:07 	[Tom Kohler]: Alright. This has been extremely interesting to me.  
13:55:36:10 	[Mickey Youmans]: Oh yeah,  
13:55:39:20 	[Eric Darling]: I, I did have one thing I'd like to ask if that's okay?  
13:55:43:11 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Yeah.  
13:55:44:06 	[Eric Darling]: I'm curious just to know like what percentage of your, you know, the, the community have come from a zen background and which have come from a different background and found zen practice somehow?  
13:56:00:15 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: All, all have found zen practice and something, you know, we now we're, I'm  
13:56:05:21 	[Mickey Youmans]: I'll go sit in the chair.  
13:56:06:19 	[Eric Darling]: Yeah, we, we need you to look towards the chair. Sorry.  
13:56:09:18 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Oh, I'm very sorry.  
13:56:10:06 	[Eric Darling]: That's okay. That's our, that's our fault. That's my fault. You tell me.  
13:56:14:20 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: Alright, so, okay.  
13:56:15:22 	[Eric Darling]: Sorry. You can tell Mickey.  
13:56:17:06 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: So in terms of the background of members now, I'm, I'm, I have a 54 year experience with this now. Certainly at the beginning, I didn't meet anybody from a Buddhist household in America, but later we started, you know, after the first 20 years we started to meet the, the children of hippies, Right? So there were people whose parents practiced all kinds of things. Buddhism, Hinduism, Bahai, voodoo. So our, 
13:56:53:06 	our members had some, some came from proto-Buddhist backgrounds. But I haven't experienced anybody who came from a real, just totally Buddhist household. Even in some of the Vietnam or, or Cambodian people that I've worked with. I worked with the Vietnam, Vietnam refugees when they came to the camp in Los Angeles after Vietnam fell. I went to the camp quite a bit 
13:57:24:01 	to work with some other actual Vietnamese monks. And then later the Cambodian population came to the South Bronx where I was working. So I was involved with them there. They, they did come from Buddhist households and a lovely young man, then teenager whose father died, spent a year with the Buddhist monks in a, a miserable apartment that they, the monks had in the 
13:57:52:02 	South Bronx to give merit to his father, to help his father have a good rebirth. But in general, our people come from Judeo-Christian backgrounds or non-religious backgrounds.  
13:58:09:01 	[Mickey Youmans]: Right. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's good.  
13:58:13:01 	[Eric Darling]: Awesome. I'm sorry, I'm just replying to a message for you from the International Seamen folks.  
13:58:17:22 	[Mickey Youmans]: Oh, he's outside.  
13:58:19:10 	[Eric Darling]: Yeah. Yeah. I think Tom went out to meet him. Yeah.  
13:58:23:12 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: But we can can this now?  
13:58:25:00 	[Eric Darling]: Yeah, I think we're there. We're we're there whether we like it or not. So thanks very much.  
13:58:30:00 	[Roshi Paul Genki Kahn]: All right. I am glad that it went okay.