The Monk

A therapist friend recently joked with me that everyone outside a relationship is hoping to get in one, and everyone in a relationship is either trying to change his or her partner and/or get out completely. Sex and relationships are no different from any other aspect of our lives in that it's all about how we deal with what is presented to us. To be truly happy - and like anything else at which we want to excel - it requires practice, patience, and maturity. And a lot of mistakes made as sincerely as possible.

The Master(Genpo Roshi)

When our walls are down, we are more in touch with our feelings and our emotions, and because we as individuals are based more in trust than in fear, everything is heightened. We are able to be open and vulnerable, having dropped our defenses or barriers, and true intimacy becomes possible. Our sexual life, our ability to communicate and relate is improved. We are in touch with our true self, it’s more tantric, it’s being there with the other person, in a sensitive way. But it’s also being true to ourselves and who we are. It’s a more conscious, awakened state of being, where we are able to use our emotions in a very positive way that gives a richness and fullness to our life. Instead of fearing or suppressing our emotions, we actually use them as the petrol for our life.

In the Eightfold Path in Buddhism, the first is ‘right understanding’ or ‘right view’ and the second is ‘right perception’ or ‘right attitude'. It’s absolutely true that when you have the right view and right perception in a relationship, it’s way beyond being just about sexual satisfaction. Then you are really in a relationship as partners, and it is all about growth - spiritual, mental, emotional, physical. It’s all about both parties doing well because you are attuned to one another, and your sensual and sexual relationship often improves because of the enhanced intimacy.

It’s all about coming from the apex, rather than from a self-centred place in the relationship, from the egocentric corner of the triangle. When you include Big Mind, the other, egoless side of the triangle, then you reach an understanding of both the personal and the impersonal, and you are coming from unconditional compassion as an integrated sexual human being. From here you look at a relationship in terms of how you are supporting one another in growth, maturation, and feelings of love. It’s a much deeper, much more profound place than where we normally come from.

But this doesn’t mean we disown the more sensual, sexual, physical side of ourselves, otherwise it just becomes another disowned voice. So we want to embrace our immature as well as our more mature aspects, and transcend them, which means to include and go beyond both. The moment I knowingly speak from an immature place, I start to acknowledge and recognise my immaturity, and I can see how I can be more mature. We don’t want to disown the immature though, because very often the immature aspect of any voice offers a vitality that may not be found in the more mature. We don’t want to lose this energy.  We want to embrace it for what it is, and go beyond.

Excerpt from "Monk in the City"

You can try the Big Mind process on your own.  Begin by speaking from the series of voices in the manner described below.  After you’ve completed the series once, you can get the same effect from a shortened version of the practice, described at the end of the series.

Ask to speak to the voice of the Controller within you.  Then identify as the Controller.

“Now I am speaking as the Controller.  I am no longer the self.  As my name implies, my function is to control.  If I could, I would control everything and everyone.  I’d control my thoughts, my actions, my emotions, my feelings, my behavior, as well as others’.  I would control the whole world if I could.  This is my job, and I’m just trying to do my job as best I can.”

Now the Meditator asks the Controller, “May I ask your permission as the Controller to allow me to speak with some other voices within the self?  Since you are the best at controlling all the other voices, would you also give me clear, direct access to each voice that I ask to speak to?  And I would appreciate it if you would keep all the other voices silent, so they will not block my clear channel to the voice that I ask to speak to.  May I now speak to another voice?  I’d like to speak to the Seeking Mind.”

"I am the Seeking Mind.  I am very valuable to the self.  I am the one who brings the self to meditation, I am the one who is always seeking to become quieter, happier, and more peaceful.  I am the one seeking to find bliss and liberation.  I am never content.  There is always further to seek.”

Meditator: “May I now speak to the Non-seeking Mind?” 

“I am the Non-seeking Mind.  I don’t seek.  I am absolutely content and happy with what is.  I have no desires or cravings to be other than how I am right here right now.  I am pure awareness, emptiness, spaciousness.  I witness and observe things just as they are.  I have no judgments or problems.  I am the mind of nirvana, the mind of complete liberation.  When I am sitting in meditation, I have no goals and no aims.  I have nowhere to go, nothing to do.  I am total peace.”

Meditator: “May I now speak to Big Mind, please?”

“I am Big Mind.  I have no borders, no boundaries, no limits.  I am unborn and undying, without beginning or end.  I am all things, and all things are manifestations of me.  I make no distinctions between self and other, you and me.  I am the mind of nirvana, absolute peace and freedom.”

Meditator: “I can easily see Big Mind as the antithesis of the self.  I can see Big Mind as one end of a line, and the self at the opposite end.  If that line becomes the base of a triangle, I would now like to speak to the Apex of that triangle, which includes and yet transcends the self and Big Mind, or the Seeking and the Non-seeking Mind.”

“I am the Apex.  I am Big Heart, I am compassionate action.  I am that which is beyond seeking and non-seeking, beyond the limited self and limitless Big Mind.  As the Apex I have complete freedom to seek or not to seek, I have choice; I have flexibility.  I can move freely between these two states of mind.  From here I do not seek enlightenment nor do I try to get rid of delusion.  I do not try to put an end to thinking and I do not favor not-thinking.  I have no preference for one over the other.  I am total freedom, and complete peace of mind, functioning perfectly and harmoniously in every moment.  I act from wisdom functioning as compassion.  I am the True and Unique Self.”

After you have done this for the first time, you can use a simpler practice.  If you already have a regular meditation routine, begin by assuming your usual posture.  If you’ re new to meditation, find a comfortable upright position (sitting in a chair is sufficient), take a few deep breaths, and relax.  From your relaxed meditation position, ask the Controller, “May I please speak to the Non-seeking Non-grasping Mind?”  Then identify as the Controller by saying, “Yes, I am the Controller, and you may now speak to the Non-seeking Non-grasping Mind.  OK, now, sit as the Non-seeking Non-grasping Mind.”

Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi, is the creator of the Big Mind Process and author of Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding YourWay, four other books, and numerous DVDs.  A recognized Zen Master in the Soto and Rinzai Traditions, he is the founder of Kanzeon Zen International Community and abbot of the Kanzeon Zen Center, Utah.  He has been teaching Zen throughout the U.S. and Europe since 1979.

For further information visit the website www.bigmind.org.

We are all born with the unborn Buddha Mind, what I call Big Mind/Big Heart, an inner awareness that we are connected with others and our environment – literally One Mind.  But something happens as we grow up; we begin to make distinctions and to separate ourselves from the rest of the world.  We trade the Big Heart-Mind we are born with for another mind that centers around the small self.  That self then becomes our number one preoccupation.

The small mind always looks at the world from the center called “me.”  The arrow points “out there” so everything else appears to be on the outside.  And when we look “out there,” we feel rather empty, unimportant and incomplete “in here.”  Naturally want arises; we want to feel better, more complete.  As long as we believe that something outside ourselves can make us feel whole, we will be driven to grasp at things.  Dissatisfaction and anxiety will haunt us because we have traded Big Mind for a narrow, self-centered one.  This unrest is what the Buddha called ignorance.  We ignore our intrinsic wholeness.

The point of spiritual practice is to return to our original nature, which is Big Mind – the mind of clarity and wisdom, and Big Heart – the mind of compassion.  When our mind is not divided, there simply is no conflict.  In Zen we turn our own light inward to find our way back to original mind.

An easy exercise can give you a glimpse into the true nature of your mind.  Take a few minutes to look inside and ask yourself this simple question.  “How big is this mind?”  Really look!  Don’t imagine what you think you should find; look for yourself.  Can you grasp the size of your mind?  No, it is ungraspable.  Can you find a beginning? an end?  Can you find a birth or death?  No.  Anything that you find has been invented by the small mind.

In Big Mind we experience no separation, no outside, no inside, no point and no center.  Even though we experience this incomprehensible Heart-Mind, our separate and frightened self wants to believe that something bigger than ourselves has everything in control; so we keep looking for God “out there.”  The secret known by all the mystics is that God can be found only when we give up our efforts to control and understand our life.  Such striving is really unnecessary.  When we give up our small perspective and come from Big Mind what is there that we don’t know? 

When we look inside and let go, we can come from Big Mind and see that there is no need to control any of it.  When we allow everything to just be, it all functions perfectly, exactly the way we want because we give up wanting it to be any other way.  The trick is to let go of wanting.  When we give up our preconceptions of where the snow should fall and let it fall where it falls, then there is no question about what to do.  Grab a shovel.  Instead of fighting and resisting, we can simply take care of each situation as it happens.  So put the car in neutral.  Relax and let be.  Appreciate how everything is functioning perfectly.

One of the first voices to explore in this process is the voice of the Controller.  Take a few minutes to experience this voice; appreciate its value in your practical life.  Could you function without it?  Now ask it to rest awhile.  You may have been thinking the Controller was the real you, but get to know some other dimensions of yourself.  There are many voices to explore on the way to Big Mind.  The truth of the voices lies in their expression, their being.  Be the voice of the Vulnerable Child.  Sit with it.  What is your vulnerable child like?  Speak as the Protector, the Damaged Self, the Skeptic, the Seeker.  Many on the spiritual path are already acquainted with the Seeker.  It’s the mind that brings us to the path.  Yet, can the Seeking Mind ever be what it seeks?

Now shift to the Non-Seeking mind.  Let all objectives simply drop away and experience this space.  One participant at a recent workshop describes his own experience: “Here [in non-seeking mind] is a sanctuary, entirely in the present, yet part of a continuum extending to the ends of the universe, incorporating birth and death.  Here is ‘Big Mind’ encompassing everything.”

Whether you’re in that space or not, Big Mind is your mind.

Zen Master Genpo Roshi, is the creator of the Big Mind Big Heart Western Zen Approach to Life and author of Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding YourWay, four other books, and numerous DVDs.  A recognized Zen Master in the Soto and Rinzai Traditions, he is the founder of Kanzeon Zen International Community and abbot of the Kanzeon Zen Center, Utah.  He has been teaching Zen throughout the U.S. and Europe since 1979. For further information visit the website www.bigmind.org.