Sacred Awakenings Series: Genpo Roshi

Produced by The Shift Network, hosted by Stephen Dinan
Gratitude and blessings to our volunteer transcriber, Jacqui McGirr
To listen to the full audio, register at http://www.sacredawakeningseries.com

 

Stephen Dinan: This is your host Stephen Dinan and I'm delighted today to be hosting Genpo Roshi, who is a revolutionary Zen teacher and founder of the Big Mind Process.
In a few minutes we'll go ahead and introduce Genpo Roshi, but we'll start with some thank yous.

First thank you is to co-sponsors, who've been really so instrumental in getting the word out about this series around the world. So I'd like to thank them and encourage you to visit their sites and see what they're offering, since they're really fantastic as well. There's:

Maestro Conference, which provides this platform
Gaya Community, which is actually going to be in transition, but hopefully more on that later
Unity
Dream University
The Shift movie
Philosopher's Notes
The Spiritual Cinema Circle
Centre for Sacred Studies
Integrated Spirituality
Intent.com
Intention Media

So I encourage you to check out those sponsors as you can.

So without further ado, I do want to introduce Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi — the full name. He's a revolutionary in the tradition of old Zen masters, who is helping to revitalize old Buddhist teachings for our own day and age. He's working to transmit the essence of Buddhist teachings in a way that is readily accessible to Westerners and relevant to our everyday life.

The core of his teachings is an unshakeable and contagious certainty that every one of us, regardless of our socio-economic, cultural or religious background can instantly awaken to our true nature, like the historical Buddha himself.

So, one of the ways he is doing that is through a Big Mind process that allows direct experiential — a direct experience of that expanded state.

So, Genpo Roshi thank you so much for joining us here today.

Genpo Roshi: Well thank you Stephen. It's a pleasure.

Stephen Dinan: Wonderful. Well, I know that, in talking in the pre-call, we wanted to make sure to give a lot of time to an experience of Big Mind, because part of the Zen tradition, I know, is that it doesn't put a high value on a lot of the talk or the conceptualizations, but really more the direct experience. Perhaps we could start with some of your background, and what lead you as a Westerner in to becoming a Zen teacher?

Genpo Roshi: Well [laughs] you know in 1970, I had no inclination of getting into any kind of particular spiritual practice or meditation practice, but in February 1971 I was out in the desert, and I was sitting alone on a mountain top, just reflecting on my own life, and in that I had a profound awakened experience that transformed my entire life. And, later on I called that experience a Zen experience. At the time, I didn't know what to call it. It was just a kind of mystical experience. And, that really set me on the path and I began meditating from that moment on. Two or three times a day. As much as up to four or five hours a day. I became a hermit for a year. Moved off into the mountains and meditated. Chopped wood. Carried water. And then I met my teacher in March 1972 and trained with him until his death in 1995, in May. And I became his second successor, or heir, in 1980.

Stephen Dinan: Beautiful. Well, I'm curious. So you had a more spontaneous awakening and then you also went through a much longer process of training and practice. I wonder if you could talk a bit about just the relationship between the spontaneous opening and also the deep daily practice, in a bit more of an integrative way?

Genpo Roshi: Sure. Well you know the spontaneous awakening happened and I wasn't searching or seeking any spiritual experience, I was just really reflecting on my life. And I had, I felt, kind of screwed up my life: I'd got divorced. I was married at 22; divorced by 26, or 25. And I really felt, how could I do that to myself such a young age? So I was just looking at my life and I was asking different questions. And this awakening experience, somehow I was fortunate enough to realize that I needed to integrate that with a practice. And what came up for me was I needed to spend every day meditating, because the experience was a meditative experience. In other words, it was a spontaneous experience of what we call Shikantaza, which is to "just sit" and "pure being"; just to be in a state of being rather than doing. And I was teaching school at that time, I was teaching emotionally disturbed children in the elementary school. I'd been in teaching for about eight years at that point, or maybe a little less than that. And as I was deepening my experience I started to invite other people to come and visit me up in the mountains where I was living as a hermit, and they'd come up twice a week towards the spring time. I moved up there in September of '72, and in that period of time I met a gentleman who turned me on to his teacher, which was Maezumi Roshi. And I went down and I began to study with him in March of '72. Still continued to be up in the cabin and then moved in, in August 1972. And went through what he — he trained us in koan practice, which are questions or riddles that Zen masters use to help others enlighten, and I went through the entire koan study, which was about 750 koans, fairly quickly; in fact, in six years from '73 to '79. And also practiced what, in the Soto School we'd practice called Shikantaza, where we just sit with no goal, no aim and just in the pure state, as I said earlier, of pure being or just pure sitting.

Stephen Dinan: So in the traditional Zen practice you mean there is a fairly extensive, as you are saying, apprenticeship and discipline and practice, and it has a more contemplative kind of quality, but you're also now teaching workshops that allow people to experience these very high states in just a weekend. And, I just wondering what's allowed that translation into kind of a more rapid process of at least experiencing these higher states.

Genpo Roshi: Well you know when I first had this spontaneous experience in February '71, what came up for me, very spontaneously, where two things: to deepen that experience and to continue to clarify it, or we could say to clarify the way or the Dao, but also to share that experience because it was so profound, it was like seeing the greatest movie you've ever seen and you just want to share it with your friends and other people, and it changed my life so dramatically from a life pursuing the kind of goals that we normally pursue, which could be fame and money and security and all that, to really seeing that the most important thing was getting to really know oneself, to be intimate with myself, to find peace, to find happiness, to find joy and love in my life. And that very experience began a search in '71 of how to help others awaken. And I really worked on that all those years.

And then in 1999, so 28 years later, I discovered the Big Mind process, and it was by pulling together a lot of the training that I had done in Zen, with also a lot of the training I did in Western psychotherapy — I started Gestalt therapy when my father died in '68 and I did a number of different kinds of therapy over the years, including some Jungian work, some Freudian work and rebirthing, and so forth — and in '99 I took the Voice Dialogue work which I had learned from Hal and Sidra Stone, and I brought that together with the Zen practice I'd been working for 16 years since '83, on somehow using the Voice Dialogue work with my Zen students. I began to have students in the 70s. And, in '99 I discovered that by simply asking permission to speak to some of the more transcendent voices — like Big Mind or Big Heart or the non-seeking mind — then I was able to get someone to make a shift, which is what Zen has always been about, to help people make what we call this shift of consciousness from the dualist realm to the non-dual.

You could look at it like a railroad track. If you say that, let's say, the left rail is the dualistic mind: it's the mind of the doer, the mind of the seeker, the one who's always trying to achieve or to accomplish and to get ahead — and there's nothing wrong with that mind, but I was stuck in that mind until I was 26-years-old. Then what many practitioners do — and my advantage was that I had this as a spontaneous experience — because many practitioners stay in that mind and try to reach enlightenment in the seeking mind, and the seeking mind is stuck on a particular rail, the dualistic rail, and it can't ever get to the non-dualistic, or the right-hand rail. And if we look down the track, it looks like the two will merge eventually but obviously they never do. And you can go faster and you can try harder and you can seek more but as long as you're on the left-hand rail, you're never going to get to the right-hand rail unless you make a leap — we call "leap of faith" — and that leap is what the Big Mind process allows us to do, is to make a leap from the left rail to the right rail and all of a sudden find ourselves in a place of pure being, of pure consciousness, or as I call it, Big Mind or the Buddha Mind.

Stephen Dinan: I really love that image of the two rails. It makes it very vivid. So, in essence really, there's a part of us that is residing on this right rail, but we're just not really identified or connected to it a lot of the time. Is that sort of what you —

Genpo Roshi: Absolutely. It's always present. It's always ever-present. But like you just said, we're not connected to it. We don't know how to access it. It's what we're looking for; we label it "God" or "Truth" or "The Way" or "enlightenment", but we don't know how to connect with that.

Stephen Dinan: And the very act of the left-rail mind seeking kind of keeps it on the left track even while trying yearn and lean — you know, it's yearning towards the right track but it just can't ever leave from within that stance of seeking this.

Genpo Roshi: Exactly. Exactly.

Now that's not the end of the practice. In Zen, you know, there's that say,ing: "Before enlightenment a mountain is a mountain. After enlightenment a mountain is no longer a mountain. And then, a mountain once again is a mountain."

It's like we then have to go back and pick up the left rail and move to what I call the "Apex". It's almost like you put a train on top of those rails, and you're the train and you're no longer just on one rail or the other, you straddle both rails. You incorporate, you include, both the dualistic, or the mind that's seeking "The Way", and the non-dualistic, the mind that is The Way. And then what that does is it allows you not to get stuck in the absolute — which everybody does for a period of time, once they have a profound experience of the absolute — so it allows one to unstick from that and to continue to grow, to expand and to seek; at the same time be totally at peace with the seeking and with the journey.

Stephen Dinan: So in essence there's a left rail; in this model, the left-rail mind never really goes away, it just becomes more permeable, softer, more integrated with the more spacious, Big Mind aspects of ourselves.

Genpo Roshi: Absolutely. However, there is an experience that we all seem to go through where we deny the left rail and we somehow stop seeking. And when we do that what happens is we get stuck; we get stuck in what we call in Zen "The Absolute", or it's also called "the stink of Zen", because [laughs] we think we're there, and that we no longer need to continue to practice, to seek to meditate or to go further, and that's a big, big delusion.

Stephen Dinan: And is part of the reason that's a big delusion is because the left rail keeps operating, but like in a kind of like a shadowy way with unconscious —

Genpo Roshi: Exactly. Exactly. Right on. Exactly. The shadow is disowned and therefore it has covert operations.

Stephen Dinan: So really, what you want to do — part of the teacher's role ...

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... is to make this leap over to the other rail and experience that but then also not to get stuck on that rail and to go back and actually integrate all the other pieces of themselves that they might want to separate off from.

Genpo Roshi: Yes, absolutely. In one of the great masters — whose name was Joshu; he was a Chinese master — there's a very famous koan. In fact some of the most famous koans are by Joshu. A monk came to him one day and said, "You know I just joined your monastery. Could you teach me?" And Joshu said, "Well, have you eaten yet?", and the monk said "Yes I have.", and then Joshu said, "Well then go wash your bowls." Now the beauty of that is that Joshu is famous for having three aspects in all his teachings: both the relative, the absolute and that what which was beyond the relative and the absolute — or we could say the apex of the triangle.

The relative in this is, well when you've finished eating, go clean up. You know, when you take off your clothes, put them away; when your house gets dirty, clean your house. You know. So that's the relative side, and that teaching is very valuable and relevant. But there's a deeper thing there. He's saying, "have you enlightenment yet?", and the monk is answering "yes I have", and he's saying "okay, now drop it. Drop your enlightenment. Lose it."

In this teaching, what he's saying is that both the relative and the absolute, the transcendent here of "dropping your enlightenment" and the relative of "cleaning up after yourself" are both relative.

Stephen Dinan: Makes a lot of sense. And I especially liked the image of the two rails 'cause it really gives a sense of the equal necessity of both; if the train is going to move forward, you need both tracks. And that often times as spiritual seekers we get identified with the seeking that right rail state and then residing there, but in actuality that creates some imbalances if we just do that.

Genpo Roshi: That's right. But I want to just change that slightly from the way you said it, Stephen. And that is, we get stuck in both rails. Seeking is the left rail. So we get stuck in identifying ourselves as seekers and when we're stuck in that rail it's very difficult to make the leap to non-seeking mind. Then we have the experience of the absolute or the transcendent. Then we get stuck there, and that too is a problem.

And so what you are saying really holds true, that at the apex we go beyond seeking and non-seeking.

Or another way to look at this is the thinking mind. Like if we look at the left rail as our thinking mind: we all know that we think and we have problems with our thinking, and we expect a lot from our thinking mind. But very seldom do we realize that the thinking mind needs to be really appreciated and honored for all the work that it does even though it becomes problematic when we're trying to take a nap, or go to sleep at night, or meditate. And by owning the thinking mind, what happens is the thinking mind feels honored and respected, appreciated and honored, and then it's willing to work for us in a very profound way.

Now we only discovered this back in October in 2009. It's how much the thinking mind also is a shadow and has been disowned by the self. Vice versa the non-thinking mind is also disowned on a universal level, where most of us have not even awakened to the ability to sit and meditate and not think. And again, by owning and honoring that voice, what we see is that we're able to be at peace, joyful and happy in our daily life. And at the apex, we embody or embrace both thinking and not-thinking, and we transcend them, and we enter what we call the non-thinking mind which gets beyond thinking and not thinking.

And the great Zen master Dogen Zenji, who lived from 1200–1253, expounded this teaching as the heart of Zen meditation: to go beyond thinking and not-thinking — the non-thinking mind which transcends them.

Stephen Dinan: That's very illuminating and very clarifying; what you're saying. I wonder if you could relate it to what does life look like back in the marketplace or back in relationships after people have done this deeper awakening and integration.

Genpo Roshi: Well, you know most of my work now is exactly around this area or issue: what is like to return to the marketplace with gift bestowing hands which, I know you know, is the tenth ox-herding picture out of ten pictures of the path of enlightenment. And what this really means is when we become spiritual, very often with that awakened experience or spiritual mind there's a tendency to disown a lot of things or aspects of the self that one does not consider to be spiritual — like competitive or greedy or ambitious or seeking or ruthless — and all those things, when we become more enlightened, we see those as works of the ego. And so there's a tendency to disown this and to practice our spiritual path; which is probably inevitable to do it this way.

"To return to the marketplace", what it means to me is to go back, find all these disowned voices, and then begin the process of owning and embodying them so that we truly transcend them. And so, at that place we're coming from the apex rather than from a place of denial that "my ego is at work here", "I really am competitive", "I really am greedy", but I'm in a state of denial and I don't want to look at my ego, my competitiveness, my greed, my ambition, and all that, and I make those things wrong and bad. And until we come back and embrace all that, we really can't be successful either on the path of enlightenment nor in the marketplace.

Stephen Dinan: I think that feels very illuminating. And it does seem that there's just this necessity to work with all those parts or else we can't be in highly functional relationships or, you know, functioning jobs, and it is part of the weaving in today's era between a lot of the different spiritual traditions, and bringing that much more into embodied life. And I think you are doing a fantastic job of explaining that.

Genpo Roshi: Well thank you.

Stephen Dinan: Great. So, I wonder if you could say a bit more about, in a typical Big Mind workshop or process, what are the stages that you really take people through? We're going to give a little taste of that in a few minutes here, but I just wanted to kind of get a framework for how you go about activating this recognition in people.

Genpo Roshi: Well, a lot of the work I do is taking people through three stages — again, looking at it in terms of the triangle: the left-base corner of the triangle, the right base corner of the triangle and the apex — so a lot of the work will be around voices that I would include in the dualistic realm, or you could also so in the human realm. If we look at the triangle as the human being, a lot of the work I'll do is around the human aspects: the dualistic aspects around emotions, and theories and thinking, seeking, wanting, craving and so forth, which we know are the cause of suffering. We know that when we're stuck in the dualistic realm because there is a self and that we are attached to the self, it creates havoc, it creates dissatisfaction and suffering in our life.

So a lot of the work would be on owning some of those voices, like the controller or the protector, voices like the dualistic mind and the emotions that come up as a human being. Then I usually move people over to the right-hand corner or base of the triangle, which we could say is the being side; the non-seeking, it's the Big Mind — the mind is at peace that transcends the self or where the self is dropped — and people get an experience of what we call enlightenment or Kensho experience. In that place, what they see is the self much more clearly, and they see how the self — where it's coming from, how it's operating — why it's creating problems and suffering in one's life. Then we move to the apex, where we go back and embrace both the human element — the being — and we at the apex as a truly functioning human being, a free functioning human being, which we can call the unique self; it's been called the true self or we can call it the authentic self and so forth.

Stephen Dinan: And so is sounds like — I haven't been on tour with you or anything — but it sounds to me like, from second hand reports, that you are having quite a remarkable success rate of people going through this process and having a really profound Kensho experience.

Genpo Roshi: Well they do, and really all it requires is them wanting to participate. That's the only thing that holds anybody back is that they don't really want to be there or to do the process fully — you know, like we had 130 people just recently in Seattle last weekend — and I'd say most everybody really gets it and is able to have a "state" experience.

You know we should make some clarification between a "state" and a "stage" experience. People will come to a workshop. They will get to experience very different "state" experiences — even the ten ox herding pictures, they'll get to experience even to the tenth stage as a "state" experience. That means they'll get to experience being there. Doesn't mean they can stay there. A "stage" experience is where you don't fall back; you move on to a new stage And usually people at one of these workshops can move at least one stage in their development. If we use what I call "the five stages of a path of a human being" — which is kind of something I created out of a former teaching, which was the Five Ranks of Master Tozan, who goes all the way back to China, a thousand years ago — people can actually move two stages in a workshop. Let's say they come in without ever having a profound Kensho or enlightenment experience, they can very often have a pretty clear experience of that and even move into the second stage. Very seldom will they move beyond two stages, though, in one workshop.

Stephen Dinan: So how does this connect, just quickly, with — there's a palpable sense that a lot of people have that we're going through a kind of collective quickening: that there's an increasing number of people waking up and there's a spreading of a kind of more awakened consciousness; and to really see that there's a multiplier effect right now, that as the technologies like you're developing get better and more people are resonating in a certain way that we have the opportunity to go through a fairly rapid collective shift in consciousness.

Genpo Roshi: Well, I'm one of those that strongly believes that that's true, and that this is happening, and for the very reasons that you mention. Both the technology: the mechanical technology, such as webs and computers and all this, but also the technology like the Big Mind. Because, you know, that healthy people awaken has been around at least 2500 years, since the time of the Buddha. However the Big Mind process, I think, and I think I can safely say, is probably the, let's say, the most [laughs] helpful in this fashion that we've ever discovered. You know Ken Wilbur says maybe the greatest discovery of spiritual practice in the last couple of hundred years.

The technology of the Big Mind process could not have developed before East and West met, because it is an integration of the wisdom of both the East and the West. And, you know, I'm of that first generation who began studying with the teachers that came over from Japan, China, Tibet, you know, Korea and all these other nations, and it really couldn't have happened with them. In other words, they where still products of their own culture. But with my generation, the first generation of Westerners, we already had a lot of the Western technology in our bones, you know. And then by going very deeply into the Eastern traditions and embodying these traditions, then people like myself were able to come up with an integrated process, which I think is an advanced technology that's allowing for this to happen, and the many spiritual teachers all over the world who are managing to share this now with us Westerners.

Stephen Dinan: Fantastic. I completely echo your sense that we do have a unique opportunity with this integration of East and West now.

So now we wanted to make sure to create some time for people to really get a direct experience themselves of this process, but before we do, I wanted to mention that Genpo Roshi is going to be doing sort of an East Coast tour: April 10th at Smith College and April 17th and 18th in New York, doing some of these processes and workshops.

Genpo Roshi: At Smith College it's going to be with Bill Harris and some other folks who are from Harvard and other places, where we're going to be discussing some of the technology available to us right now in the West, towards a more enlightened way of being and way of introducing this into the world.

And then on 17th and 18th: it will be all day from 10am to 6pm on Saturday and 10am to 1pm on Sunday at the Marriott Downtown, where I will be teaching by myself, for these six hours on Saturday and three hours on Sunday, and bringing people through the most advanced work in the Big Mind process and in Zen study that I have available to me.

Stephen Dinan: And what we'll do next is actually — we thought it might be most valuable to have four volunteers — and what you'll do over the next twenty minutes is actually go through a process with Genpo Roshi; so you'll need to be participatory and be willing to be heard by other people. So if you'd like to be one of those four volunteers to go through a process in the next twenty minutes, publicly, just hit 2 on your keypad right now and I will choose four of you to do that. Why don't we have Anne, Jennifer, Jenna and Lenny. Okay, so all four of you are live, and now, Genpo, take it away.

Genpo Roshi: Since we were talking about seeking and non-seeking, maybe I just do a quick triangle with you folks on this — and Stephen, how much time should I take?

Stephen Dinan: You can take about twenty minutes or so.

Genpo Roshi: Okay, got it.

Alright. So what I'd like to do is to first speak — I'm going to speak to different aspects of the self, and I'm going to cover three aspects, and the three will be the seeking mind, the non-seeking mind and that which goes beyond the seeking and non-seeking.

So when I ask to speak to this aspect or this voice, if you would identify completely by making a physical and mental shift to speak only from the voice that I'm asking to speak to, and then you're no longer the self but you're speaking as only this voice.

Imagine that if you were in a company and I asked one individual or one employee of the company to come in and be interviewed — not the whole company, the company is the self and you're just one employee of the whole company.

Is that clear? Everybody?

Stephen Dinan: [To volunteers]You're all live.

Genpo Roshi: Alright, so I'm going to assume it was clear [laughs].

So, the first voice I'd like to speak to is: I'd like to speak to the one who seeks; I call you the seeking mind, or the mind that seeks the way.

So would you allow me to speak to the mind that seeks the way or the one who seeks the way, please.

Okay so who am I speaking to everyone?

Volunteer 1: My name is Jennifer.

Genpo Roshi: Okay so Jennifer, I'd like to speak to the mind that seeks the way. Okay? The mind that seeks the way.

Jennifer: Okay.

Genpo Roshi: So would you make a shift — physical and mental — and allow me to speak to the mind that seeks the way. So who are you now?

Jennifer: Actually I feel a lot of emotions, like —

Genpo Roshi: First clarify who you are, repeating what I asked to speak to.

Jennifer: I am — I wanna speak with my mind —

Genpo Roshi: No, no; you are the one who is seeking the way.

Jennifer: Seeking the way. Okay.

Genpo Roshi: So you are the one who seeks the way.

Jennifer: I am the one that seeks the way.

Genpo Roshi: Alright. You're saying a lot of emotion is coming up immediately. So tell me about that.

Jennifer: It's, it's like, it's a kind of fear because I don't know where I'm going [laughs], and my desire wants to know where I'm going. So it sort of starts to get involved: like maybe it's the ego, it's trying to kind of control it —like "what does that mean?", "Where are we going?" — kind of a thing that comes up.

Genpo Roshi: Okay, so what's coming up is fear, and that's excellent, because you're entering a new territory, a new frame of mind. So let's just clarify who you are. You the one who seeks the way. So are you the self?

Jennifer: Say that again about the self.

Genpo Roshi: Are you the self? Or do you work for the self?

Jennifer: There's probably a little battle going on actually.

Genpo Roshi: Aha. Interesting. So you're not the self, but you're actually supposed to work for the self?

Jennifer: Aha. Okay.

Genpo Roshi: But there's a battle going on.

Jennifer: Right.

Genpo Roshi: Okay, as the one that seeks the way, tell me what the battle is.

Jennifer: Um. Just fear because we don't know where we're going; we wanna know where we're going.

Genpo Roshi: Okay, so the self is in fear and you're in fear. Is that what you're saying?

Jennifer: Well, there's also a little curiosity. So there's fear and there's curiosity. So I'm not sure, it's hard for me to sort of separate all that out, I guess, if I'm a seeker or a self —

Genpo Roshi: That's fine. You don't need to right now.

Jennifer: Okay

Genpo Roshi: Okay, so let's just clarify a few things. Is anybody else on the line too?

Volunteer 2: Yes. I'm right here.

Genpo Roshi: Okay. And you are?

Volunteer 2: I'm Anne.

Genpo Roshi: Anne. Okay, so again, the same thing. Let me speak to the one who is seeks the way. So you are now?

Anne: I am the seeker. The one who seeks the way.

Genpo Roshi: Yes. So tell me, as the one who seeks the way, what is your job?

Anne: To be an adventurer. To be the one who goes first.

Genpo Roshi: Absolutely. Okay, so you're the one who goes first. You're an adventurer. What is it that you both are seeking? Or any one of the four of you that are one the line: what is it that you're seeking?

Lenny: The self.

Jenna: To provide.

Genpo Roshi: Provide what? What is it you're trying to provide?

Jenna: I guess security.

Genpo Roshi: Okay.

Jenna: Or a sense of it.

Genpo Roshi: Okay, so you're seeking security, or sense of security. Anybody else: what is it that you're seeking when you're supposed to be seeking the way?

Anne: I'm seeking complete alignment with all that is, all of the time.

Genpo Roshi: Okay. Excellent. Anybody else: what is it?

Jennifer: An openness. A peace. Serenity. Acceptance. Trust and faith.

Genpo Roshi: Beautiful. Absolutely.

Jenna: For me it's like a union with God, mostly.

Genpo Roshi: Sure. So, if you're the one that seeks the way, obviously you're not the self but you work for the self. Does the self sometimes interfere with your seeking the way?

Anne: Yes.

Jenna: Definitely.

Genpo Roshi: Definitely. That's for sure. What are some of the things that it does that make it difficult for you to stay on track, to stay just seeking the way?

Anne: I get sabotaged.

Genpo Roshi: Yeah. Say more about that.

Anne: I get sabotaged by feelings and emotions that are, I would classify, as negative.

Genpo Roshi: Yes, Uh huh.

Anne: And that stops me dead in my tracks.

Genpo Roshi: That's right. So what would you like, any of you, what would you like from the self, so that you could do your job more efficiently and proficiently?
What would you like?

Jenna: I guess, discipline.

Jennifer: I think I want compassion and love and a mentor. I don't want discipline. To me that seems so hard and harsh. I already do that to myself enough, so I want love and acceptance and a mentor, yeah.

Anne: And I'd like compassion.

Genpo Roshi: Yes. So what you're looking for from the self is some compassion, some support, maybe some appreciation, some love you said, some honor.

Volunteers: Yeah.

Genpo Roshi: You want this from yourself so that you can do your job more efficiently.

Anne: Yes.

Genpo Roshi: Okay?

Volunteers: Yes.

Genpo Roshi: Alright now. Now you're job is to seek the way. Is it to actually find the way?

Anne: No. As the seeker I just seek.

Genpo Roshi: That's right. Okay — this is very important for everybody to get; all the listeners — as the seeker, my only job is to seek: it's not to find and it's not “be the way”, it's only to “seek the way.” I was hired just for one purpose, and that is to seek the way. You got that?

Volunteers: [separately] Yes. Right. Yes.

Genpo Roshi: Alright. So now I'm going to ask to speak to the other base side of the triangle; the right-hand base of the triangle. And when I ask to speak to this voice, I would like for you all to make a shift in your body to the right-hand-side, towards your right, and you're not going to be the seeker anymore of the way, and you're not going to be the self, but you're going to actually — I would like to speak to the way itself. May I speak to the way, please, at this moment?

Anne: Yes.

Genpo Roshi: So now who are you?

Anne: I am the way.

Jenna: I am the way.

Lenny: I am the way.

Genpo Roshi: Yes. Okay. Just stay there for a moment, because this is very profound. To own and to admit "I am the way", "I" am no longer the seeker, I am no longer the self, the limited self, I am actually the way. Just stay there for a moment, and to realize what you just admitted to.

Volunteer [Jennifer or Anne]: Oh my god!

Lenny: I have admitted that many times.

Genpo Roshi: So you are the way and you've admitted this before. And what is it like to actually identify as the way? What's it like for you?

Jenna: It's so powerful.

Lenny: Empowering.

Volunteer [Jennifer or Anne]: Very much empowering.

Genpo Roshi: So let's just stay here, and just be here for a moment. As the way, I'm no longer seeking the way because I am the way. Just see what it's like to be the way for a moment; how empowering this is.

What do you want to say as the way? When you look at the self, at he or she, what do you see as the way, when you look over there to the left hand of the triangle and you see the self, and you see the one that's always seeking? Tell me what you see, what you're aware of.

Anne: Compassion.

Genpo Roshi: Yes.

Jenna: A profound sense of love.

Genpo Roshi: Absolutely.

Genpo Roshi: Speak more. Anybody.

Lenny: An explorer.

Genpo Roshi: Yeah, an explorer.

Jenna: And a desire to tell the other side to relax [laughs].

Jennifer: Yeah. To stop working so hard. You don't have to work so hard.

Genpo Roshi: That's why all this compassion and love comes up because you see that self struggling and wanting so hard, sometimes even desperately, to find who or what?

Anne: Something that's already there. Something I already am.

Genpo Roshi: Exactly. To find you; the way.

Anne: Yes.

Genpo Roshi: So I'm going to give you another name as the way, just to help us explore this transcendent state a little bit. I want to give you the non-seeking mind as another name for the way. So let me speak to you, the non-seeking mind. So you are?

Anne: The non-seeking mind

Genpo Roshi: Everybody

All volunteers: The non-seeking mind.

Genpo Roshi: Now just see when you own this voice, it's the same as the way but there's another nuance, another variation: that you no longer have to seek because you are the way. And just feel and experience what the energy is like, what the mind is like, as we embrace being the non-seeking mind, the mind of the way

Jennifer: So what about the emotions that come up?

Genpo Roshi: That's fine; the self has emotions. We just witness them. What emotions are arising?

Jennifer: There's a lot of sadness that comes up.

Genpo Roshi: Say that again. I couldn't hear you.

Jennifer: A lot of sadness comes up.

Genpo Roshi: Yes. For her, there's a lot of sadness. Is that sadness about what? — or, should I just, let me change that — what is the sadness about?

Jennifer: I think that a lot of it is this sort of, you know, there's a sense of hard work and effort and stress and struggle, and it feels like, um, there's just a grieving of, I guess, something. I'm not sure.

Genpo Roshi: Well this is what happens to all awakened beings. When we awaken to I am the way, I am the non-seeking mind, I am Big Mind, I am Buddha, what comes up is a lot of compassion, empathy, sadness, for the self which is so, which is struggling so much, is efforting so much.

Jenna: So overworked.

Jennifer: Right, it's overworked.

Genpo Roshi: Over not being able to find what it is that it's searching for: truth, harmony, love, compassion. It's not able to find that which it's searching for, so a lot of compassion and empathy can come up.

Genpo Roshi: I do wanna move us on though — because we only have a few more minutes — to the apex of the triangle. So, I want you to imagine that the left-hand base of the triangle is the seeking mind, the mind that seeks the way or the one who seeks the way; the right-hand is the non-seeking mind or the way itself. And I want to speak now to the apex, which embraces both seeking and non-seeking, the one that seeks the way and the way itself. It goes beyond them both. Transcends them. So allow me to speak now to the apex. So you are?

Volunteers: I am the apex.

Genpo Roshi: Alright. Now just see what it's like to embrace it all. To completely embrace it all. What's it like?

Volunteers: There's a sense of wholeness [said one]. A feeling of peace [said another].

Genpo Roshi: Yes. Wholeness. Anybody else?

Jenna: Peace.

Genpo Roshi: Yes. Peace.

Jenna: Completeness. Satisfaction.

Genpo Roshi: That's right.

Jenna: And the emotions stayed down. It's like they're in control now. They're in check and they're okay. They're okay to be not overwhelming.

Genpo Roshi: That's right. Exactly.

Jenna: They don't take over anymore.

Genpo Roshi: That's right. You're now the master of your own life. Rather than being controlled by all these emotions and feelings, you have the emotions and feelings but you're not controlled any longer by them.

Volunteer: Yes.

Jenna: Absolutely.

Genpo Roshi: So who is the one who is completely responsible for this life?

Volunteer: I am [said one]. The self [said another].

Genpo Roshi: That's right. So, you can no longer be a victim. Once you see that it's my life and I'm at the apex and the whole triangle is my life, how can you be a victim and blame others or anyone or anything? At this point the buck stops here: it's my life. I am the master of my own life.

Volunteer: That's right.

Genpo Roshi: We have a koan of the great Zen master — whose name was Zuigan — who used to go everyday to the top of a mountain and he'd sit down and he'd say:

"Master, are you in?".

And he himself would answer, "Yes, I am."

And he would say, "Are you awake?"

"Yes I am."

"Don't be deceived by any of these fellows."

"No I won't."

So all the voices can try to deceive you, but once you are at the apex it's very difficult to be deceived, and yet we gotta practice this on a regular basis, like Zuigan did. Everyday, besides meditating, he would call out:

"Are you awake?"

"Yes."

"Are you present?"

"Yes, I'm here."

Okay. I think that's our fifteen minutes, Stephen.

Stephen Dinan: Great.

Volunteers: Thank you.

Stephen Dinan: Thank all of you — We did have to drop the fourth one because of the line static. But thank you for participating.

Volunteers: Thank you.

Genpo Roshi: Thank you all.

Stephen Dinan: Great. So what we normally do at this time — we have a little less time than we typically do, but still feel it's always very valuable to integrate some of what you've been hearing today and really think about how you're going to apply it in your life. So we can create groups of four, but for a shorter period of time than typical. Just really for about four or five minutes. And we're going to have one minute each to really share about what was the most valuable thing for you personally in this call today. And really what are you wanting to apply in your life. And we'll circle back around for a few more closing thoughts and deeper reflections from Genpo Roshi. And then after the call we'll have the opportunity for some conversation circles as well. So, we're going to put you in groups of four right now. And you'll have one minute each to share about what was most valuable for you on the call today, and what you'd like to apply in your life. So you can go ahead and start sharing now.

Stephen Dinan: Okay. Well, Genpo, the time goes quickly and I thought that was a really fantastic process that you took us through because, clearly, the people had a powerful impact in the groups. I wonder if you — as we move to the close of our time together, if there's some core teachings and thoughts that people can take away and that we want to really reinforce to really help them in their awakening journey.

Genpo Roshi: Sure.

One of the things that would be very helpful for our listeners, if they're not already doing it, and it sounds like most are, is spending time everyday in meditation. And what I would recommend is to ask to speak to the non-seeking mind — since we did that one — or the mind of the way. And to sit in that state of true being. And just watch the mind do its thing. Watch the thoughts come and go. But just sit and witness — as the non-seeking mind or the mind of the way — the whole process that is going on. And, you know, twenty/thirty/forty minutes a day, once or twice a day would be adequate.

And then also, you know, we have a lot of DVDs and work that's one the Zen Eye — which is, if people go to bigmind.org and they click on "Zen Eye" — there's a lot of material, thousands of hours of material, that will help them go through this process and work with it, and then do it on a daily basis much like I said earlier. Every day, sit down — maybe spend some time asking the master if the master is awake: "Are you present?" "Yes." — and just being in that state, and also noticing in a mindful way what voice is speaking.

Because in the DVDs we go through, like, a lot of the voices in a human level —the controller, protector, etc — and they can get in touch with — Is fear speaking right now?, Is jealousy speaking?, What voice is speaking? — and be less identified with it by identifying it.

Stephen Dinan: Beautiful.

Genpo Roshi: And of course there's the workshops that we have here in Salt Lake and around the world, and people who are interested can come and they'll find that really accelerates their growth, all these workshops I conduct: some two days, and some all week long.

Stephen Dinan: Well thank you so much for joining us here today. I absolutely just felt like it really clarified what you're offering in the world to me, since I haven't done a workshop myself, and I felt like I kind of got it on a core level, and it was a very illuminating especially as an integration of East and West. So I deeply honor you for the work that you've synthesized and that you are offering so generously in the world and on this call today. So, many thanks.

Genpo Roshi: Thank you, Stephen.