Genpo Roshi and the Big Mind Process
On Monday night, EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen and many of his students engaged in a fascinating and powerful dialogue with Zen Master Genpo Merzel at the EnlightenNext World Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Genpo Roshi was delightfully funny and disarmingly frank, displaying an impressive spiritual depth born of 37 years of Zen practice and teaching. (A dharma brother of Bernie Glassman, Genpo Roshi is now 65 years old and started performing basic Zen teaching functions when he was just 28, at the behest of his master, the late Maezumi Roshi.) Over the course of the evening, we spoke with him about the evolution of his teachings, the necessity of maintaining a clear vertical hierarchy in any student-teacher relationship, and even about his experience as a collegiate water polo team captain. The highlight for me, though, was when Genpo Roshi guided us through a three-minute version of his innovative “Big Mind Process.”
I first learned of Genpo Roshi through his involvement with philosopher Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute. In a 2007 foreword to Genpo Roshi’s book Big Mind, Big Heart, Wilber offered tremendous praise for the Roshi and his work:
Let me state this as strongly as I can: the Big Mind Process . . . is an astonishingly original, profound, and effective path for waking up, or seeing one’s True Nature. . . . What Dennis Genpo Roshi has done is not only the most original discovery in Buddhism in the last two centuries, it is unbelievably simple, quick, and effective. In Zen, this realization of one’s True Nature, or Ultimate Reality, is called kensho or satori (“seeing into one’s True Nature,” or discovering Big Mind and Big Heart). It often takes five years or more of extremely difficult practice (I know, I’ve done it) in order for a profound satori to occur. With the Big Mind Process, a genuine kensho can occur in about an hour — seriously. Once you get it, you can do it virtually any time you wish, and almost instantaneously. It is nothing less than the discovery of your True and Unique Self, Ultimately Reality, the Ground of All Being — again, call it what you like, for “they call it Many which is really One.” . . . And once you spot that, an entirely different world opens for you.
Now, I have to admit that I’ve always been somewhat of a snob when it comes to Zen, having cut my spiritual teeth on the works of the almighty Zen masters Hui-neng (7th century), Keizan (13th century), and Hakuin (18th century), among many of the other great figures in that most no-nonsense of Buddhist sects. In light of those towering giants of Chinese and Japanese Zen, I considered most Western teachers and approaches to be far too soft and watered-down to be taken seriously. To me, Zen required years of shaved-head, sweat-browed, bulging-eyed discipline — like meditating without flinching while being attacked by swarms of rabid mosquitoes, or contemplating a tough koan for a week without sleeping, or simply staring at a wall for nine years straight, as in the case of Zen’s founding father, Bodhidharma. So when I first heard about Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind Process six or seven years ago, which promised people a satori after just a few hours of “voice dialoguing,” I was skeptical to say the least. (Though I never approached the heights of disparaging arrogance demonstrated by Brad Warner, a Gen-X self-styled “Zen punk” whose inane books I’ve critiqued in the pages of EnlightenNext. See bottom of the page here, and a more recent review here.)
In YouTube videos of Genpo Roshi taking people through the Big Mind Process — which involves him asking the audience to contact, feel, and speak from different “voices,” or parts of the self, until they fall through the trapdoor and find themselves in Big Mind, the True Self beyond all concepts — it’s hard to get what’s going on unless you really engage with it, performing the exercise yourself and not merely watching others do it. Genpo Roshi works dynamically, engaging with you in the moment, face to face, peeling away layers of self-identity until he brings your attention all the way back to your Original Face. So, Gen-Y slacker that I am, I never fully tried it out and therefore never got it. That is, until Monday night, when he was no longer on YouTube but actually sitting right in front of me. :)
And . . . it really works. It is indeed “simple, quick, and effective,” as Wilber so boldly advertised. Granted, our audience wasn’t exactly the most random test sample, since everyone in attendance was a student of Andrew Cohen and his teachings of Evolutionary Enlightenment. But the exercise jogged memories of my first prolonged satori experience nine years ago, which happened shortly after I met Andrew and attended one of his long retreats. During that initial, overwhelmingly ecstatic foray into enlightened consciousness, I remember taking a Zen book off the shelf — perhaps The Blue Cliff Record — and opening it up to random koans. I would read them and then nearly fall over laughing, suddenly getting the joke. So as Genpo Roshi walked us through the famous “Mu” koan during our three-minute Big Mind session, it had a similar effect. It was comical how obvious the answer to the koan was after we’d exhausted all our intellectual answers to his question, “What is Mu?” And I’m sure it is all the more powerful for those who are guided by Genpo Roshi to the liberating recognition of their Self for the very first time (then again, isn’t it always the first time?). The surprising simplicity of the Big Mind approach reminds me of a classic quote from Zen Master Foyan: “When you see, let there be no seer or seen; when you hear, let there be no hearer or heard; when you think, let there be no thinker or thought. Buddhism is extremely easy and saves the most energy. It’s just that you yourself waste energy and cause yourself trouble.”
Still, the Big Mind method does have its drawbacks, which Genpo Roshi spoke with us about at length (and he did so in even more depth during an interview/dialogue conducted by Andrew earlier in the day, which I’m currently editing for the upcoming issue of EnlightenNext). Specifically, it can be used and abused for a kind of quick-fix gimmicky spiritual high by postmodern seekers who have zero authentic spiritual training — nor necessarily any intention of engaging in spiritual training — which thereby allows them to sneak a peek at the Absolute and then conclude that they’ve somehow attained something. Genpo Roshi gave the example of some eager young seekers coming up to him, after practicing Big Mind for only three months, and asking if they were now qualified to be Zen masters! (“As soon as you get some sense of contact, you want to be teachers of others,” observed the Zen master Ta-sui, long ago. “This is a big mistake.”) Most worryingly, Genpo Roshi explained, the Big Mind Process— when practiced in and of itself, without being supplemented by koan study and zazen — has revealed itself to lack a fundamental verticality, the hierarchical tension that alone has the power to pull a developing soul along the spiritual path. But he’s now taking active steps to correct this.
For the first two decades of his teaching work, he said, he was very traditional, sitting on a raised dais before his students in full Japanese Zen master regalia. In that context, verticality was obvious, and respect for the teacher, as well as reverence for the sacred heights of Spirit itself, were implicit in the tradition. But over time, it became evident that a strictly traditional path wasn’t necessarily the best fit for his post-traditional, postmodern students. So, in 1999, he developed the Big Mind Process, intending to convey the essence of Zen in a way more amenable to modern and postmodern sensibilities, while also making Zen more widely accessible — i.e., a more “horizontal” approach, aiming for breadth over depth. But now that the limitations of that have also become all too clear to him, Genpo Roshi envisions a new stage in the unfolding of his work: an integration of the vertical and the horizontal, the traditional and the new, with the potential to revitalize the practice of Zen Buddhism for the 21st century. And given what I’ve seen so far, I think he stands a good chance of succeeding.
Filed Under: Buddhism • Consciousness • EnlightenNext Editors’ Blog • EnlightenNext magazine • Integral Philosophy • Religion • Spirituality
My name is Debora Prieto and I am Spanish. I am the wife of Mick Quinn, author of “The Uncommon Path”, who studied Andrew Cohen’s teachings for several years, with whom I attended one of Andrew’s Retreats in Montserrat (Barcelona ‘05). Now we live in Salt Lake City, the base of the Big Mind Western Zen Center.
I have the honor of being Genpo Roshi’s formal student and to have received Jukai from him. His teachings really made me realized how important it is to develop presence and to sit as well as to do koan study. I began as his student because of the Big Mind Process and now I am embracing Zen as I never would have believed. There are many skeptics that say that Big Mind is not Zen. To me and because of Big Mind I can say today that I love Zen the tradition and that I really appreciate the importance and value of the hierarchies or the vertical.
I am really excited about Andrew Cohen and Genpo Roshi sitting together at the same table. They both share a common goal, and what they can do together is pretty big. I profoundly respect both teachers, their intentions and values and I see this meeting as a new, big step for the evolution of humanity.
Thank you both, with all my respect and love,
Debora Prieto
it can be used and abused for a kind of quick-fix gimmicky spiritual high by postmodern seekers who have zero authentic spiritual training…which thereby allows them to sneak a peek at the Absolute and then conclude that they’ve somehow attained something
Where do you think the postmodern seekers get this wacky idea? Perhaps from marketing copy like this from Wilber:
With the Big Mind Process, a genuine kensho can occur in about an hour— seriously. Once you get it, you can do it virtually any time you wish, and almost instantaneously.
If that doesn’t say “instant enlightenment in an hour without ongoing training,” I don’t know what does. Wilber’s model of enlightenment is that of state-stages, in other words solidifying one’s ability to enter states. In the above quotation, Wilber clearly implies this state-stage mastery, i.e. enlightenment, is possible in one, 1-hour Big Mind Process. That is a specific claim of attainment, clearly equating one state experience with mastery of access to the state.
Or perhaps they get the idea from Bill Harris, who is also a marketer of the Big Mind Process, making claims like this (from https://www.centerpointe.com/bigmind/details/):
You’ll have a real, tangible experience of being One with the entire universe — what Genpo Roshi calls Big Mind/Big Heart. I’m talking about the same experience a Zen master or other enlightened master has — something that usually takes decades of meditation and direct work with a spiritual master to achieve. I’m not kidding. You’ll experience this amazing state (more than once) during these two days, and I promise it will change your life — forever…
Clearly Harris is equating a Big Mind weekend workshop with diligent years of meditative discipline.
It’s not some straw man postmodern seeker that is making these claims to instant enlightenment. Clearly it is those selling the process itself.
Roshi is taking “active steps to correct this” in his teaching, but obviously not in his marketing–the very source of the confusion. Would the process be so well known without such hype and overstated claims?
That said, I found Big Mind with Genpo somewhat useful. The voice dialogue part seemed most helpful to me, the higher voices less helpful. I did not experience a profound satori in the nearly 3 hours of the process, neither with Roshi nor with Diane Hamilton. I had sat about 500 hours of retreat time doing Vipassana prior to trying Big Mind. I felt calm and my mind was quiet, but nothing special (imagine that…perhaps I was truly awake after all, beyond the craving for the extraordinary).
My brief experience of Big Mind with Genpo Roshi a year or so ago in Seattle convinced me that, in isolation, it is something like taking a psychedelic drug. As I have heard Andrew say in the past, psychedelics can show you the top of the mountain but they don’t get you there. That was my experience with Big Mind. It refreshed my connection to earlier open-eyed “enlightenment states” that I have been privileged to have.
At the same time, the Big Mind experience made clear to me how meditation, life practice, and especially the kind of collective consciousness practice that Andrew and his students have developed and refined over the years with groups, must be used together to create movement toward a new stage in evolution. Experience of that state is incredibly useful in sharpening one’s intention, reminding one of the “goal,” and maybe making it easier to consciously choose the experience of open-eyed non-dual awareness more frequently.
But in isolation, it’s really sort of like a powerful drug. An important difference, on the other hand, is that it enables one to experience that state without drugs or other physiological interventions (e.g., severe fasting) that might not be available at the moment of death. So it’s a really powerful thing, but hopefully part of a bigger practice.
It’s so inspiring to see Teachers, such as Andrew and Genpo Roshi, evolving in their own work, acknowledging that there is always further even for them to go, and modeling continuous development for the rest of us!
In consciousness –spiral and developmental terms,
My red, opportunistic self wants Big Mind to confirm my reign of greatness.
My blue self wants it to be sure I experienced the same things as my friends and group, plus I will get a consensus and settle on certain facts about it.
My orange, achiever self wants to have my mind blown, use the experience as a practical leverage in daily life.
My green, individualistic self wants Big Mind to acknowledge my consideration and sensitivity, my balance and all things ‘me’.
My autonomous self uses Big Mind to confirm some things such as synchronicities and uses it as a platform from which to perceive these patterns.
The construct aware, turquoise self uses Big Mind as more of a home base from which these described things arise, including the sense of ‘me’.
The Unitive sees this discussion as clamoring among the argumentative and those who toss and turn in the night of seeking and the usefullness of it all, maybe–as a signal that there’s fluttering of the wings of a potential butterfly as what happens, happens.
yes, Zen is GREAT, also Satory is great, all good intentions and positive help are great, but do not stop there, please do not stop there, there is much more…go on, explore, expand, start by loving unconditionally your own Self..have you met your Self, and the self of all.???..can you expand so much that your glorious Love is able to “Understand”? Stand-under and accept the Universal “Wisdom”?????
Yes, maybe, some day, you certaily will…
Good luck!
MAF
Big Mind is an amazing process… I’ve went to a retreat in Salt Lake for a week in April and it is genuinely one of the most amazing weekends I’ve experienced. Obviously, one also should do daily practice as well, be it meditation, holosync or sitting as ‘big mind’…
Kudos!
- Julius
Hi!
I haven’t read any of Dennis’ recent work. I am completely independent.
When I was 14, 33 years ago, Dennis Genpo Merzel (then sensei) was my teacher back at Zen Center Los Angeles under Taizan Maezumi Roshi. My dad and I, Howard Delaney, philosophy professor at Loyola University, used to ride a motorcycle to get there from Westchester. The first day, I walked into the room with him and that was it! tremendous dissolution of everything and I could not stop laughing and laughing and smiling! I continued for 2 years under him, including sesshins, (one 11 day sesshin) and sometimes Charlotte Joko Beck who took another line of zen by asking about my relationships. I never said much to them, never asked questions, just sat, and did what they said to do: focus! I still sit every morning and every night. I would not doubt anything that Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi would claim to. Big Mind Big Clarity Big Potential More than big: Everything Mind. That man has tremendous focused energy! Thank you my great teacher from long ago.
There is a mountain of difference between Genpo’s notion of mind and mind (citta) as found in important and pivotal Sutras like the Lankavatara and Surangama. Genpo’s mind and the methodology, it could be argued, is purely psychological. The Mind expounded upon in the Lankavatara Sutra, for example, is not psychological. It is the very substance of everything including our thoughts and the universe. It is the absolute medium of all.