Sometimes Roshi wears a black robe, in the ancient Japanese style, but tonight he is wearing jeans and a polo shirt. After this class, which he has titled "Transcending Zen," he will get on his motorcycle and drive home to his wife and two children.

In the future, he tells his students, Zen will look very ordinary. It will blend in more and more with western culture, "and transform the culture from within."

"We're in an incredible period of history," he says, a time when Zen is taking hold in the United States. "It's the biggest leap across oceans and cultures in 2,500 years." The question for Buddhists in the west, he says, is how much of the traditional practice to hold on to and how far to move beyond it.

In China, he says, it took six generations for Buddhism to look nothing like it did before. "We shouldn't feel funny above moving ahead," Roshi tells his students. "We shouldn't feel bad that we improve" — even though, he says, "when it comes to spirituality, we have something in our brain that says we can't do better."

Zen is all-encompassing, he says. "But the moment we say 'Zen' we have to move beyond Zen. And the moment we say 'beyond Zen' we have to move beyond that." That's the Buddhist teaching, he says: "to go beyond the teaching."

Later, Roshi talks about the human tendency to think of religion as something fixed. "When people don't go very deep into their own spiritual practice, they tend to cling to their religion as being the only or right religion. Those who really go deeply, (LDS) President Hinckley is one of those, have a greater respect for what we're all trying to do," he says, "which is to help people become better human beings, to reach our potential as human beings to become more compassionate. When we go deep enough, we all reach the same place."

There are rabbis and Benedictine monks and Tibetan Buddhist lamas who want to bring Big Mind to their religious traditions, he says. Roshi's goal (even nonseeking, nontrying Buddhists have goals) is to help "change the planet," one mind at a time. Along with Zen Buddhist master Bernie Glassman, co-founder of The Peacemaker Circle, and Ken Wilber, author of "A Brief History of Everything" and founder of the Integral Institute, Genpo Roshi has formed "The Alliance of Three" to bring Zen principles to businesses, religions and other institutions.

Roshi has made an introduction to the Big Mind process, a 3-hour DVD that is a shortened version of the 5 1/2-hour Big Mind workshop. And soon there will an even shorter version, a one-hour DVD for college classrooms; a glimpse of the glimpse of the glimpse of enlightenment. If Americans aren't fond of sitting still, Roshi has learned, there are still ways to reach them.

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