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| Genpo Roshi: Big Mind/Big Heart |
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| posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 |
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EDITOR'S COMMENT:
The following post contains a host of information about The Big Mind/Big Heart Process that Genpo Roshi discovered and which Ken Wilber has been trumpeting for some time now as a near-instant path to enlightenment. I first reported on this in 2005:
WILBER, INTEGRAL INSTITUTE SEMINARS & NEAR-INSTANT SATORI (2/8/2005):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/8829
The first portion of this post introduces a discussion between Wilber and Genpo that was recently posted on the Integral Naked website. You can listen to this discussion by going here (mp3).
.......
Excerpts from this discussion include:
Ken Wilber:
"The theme of Integral Spiritual Center <http://www.integralspiritualcenter.org> is teachers teaching teachers. And we wanted to put some of the finest teachers together and have them take turns teaching each other. And so the first person I asked to grace us doing this was Genpo and basically we locked everybody in a room for three days and shut the doors and I basically looked at Genpo at 8 o'clock on the first morning and said you've got eight hours to enlighten everybody in the room. Go. And he did. We did six hours of Big Mind Process... with people who are already pretty far along the old road."
"I wouldn't hesitate in saying that was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my entire life."
Genpo Roshi:
"What we discovered... was that we had disowned or suppressed a lot of qualities, a lot of aspects of ourself in order to train in such a disciplined way. And also in a way that didn't really allow for inclusion of anger and jealously and... a negative way of being. We didn't really include that. In fact, we were basically told not to get angry, it was wrong to be angry, it was one of the three poisons... It's wrong to be aggressive. There was a number of things. So what became clear was that we had a bunch of disowned aspects of ourself that were working on us in a covert way, meaning that they went underground, they were still present, but we're not aware of them. They're shadows, so we didn't see them. So I started to really work with the voice dialog process in '83 and we trained a number of us... and we got to a place where we really saw that this could compliment the tradition... And I worked on that for 16 years and then in 1999 I had a breakthrough in seeing how the technique... could actually open the door to The Transcendent, to help us drop the ego self and move into that no boundary, limitless place."
.......
The remaining portions of this update include Ken Wilber's Forward to Genpo Roshi's new Big Mind/Big Heart book, Genpo Roshi himself describing the process, and various related links, including a Wikipedia page dedicated to the Big Mind Process.
You can watch videos of the Big Mind Process at these locations:
NHNE's "Big Mind" (& Related Topics) Resource Page
Integral Naked (Integral Institute)
Genpo Roshi Website
YouTube
In my previous update on The Big Mind Process, I reported that I took it for a spin and didn't experience any significant changes in consciousness. While putting this post together, I tried it again. Whereas before I watched Genpo Roshi's presentations without setting aside a special time and place, this time I set aside about an hour in the evening when I could listen undisturbed and uninterrupted. And while I still didn't have a life-changing, knock-your-socks-off classical experience in Cosmic Consciousness (see here if you aren't sure what I am talking about), I did experience a noticeable deepening. And this, in turn, leads me to encourage you to take it for a spin and then let the rest of us know what happens. Your can share your experiences in a special forum that I have created on NHNE's new community website:
NHNE's Genpo Roshi's Big Mind / Big Heart Process Discussion
--- David Sunfellow
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BIG MIND BIG HEART. PART 1.
THE MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY IN TWO CENTURIES OF BUDDHISM
Genpo Roshi
Integral Naked
Original Link
In the foreword to Genpo Roshi’s latest book, Big Mind/Big Heart: Finding Your Way (to be released this summer), Ken writes: “Let me state this as strongly as I can: the Big Mind Process (founded by Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi) is arguably the most important and original discovery in the last two centuries of Buddhism.”
No matter how you look at it, that’s a stunning statement. So what’s going on “under the hood” of this particular assertion? What does it mean, what’s the context, and how can one back it up? Equally important, what does this actually mean for my life and practice right now?
Well, what’s “under the hood” is integral consciousness, developed and mastered in their own ways by both Ken and Genpo in over six decades of combined experience. Integral here simply means more inclusive, more comprehensive, and more embracing than anything that has come before -- because in the manifest domain, “things” evolve; teachings evolve; skillful means evolve; right communications evolve. Ever-present Big Mind Big Heart as the one true Dharma and simple I AMness of this and every moment is the nondual union of form and emptiness, and while one can’t actually give this ultimate understanding qualities or attributes (even that one), the fact that form evolves is not a moot point in the enlightenment game. If the reality of Big Mind Big Heart was something all sentient beings could immediately grasp and understand, there would be no need for spiritual teachers. As it is, there is a very, very real need for teachers, and their work specifically entails working with the world of form to remind it of its timeless and spiritual nature, and in this particular Kosmos that means working with the “10,000 minds” of human beings.
The thing that the founders of every single great religious tradition -- including, for example, Gautama Buddha and the Zen Patriarchs -- didn’t know, and in fact couldn’t know, was that these “10,000 minds” evolve, and that more minds are added to the pantheon as time progresses. What’s important here is that some of these new “minds” are not simply new variations on old themes, but developmental emergents. From archaic to magic to mythic to rational to pluralistic to integral and super-integral (and beyond), individuals (and cultures) only have access to the structures in consciousness available to humanity at that point in history, and the latter half of the structures just mentioned have only crystallized or began to crystallize in the manifest domain over the past 300 years or so. Texts and teachings from pre-modernity will ring as clearly with ever-present formless Truth as they did the day they were written, but they won’t know how to address the forms of mind that have emerged in world consciousness since that time.
It is the responsibility of present-day teachers and lineage-holders to help create self-consciously evolutionary and integral forms of spirituality, because that is what the world of form now demands. Again, if ever-present Big Mind Big Heart was obvious to all sentient beings at all times, there would be no need for teachers -- but in this particular realm of samsara, that need does exist. Teachers interact at the deepest level with the world of form to help liberate sentient beings, and if the world of form evolves, it is their responsibility to integrate these evolutionary emergents with timeless Dharma. It is in this integral and evolutionary context that “the Big Mind Process is arguably the most important and original discovery in the last two centuries of Buddhism.” Combining some of the most essential insights of Western psychotherapeutic technique (particularly Voice Dialogue, founded by Hal and Sidra Stone) with Eastern contemplative wisdom (particularly Zen Buddhism, courtesy of Genpo’s teacher Maezumi Roshi), Genpo Roshi is not only responding to the demands of today, but creating something new through which a new face of enlightenment might shine tomorrow. (To learn more about integral-evolutionary spirituality in the modern and postmodern world, be sure to check out 30+ of the world’s finest contemplative teachers from across traditions applying an Integral Approach at <http://www.IntegralSpiritualCenter.org>. To learn more about the theoria of an Integral Spirituality, see “What Is Integral Spirituality?” <http://in.integralinstitute.org/faq-pdf.aspx?id=10>), and to learn more about the praxis of an Integral Spirituality, see Integral Life Practice <http://www.myilp.com/>.)
What’s the secret of this profound new form of teaching, and why does the Big Mind Process succeed for 99% of the people who try it? Indeed, why should you try it in your own life and practice, when it sounds too good to be true? The answers lie within this dialogue between these two pioneers of modern spirituality, and we invite you to join in on this ground-breaking conversation.
(To read the entire foreword to Genpo’s new book Big Mind/Big Heart, click here. To check out Genpo’s prior audio and video appearances on IN, including experiential follow-along Big Mind Process instructions, click here.)
(Newsflash!: For an in-person and live experience of an Integral Approach to Buddhism, check out the upcoming “Integral Mahamudra: Mandala of Awakening” seminar with Patrick Sweeney, Diane Musho Hamilton Sensei, and Terry Patten -- all Integral Spiritual Center founding members -- this May 21-23 in Denver.)
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KEN'S FOREWORD TO BIG MIND/BIG HEART BY GENPO ROSHI
February 04, 2007
Original Link
Let me state this as strongly as I can: the Big Mind Process (founded by Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi) is arguably the most important and original discovery in the last two centuries of Buddhism. It is an astonishingly original, profound, and effective path for waking up, or seeing one's True Nature. It is such a simple and universal practice it can be used in any spiritual path you wish, or even just alone, by itself, as a practice for realizing your True Nature -- which you can call God, Allah, Jahweh, Brahman, Tao, Ein Sof -- it doesn't really matter, because the core of the Big Mind Process is Emptiness itself, which, having no specific content at all, can and does embrace anything that arises, integrating it all. 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."
But Genpo didn't work merely with Buddhism. He took some of the central discoveries of Western psychology -- particularly Voice Dialogue and subpersonalities -- and found an astonishingly effective way to integrate the best of the East (or simply the best of the contemplative traditions) -- which is finding one's True Nature and Infinite Self or Infinite-Empty Consciousness -- Big Mind itself -- satori itself! -- and then integrate that with some of the best of the West (namely, working not with infinite Reality but with finite reality and with finite selves, helping to make them conscious and then healed and wholed). The wondrous part is that he then found an easy and effective way to integrate the Infinite and the finite selves (again, using the overall Big Mind/Big Heart Process).
Big Mind Process works with your own mind, with your states of consciousness, just as they are now. What you don't know, if you haven't had a satori or awakening of some sort, is that right now, reading this page, is Big Mind, or God, or Spirit. And it is so close and so obvious that you can't see it. But Genpo, in this book (which is a simple handbook of how to do Big Mind/Big Heart practice yourself), will show you that part of your own awareness, right now, which is already enlightened, already one with Spirit, already fully awakened. And once you spot that, an entirely different world opens for you. The book you have in your hands right now will, I can almost guarantee it, open your mind's eye and show you how, in this very instant, Spirit is fully and completely present, looking through your eyes, listening with your ears, holding this book in its hands: right now! And it always has been, but it was too close to see, too obvious to notice, too simple to believe. This extraordinary discovery awaits you in this book.
(We at Integral Institute have found this process to be so effective and profound, that we have made it a central part of our programs, seminars, and Integral Life Practice. You can see videos of Genpo doing this process, and leading you through it completely, at Integral Naked at www.integralinstitute.org. You can also find these types of videos on Genpo's own website, BigMind.org. We have found the process to be around 97% effective, and that is why I feel comfortable promising, or darn close to promising, that by the time you finish reading this book, you will be among the enlightened ones, even if with beginner's eyes. Of course, this initial -- but very strong -- insight or kensho can be infinitely deepened if you want, and Genpo gives simple instructions for how to continue meditating to deepen this awakening. But awaken you will, I truly believe.)
Genpo did not include developmental psychology in this integration of the best of the East and West, and for a reason: it simply does not matter what stage of development you are at in order to do Big Mind Process. It works at virtually any major stage of development -- whether you are at magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, integral, or super-integral: any stage can do Big Mind and awaken to the ever-present, all-pervading, infinite Reality of All Being (again, name it as you wish). But, if you want, you can study how these stages mesh with the states of Big Mind: Genpo Roshi is a founding member of Integral Spiritual Center (at Integral Institute), and has been instrumental in studying ways to fit together stages of consciousness with states of consciousness. Again, his work can be found at IntegralSpiritualCenter.org, and at his own website BigMind.org. And you can find all of this in a book that I happened to author, called Integral Spirituality <http://tinyurl.com/2n7kuq>.
But start here, with this book, and this simple but profound process, and be prepared to find your own True Self, possibly for the first time, but joyous in any event. And you will learn to integrate the finite or dualistic selves (the skeptic, the controller, the victim, the damaged child, the angry mind, the seeking mind, etc.) with the Infinite or Non-dual Self in its many displays (Big Mind, Big Heart, Integrated Feminine/Masculine, Great Joy, Great Gratitude, Integrated Free-Functioning -- the Ultimate Goal). A genuine taste of all of this awaits your reading pleasure, my friend, and I am happy and hopeful for you that you will simply relax the mind, rest in the present, let your consciousness go free, for it has no walls—and then read this book, or simply let it soak into you, let the words wash through you, and soon enough, that "you" will be "YOU" -- which is to say, I AMness, your own True, Infinite, and Eternal Nature: "before Abraham was, I AM." This book is truly a handbook of Awakening to I AMness, which is already looking out of your eyes right now.
I am adding my own blessings to these wonderful words of awakening that this book contains, and may the merit of all of this be dedicated to sentient beings everywhere, that they too may wake up and discover who, and what, they really are. In that awakening, suffering can find no purchase; in that enlightenment, hatred and anger can find no home; gratitude and joy inexplicably arise in their place, dancing wildly in the deepest clarity and most astonishing thankfulness, all of which together provide an endless fountain of awakened joy, happiness, compassion, and wisdom, pouring out of your mind and your heart (now your Big Mind and Big Heart), and into the world in a gushing and uncontrollably overflowing superabundance of radiance, release, bliss, luminosity, celebration, and joy.
Now look at me, my friend, and listen, please, I'm truly serious: isn't it time for you to wake up? How long have you been lost in this dream? Can't you feel the wisdom holders shaking you, saying, "Wake up, please, this is just a dream!" You know this, don't you? You know that in the deepest part of your being, you can wake up, don't you? You have been searching for how long now? Well, it is time for the Great Search to end. As long as you are searching, you are looking for a future moment that will be better than this moment, but it is this moment that holds the entire key: why are you running away from your own awakening?
So stop searching, take a breath, and start reading this manual for Awakening to the present moment, and I think you will never be able to look back. And then, if you and I ever meet, we will know each other, won't we? With a twinkle in your eye, a slight smile on your face, a radiance in your heart, you and I will look into the eyes of each other and see the one and only Self, Big Mind, Big Heart, and the days and nights of the endless search will have lost its dreadfully painful meaning.
And we will have Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi to thank, for discovering a simple and original process of Awakening right now. And so I offer the deepest bow to Genpo, offer the merit to all sentient beings, and into your hands, with infinite blessings, I now pass on this extraordinary book to you.
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GENPO ROSHI ON "THE BIG MIND" PROCESS
From The Stuart Davis Show, Episode 1
http://www.kenwilber.com/scene/show/185
"All I know is that it is completely revitalized, rejuvenated, inspired me to continue to go deeper with students and the shift that I see possible with students after doing the traditional after all those years, almost 30 years, continues to blow my mind."
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THE AWAKENING OF EVERYONE
YouTube
November 9, 2006
In this video clip Genpo Roshi speaks on the potential of the Big Mind Process and how it can awaken everyone regardless of their religious or spiritual level of experience. He speaks of the urgency in this day and age for all of us to awaken, meaning the ability to fully understand, embrace and transcend the personal and global paradigms.
Watch Video
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EXCERPT:
"We've been searching for really 2500 years plus for how to awaken to our true nature. Prior to 1999 it has always been hit and miss. My teachers used to say when all the conditions were absolutely right, one would come to a state of awakening, and that was a gift, it was like a state of grace. And we really couldn't do that much to get ourselves there other than really work hard -- sit, go deep, and wrestle with our self, our resistances, our fears, etc....
"The Big Mind, since June of 1999, has really made that possible for the world and for anyone. Anyone who is willing to approach the Big Mind Process, within a very limited amount of time, like an hour, an hour and a half, can come to a state of awakening and raise their consciousness at least one level. Because awakening is ever presence. It is always possible for us as human beings to reach a new state of awareness simply be letting go of wherever we are at that moment -- wherever we are stuck.
"The Big Mind Process is really a non-invasive, non intrusive, non-intimidating way for everyone to get past their ego. What we do is we incorporate the ego, enlist the go to actually support us in our goal which is to go beyond the ego. And before we discovered the Big Mind Process, this somehow eluded us and wasn't possible. So as Ken Wilber sees it, as Bernie Glassman and myself all see it, in connection with the vast sky work, is that the Big Mind Process is going to really be at the forefront of our work in raising the level of consciousness on this planet.
"Ken is probably the best supporter of The Big Mind Process. In fact, he might even be a better supporter than I am. And I think it is because of his brilliance. He really sees the potentiality of this process. And it is far beyond just a kind of spiritual awakening. The possibilities of the Big Mind is to move into politics, into social action, into all kinds of work of mediation, even on a global level. If we could just get some of the nations right now who are at war to sit down together and do Big Mind, I think we could really do a very good thing. Of course getting them together is not so easy. It has the potential to do amazing work in psychotherapy, in psychoanalysis, in education, just in so many arenas. And I think Ken, having the kind of vision that Ken has, is able to really glimpse at the potential of what this means for the world. In fact, he calls it the next turning of the wheel of the Dharma -- the fourth turning of the wheel -- that this is going to be one of the key players in the turning of the wheel of the Dharma."
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BIG MIND: SIMPLE EXERCISES FOR RECOGNIZING YOUR OWN TRUE NATURE
With Genpo Roshi
Original Link
Big Mind -- your Original Face -- Nondual Awareness -- Spirit itself, is not other than who you are at this very moment. To get us to realize this, many spiritual paths and techniques call us to go beyond the ego, into its source or ground. And rightly so. However, what an integral approach would suggest -- and what we find wonderfully exemplified in Genpo Roshi's Big Mind Process -- is that in order to transcend the ego, we must include it as well. In order to go beyond -- in order to taste the spaceless, timeless Reality -- we must integrate what is with us here and now, in space and time.
The Big Mind Process befriends the many voices within us -- the dualistic voices with which we narrowly identify at one time or another -- in order to gently lead us into a recognition of our nondual self. Because the enlightened state is ever-present, we can access it any time. And while a permanent realization of Big Mind requires growth through stages of development, this process is one of the quickest and most reliable ways to give us a taste of this "stateless state" right now.
We're proud to offer a complete hour and a half of the Big Mind process, as led by Genpo Roshi during an Integral Art Weekend in Boulder, CO in February 2004. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy this guided tour into the freedom and fullness of your very own Big Mind.
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RELATED LINKS:
Genpo Roshi Website
Wikipedia On Big Mind
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Ken Wilber's Website:
http://www.kenwilber.com/
Ken Wilber's Journal RSS News Feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/kenwilbercomjournal
Integral Institute:
http://www.integralinstitute.org/
Integral Naked:
http://www.integralnaked.org/
NHNE Ken Wilber Resource Page:
http://www.nhne.org/tabid/489/Default.aspx
NHNE's "All Things Integral" Forum
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