The Big Mind

[Chris_Tomlinson]

Re: The Big Mind

10,000 voices? I sure hope that's metaphorical. I saw in the comments on the videos people claiming to have experienced kensho. I'd really like to think this man wasn't taking advantage of people. I watched the videos with an open mind and by the end i was just shaking my head.

Gassho, Chris

[chicanobudista]

Re: The Big Mind

I'm not sure what the connection is. i watched the videos and all i witnessed was Genpo Roshi asking to speak to different voices, asking people to spin around in circles and asking questions. I understand he accepts money for this "service" also. Something seems very off and wrong here. This concerns me. May all be well.

And that's what raised my curiosity in so far what is the connection between his training in Soto and Rinzai and his method, Big Mind.

I think he mentions it in the video, but from wiki:

The central idea in the Big Mind exercise is that there are 10,000 voices in the mind. They are all competing to be heard and to act. Because they are "stuck" or suppressed, they are not well controlled and manifest at inappropriate times. (e.g losing one's temper). Proponents of the Big Mind process argue that by very clearly bringing out each voice into full consciousness, the voice loses its neurotic control of actions and instead can be expressed in a healthy manner.

Probably that's not what Denni's would define as his main central idea, but, let's say it is, IMHO as a non-buddhist scholar, I just don't see the Buddhist connection.

BTW, 10,000 voices? Where did he get that? Probably metaphorical. Hopefully. I mean, that's quite a lot of voices to be counting. :mrgreen:

[Chris_Tomlinson]

Re: The Big Mind

I'm not sure what the connection is. i watched the videos and all i witnessed was Genpo Roshi asking to speak to different voices, asking people to spin around in circles and asking questions. I understand he accepts money for this "service" also. Something seems very off and wrong here. This concerns me. May all be well.

Gassho, Chris

[chicanobudista]

Just an intellectual curiosity from someone with a minor in History.

I was looking at the updates on my youtube subs and found the following video from Dennis Gempo Merzel Roshi:

"1 Introduction to Big Mind by Genpo Roshi"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT9y1YEUjy0[/video]]

I sortta remembered about "The Big Mind" from a Brad Warner's article. This time I decided to watch the whole set of youtube videos (ok...up to part 5 :P ).

I read the wiki articles on Big Mind and Dennis Genpo Merzel to get more background info. I also read Ken Wilber's intro to Big Mind/Big Heart by Genpo Roshi.

From Wilbur's text:

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. 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.”

:shock:

But.

What I am trying to figure out is the connection from where Dennis Genpo Merzel the Zen Teacher went to become the Dennis Genpo Merzel the Big Mind teacher. To put it in another way, what is the Buddhist foundation or connection between Dennis Genpo Merzel's Zen Buddism and his Big Mind practice? I read the wiki article, but I can't see the connection.