Big Mind/Big Heart

Genpo Merzel Roshi

Genpo Roshi is the creator of the Big Mind/Big Heart practice, as well as the Founder and Abbot of Kanzeon Zen Center and Kanzeon Sangha International. He used to be a champion athlete, and is a devoted husband and father, a successful businessperson, and the respected author of five books.

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.

“Many books point out the pure Now moment, but a person sees that, gets a little bitty glimpse of it, and then the ‘small selves’ snap it up and they’ve lost it. But what happens with the Big Mind Process is that you’ve knocked out a half dozen small selves in the first round. So then, when you point out the pure Now, people rest in Big Mind much longer….”

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.

What's the secret of this profound new form of teaching, and why does the Big Mind Process succeed for most 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. Join us.

The "Wilber-Combs Lattice" demonstrates the interplay of structures of consciousness (vertical axis) with states of consciousness (horizontal axis), revealing an entire matrix of possible spiritual experience.