Andrew Cohen: Genpo, our backgrounds are both in traditional Eastern paths—you’re from the Zen tradition, and my final guru was a master of Advaita Vedanta. In those traditions, the concepts of spiritual authority, spiritual hierarchy, and spiritual attainment are assumed and taken for granted. It’s understood that there is a hierarchy—that an individual can go from a lower state of development to a higher one—and that the role of the spiritual master is to facilitate this transformation.

But ever since the 1960s, when Westerners began to practice the Eastern dharma, something very interesting has happened. Many Western spiritual teachers have started to recontextualize the meaning of spiritual attainment in terms of the postmodern value that says, essentially, that everybody is equal. The minute we start suggesting that some individuals might be more evolved or more enlightened than others, it tends to challenge everyone’s egalitarian sensibilities. I’ve often observed Western teachers bending over backward to reassure their audiences that although they might have more experience on the spiritual path, they really aren’t at a higher level of development than anyone else. They would deny the notion of hierarchy in order to make everyone feel comfortable because the postmodern self feels very threatened by the possibility that there could be anyone or anything higher than itself.

Since the day I started on the spiritual path, however, it has been clear to me that there is something higher than the individual self. When one truly awakens to that higher reality of Spirit, one has the potential to become a different kind of person, a more evolved person. And if such a one can demonstrate a higher level of spiritual awareness that is tangible and obvious to other people, then it puts him or her in a position to convince others of that which is higher in such a way that, ideally, will inspire them to make the effort to evolve themselves.

As you know, for many years a very big theme in my work has had to do with bringing hierarchy back into the discussion of what spiritual enlightenment and the teacher-student relationship are all about. So when you contacted me to ask if we could have a dialogue about this topic, I was thrilled and knew it would be fascinating to explore with you, a modern Zen master, why the hierarchical or vertical dimension is such an essential part of the spiritual dharma.