big mind

Apparently spring is Buddhist season in NYC. After a long depressing winter, now, in the span of six sunny weeks, we have Genpo Roshi, Krishna Das, and the Dalai Lama in town. But Buddhism is not just a fair-weather friend, and neither is Zen master Dennis Genpo Merzel, who goes by Genpo Roshi (“Roshi” means “venerable teacher”) and who comes to Manhattan a few times a year to teach Big Mind, a form of Buddhism that he founded.

On Monday night, EnlightenNext founder Andrew Cohen and many of his students engaged in a fascinating and powerful dialogue with Zen Master Genpo Merzel at the EnlightenNext World Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Genpo Roshi was delightfully funny and disarmingly frank, displaying an impressive spiritual depth born of 37 years of Zen practice and teaching

Question:

Addiction is defined as “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, such as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.” What makes so many of us prone to addiction in its various forms? What causes us to be open to this enslavement? And how do we begin to undo it?