Big Mind Big Heart

Finding Your Way
by Genpo Roshi | Big Mind Publishing © 2007 · 189 pages

Zen Master Genpo Roshi spent decades figuring out how to best help people develop enlightened awareness and came up with his revolutionary process called "Big Mind." In this Note, we'll take a peek at some Big Ideas from the Zen Master including how the root of suffering (dukkha) is getting stuck in one perspective and how that's about as effective as having a Maserati stuck in first gear. We'll also explore the place beyond idiot compassion as we become integrated human beings giving ourselves joyfully to the world.


In reality, there are an infinite number of perspectives, but we act as if there were only one.
Genpo Roshi

“There is a transcendent awareness, a Big Mind, a Big Heart, present and readily accessible to each and every one of us. When we realize it, we see it is the source of true peace, happiness, satisfaction, courage and joy. And yet, we don’t know how to access it, we don’t know how to bring it into our awareness. We don’t know how to manifest it or embody it.

For the past thirty-six years, I have been searching for a way to assist people to access this awareness. In June 1999, after much study and difficulty, I finally found a simple, effective way which I have been exploring and refining since then. I call it the Big Mind/Big Heart process, or simply, Big Mind.”

~ Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel from Big Mind · Big Heart

Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel. Also known as Genpo Roshi.

I was first introduced to him and his incredible Big Mind process during a week-long event produced by the Integral Institute in Boulder, Colorado a few years ago. It was stunning how easily and quickly Genpo was able to bring us through his process to get a glimpse of the higher thresholds of consciousness known as Big Mind.

In this book, he playfully and brilliantly articulates his wisdom while presenting the Big Mind process—a process that integrates Zen Buddhism with Voice Dialogue.

You’ll need to get the book to get a feel for the Big Mind process (and I HIGHLY recommend you do!!!). For now, let’s explore a handful of my favorite Big Ideas that you can immediately apply to your life.

“Do we need the self? Yes, absolutely. Do we need to be identified with it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Absolutely not. Because when we’re identified with the self, as the self, we live in fear, we live in anxiety, we live in stress, we live in suffering. When we’re able to identify with that which has no boundaries, with Big Mind—it’s a name, you could call it many things, universal consciousness or whatever—when we’re no longer identified with the self, fear doesn’t come up. When we identify with that which is ungraspable, that which is unnameable, then there is absolutely no fear. We live in fearlessness.”

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About the author

Authors

Genpo Roshi

combines Zen and Western psychotherapy to change lives