Genpo Roshi's Big Mind / Big Heart Process

[David Sunfellow]

What are your thoughts and experiences with Genpo Roshi's Big Mind / Big Heart Process?

[Wanda Ballentine]

I know that both Ken Wilber and Genpo Roshi are well respected names. I like the paragraph where they address joy bubbling out of everything. But it took a lot of scanning to find those words in one paragraph toward the end. What I didn't see was any connection to social justice - any description of ways they have taken this process into low-income housing projects, or latino gangs and seen the transformations occurring. I didn't see suburban Republicans flocking to join inner city Habitat for Humanity projects or to join the Non-Violent Peace Force in Sri Lanka. Nor do I see Nasdaq day traders spontaneously giving up their online addictions and taking walks in the Spring woodlands instead - nor habituated BlackJack players missing the bus to the local casino so that they could work as a nurses aid in the local hospice.
As this piece is presented (quite apart from its actual merits) it could just be another "new age" escape for the better (or best) off and not something that will directly and promptly begin to make substantial differences in the places where corrupted human thinking has shown its worst consequences - namely in the lives of the poor and weak and those with no voice in the current money-driven global system. A real Proof of Principle still awaits us as we take it to Halliburton and Martin-Marrietta to see just how quickly we can 'liberate' the minds of people who are the most comfortable beneficiaries of our current "small minded' war-profiteering system.
The above mini-scenarios represent practical tests that will need to be passed before many people will consider investing themselves and their precious preconceived notions of their identity in a new way of thinking. (And then there is the test of whether it can get past the centralized mainland Chinese Government - who have been terribly threatened by the Falun Gong movement (which only claims to be a 'mind calming' exercise) and have been quite successful in brutally suppressing it.)

[Joan Schaefer Richmond]

I spent some time this week going through the BM/BH process. It does seem to be a better experience, as David said, if you really do it at once, without being distracted in the middle. And probably doing it that way twice would be effective, since the first time I know I was paying more attention to little things going on -- people's faces, trying to glean what the people without mics were saying. Once you know how it goes, perhaps it'd be easier to really pay more attention to one's inside during the process.

Anyway, I discovered two things. First, it really helps to know something about Zen meditation before doing it. I'm not saying anybody couldn't have a satori moment without it, but Genpo Roshi offers some insights that his audience nods enthusiastically at but newbies might say "um, come again?" New practictioners might find, for example, the non-duality paradox tough if it's their first exposure to it. And Genpo himself says that the process was developed particularly in relation to the kinds of selfs-repression that Zen mediators tend to do -- pushing away anger, etc., the "three poisons." As Ken Wilber describes it in Integral Spirituality, you have to deal with your shadow sides. I think this process helps that a lot.

Which is why I did get something out of it. I've been going about my day for a couple of days, and I find that I'm more aware of different "selves" inside that are directing me more than I recognized. I ate lunch, and it was great, and I thought I'd like to eat more of it. Hey, it was one of those smoky good grilled things from Panera. But the first half of it was plenty for lunch, so I wasn't really hungry anymore. But I was still tempted to go on enjoying it. And I said, "That's me as Desire. What do I do? I desire." And separating that element out, and understanding and accepting that's what Desire does, I could affirm it, see it for what it was, and put the sandwich away, content. That felt good.

I realize this is a really low-level example. But I also caught myself having a different reaction this afternoon when I became angry with my daughter. Same kind of thing. Yesterday I did something embarrassing (thought I might have sent a mis-worded email to somebody) and caught myself watching myself feel that emotion, identify the "self" acting, and then connect it to other things in my life. Which was revealing and refreshing. So, if anything, the BM/BH process has had a positive effect on my awareness and therefore my daily life responses and practices. I do find myself being more Mindful.

And frankly, although these things are so mundane, that's exactly what I've been looking for. Once you have experienced a connection with Big Mind, you don't ever lose that. So doing the Genpo Roshi exercises didn't give me some great rush of joyful bliss. I get that now and then and would like more of it, of course (!), yet I find myself much more concerned about what life is supposed to look like from moment to moment AFTER you've experienced that awakening. When the sink is full of dishes. When your child lips off, when you are tired and have One More Thing to Do, when you are driving, when you are working out, when you are making love.

If we can use this reflective process to stimulate more moment-to-moment awareness, then perhaps it really does have a lot of real-world applications. I just think it really helps to be in a place of personal development that has enough velcro for the lessons to "stick." After all, you have to be seeking to find.

You can't find until you seek, yet you can't have found if you are seeking. People coming across the BM/BH process will get the seeking part; they may not get the paradox for awhile, but they're on the path. When the seeker becomes the found, then they've got it. I guess the first step is to generate more seekers and then let them experience this paradox. If the process results in nothing more than intriguing more people to seek, then I think it's a good one. Some might have the "Whoa!" moment, others will certainly get a glimpse of it or of what's possible. And what it does for more experienced people I can't say, but those people seem to get a lot out of it.

I'm just in the middle, and for me, it was helpful.

[Steve Haag]

Hi Joan,

I'm enjoying your writing and reflections. It's straight forward, not boastful, but probing and accepting.

I found the Big Mind thing to be simpler than I'd expected. I was all geared up for something complicated and profound. But I found it to be just a good exercise in seeing these different qualities of mind that tend to take us over at times, convince is they are all that we are, when really, they shift, come and go, and come back around. It gave useful names to separate out some of the key characters making their way within all of us.

I think the quandary is that God rather likes losing Him/Herself in playing parts, in being fully engaged in fascinating dream persons. It's like an actor longs to be so absorbed in their role that they become the role, feel it is absolutely real with no fakery. But then sometimes in these dream personages, we get to too much suffering, get too overwhelmed or embarrassed or consumed in fear or disorientation. So then we want out, want to transcend, want to return to Big Mind awareness, where we aren't so attached to the the dream personages. Where we can rest in oneness in contrast to all the incompleteness that usually provokes us so to have to react so urgently.

It seems that we remember, then forget, then remember again. And there must be some good reason for that. The game seems to be set up so we keep getting plunged back into it for better and worse. We fall asleep to dream in it with all its beguilements only to eventually wake up laughing again, only to fall back in. It's like a continuum we are always on some balance of being in or out of, and there isn't necessarily any final right place to be among the possibilities.

Big Mind likes to reflect on it all, as if above it, overarching it. Little Mind seems to like to throw itself into life for the sheer magnitude of feeling all that there is to feel, amping it up for maximal value.

Steve

[Joan Schaefer Richmond]

Steve-

I love your point that "I think the quandary is that God rather likes losing Him/Herself in playing parts, in being fully engaged in fascinating dream persons."

I was thinking about that kind of thing just recently. I'm still working on developing a mediation practice, and I find it so difficult to Not Think. Samsara is so seductive. It pulls me away before I'm even aware of it. I'm getting a little better at watching thoughts arise and fade, yet usually, after only a few moments, I'm off on a trip. So Something must really love diving into the world and being lost in it.

Today I came across an article in the online mag. What Is Enlightenment, an interview of Eckhart Tolle. At one point he said,

"The human mind is the conditioned consciousness that has taken form as thought. The conditioned consciousness is the whole world that is created by the conditioned mind. Everything is our conditioned consciousness; even objects are. Conditioned consciousness has taken birth as form and then that becomes the world. So to be lost in the conditioned seems to be necessary for humans. It seems to be part of their path to be lost in the world, to be lost in the mind, which is the conditioned consciousness.

Then, due to the suffering that arises out of being lost, one finds the unconditioned as oneself. And that is why we need the world to transcend the world. So I'm infinitely grateful for having been lost.

"The purpose of the world is for you to be lost in it, ultimately. The purpose of the world is for you to suffer, to create the suffering that seems to be what is needed for the awakening to happen. And then once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering."

Now, I'm not sure about the suffering part being so primary (if indeed I'm reading that right). But I do appreciate the part of the necessity of being lost in the world. And maybe there is a lot of suffering in the sense that at some point you sense this huge longing for whatever is MISSING. At various points in my life I have felt that yearning and thought it meant I needed a solution to some huge pressing problem, or I was longing for a meaningful relationship, or a child, or more relief from material concerns. It's not like I turned to those things out of a lack, exactly -- the beautiful parts of my life that include my husband, my child, my career, and my home are valuable and not just a substitute for something I was missing. And yet, for each person, I think, there always also comes a sense that those things are Not It. They are complete as they are, but there is always also this Other Thing. And it's that yearning that can, for some people, render life meaningless. As in, "I got the partner, the spouse, the 2.4 children, the money, the house, the boat, the dog, and all this was supposed to make me happy, but I'm not satisfied." Or for those who don't get those things, they might lament that they missed out on the "good life." If you get caught up in that, from either end, you can begin to wonder whether anything makes life meaningful. I can see where many would get miserable, suffer intensely from a sense of meaninglessness.

Maybe that yearning, which can lead to that suffering, is what it takes to awaken. I have to say that I haven't known that kind of prolonged suffering. I haven't been reduced to a suicidal angst. But then, like everyone I've had my share of troubles. Some from an early age. Which may be the experiences that lead to an inner turn that came to me young, why people always called me "old for my age." Maybe a lot of things can cause prolonged introspection that leads to a path of awakening.

And then things brighten up and you find yourself immersed in the world once again. These days, I'm living a very happy and fulfilling life. It's not suffering that draws me inward. I just find a sense of deep satisfaction in reading, reflection, and quiet. I don't know whether, if I didn't have to come out to teach, to work, I might just spend more and more time staying "in." But I suspect that you are right, that the world calls, too, inexorably. So I try to find a balance, between "in" and "out," recharging and spending.