As we move into the new year I want to let you all know where I am now in my journey. I am writing this on the Chinese New Year, the year of the Dragon. I trust it will be a better year for us all and a year of great transformation for the world. [...]
I am using the term Abhidharma here as a way to study the self and drop our identification with the self, in order to live a happier, healthier and more joyful life. I see this as a foundation for a new psychotherapy embracing both Eastern and Western Philosophy and Psychology. The Abhidharma is the known [...]
Maybe it is time for us Zen and Tibetan Buddhists as well as other Mahayana Buddhists to re-look at the Arhat, the Theravada Buddhist ideal archetype who seeks self-realization and complete emancipation. Let’s begin by acknowledging that there is an Arhat as well as a Bodhisattva within us all. In Theravada Buddhism an Arhat is [...]
I have written and spoken often of the two roots of the Big Mind process being my experience and training as a Zen monk and teacher for the past 40 years under the guidance of my own teacher Maezumi Roshi, and the insights of Western psychology, particularly the Voice Dialogue method of Doctors Hal and [...]
“Selling water by the river” is a famous Zen phrase, said to have been spoken by a Zen Master to describe his forty years of teaching. Why would you buy water from someone standing beside the river, when you could just as easily put a cup down and scoop some up for yourself? Furthermore, Zen [...]
Student: Why do you emphasize that ideas, notions, hopes and expectations are the problem? Roshi: The thing we are most attached to, of course, is what I call my self, which includes my ideas, notions and beliefs about who I am. So this “I” and whatever I call Me, My or Mine are the most [...]
Student: In the voice of sanity and disowned sanity, I just realized that it’s so much taken for granted in this practice, at least by me. As you said, it’s always there, but you have to choose it and not just take it for granted because it’s always there. Roshi: That’s right. Well, we know [...]
This is a response to a question from a reader of Genpo Roshi’s most recent post, “Having No Preference”. What I mean when I say to be really free, and the reason why I call it the most difficult thing in our practice, is that in my experience one can have numerous experiences of [...]
Student: We often hear the comment, “Just have no preference and everything will be fine.” It sounds straightforward and yet it seems impossible to practice in today’s world. Can you say more about this? Roshi: There was a time in the 80’s and early 90’s when I saw it this way. Today, more than 20 [...]
Transcend discrimination of opposites Discover total reality And achieve detachment This is true freedom. Shinjingakudo – “Learning through the body and mind” Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) Transcend discrimination of opposites is what I mean by include and embrace the opposites. Discover total reality in Big Heart Zen is what is meant by the Apex. And achieve [...]
By Genpo Roshi I’m using “Big” with the sense of the Japanese word Dai, or the Sanskrit word Maha, meaning great or big. “Mind” when preceded by Dai or Maha means a mind with no limits or boundaries. A quote from the 6th Patriarch: “The capacity of the mind is so great, it’s like space. [...]
Student: How do we work with overwhelming emotion? Roshi: Well, the only reason it’s overwhelming is that we’re not allowing our self to experience it fully. There’s no such thing as an overwhelming emotion; there’s just emotion. When we repress it, it becomes overwhelming. When we open ourselves to it, nothing’s overwhelming. It’s like a storm in the sky, the empty [...]
Student: It occurred to me that one reason the thinking mind is disowned is there are a lot of things that one would rather not think about. For example, why we have so much and thousands of babies are being born in rubbish heaps every day, and why corporations control governments that have millions of [...]
Student: I notice when I try to work with disowned voices it gets difficult to identify them and pull them apart. Do you have any tips or tricks to work with that? Roshi: I don’t know about tricks, but I’m glad you brought this up because I’ve been asked this very often by people who [...]
by Zen Master D. Genpo Merzel Q: How is it that disappointment can bring about enlightenment or an awakening? Genpo: Disappointment is a cruel but vigorous teacher. We all enter the spiritual path with many ideas, notions, hopes and expectations. It is our hope that the spiritual path will save us from our fears, loneliness and [...]
by Zen Master D. Genpo Merzel If you really want to practice Zen, not just know something about it, a good first question to ask is “where am I stuck?” We may think, ‘I’m not stuck,’ or ‘people fall into two categories: some are stuck and others are not, and I myself am [or am not].’ [...]
by Zen Master D. Genpo Merzel For much of my 40 years of Zen practice I was beyond most of the pain of this realm of suffering and loneliness. In the early days of practice I would alleviate suffering by asking myself, “who is the one suffering?” and since there was no one there, the suffering [...]
by Zen Master D. Genpo Merzel It just gets clearer and clearer to me how much I, and we, are deluded by our enlightenment. We have a saying by Dogen Zenji: “We’re enlightened in our delusion. We’re deluded in our enlightenment. And then there’s delusion beyond delusion”. It’s all delusion, and enlightenment is just another delusion. [...]
by Zen Master D. Genpo Merzel I feel like I’m really learning what it means to be an ordinary human being, with all the ordinary things that happen to ordinary people. For the first time in nearly forty years I’m not seeing myself as, or being surrounded by people who see me as Genpo Sensei or [...]
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