Genpo Roshi's big psychological mind

Genpo Roshi’s theory of Big Mind is not without its problems as regards Buddhism and Zen Buddhism.  But before I proceed down this trail, this paragraph taken from Dennis Genpo Merzel’s book, Big Mind, Big Heart is the corner stone of his theory.  It describes how the Big Mind process was born. 

“Then in June of 1999 something emerged.  For about nine months I had felt as if I were pregnant.  I knew something was growing within, but I had no clue what it was.  Around my fifty-fifth birthday, during one of my workshops, I was working with a young man, in front of a whole group—there were probably fifty or sixty people in the room.  I asked to speak to the voice of Big Mind, and at that moment the Big Mind process was born.  He was a beginner, he had never studied Zen, but when he began to speak it came across so clear, it just blew my mind—the clarity that he had.  I saw that he had made a shift.  The moment I asked to speak to Big Mind, he was there” (p. 32–33).

From what I can tell, it appears that Genpo’s Big Mind is a process of letting the higher person or psychological mind naturally come forth which Genpo also calls the “Non-Seeking Mind” in which we naturally and always speak as it.  Going even further, I would not be wrong to suggest that Big Mind is not far off from Freud’s superego which is a part of the psychic apparatus not caught up in the neurotic conflicts of which the id certainly is.  Nor is it unlike Martin Buber’s thou, a kind of Ultra-person. 

The main problem that comes to mind with Genpo’s Big Mind theory is not its therapeutic implications, but that it might lead to the mistaken belief that this mind is the same as the Mind (citta) that is expounded upon in Sutras like the Lankavatara and the Surangama, and in the subsequent works of later Zen masters like Gunabhadra, Bodhidharma, Hui-neng, Tsung-mi, Huang-po and others.  To oversimplify the matter, Big Mind is not Buddha Mind or the luminous Mind.   

Turning for a moment to the Lankavatara Sutra, since it was the main Sutra of Zen that established its characteristic teachings of Mind, unlike Genpo’s notion of mind, the Lankavatara Sutra understands Mind to be the fundamental substance of all phenomena.  This means that all phenomena, without exception, are compositions of Mind as a pot is the composition of clay.    

This is not the case with Genpo’s Big Mind which is a psychological mind.  It works as a part of a therapeutic process, much of which is owed to the work of Hal and Sidra Stone in the 1970s who created the psychological therapy of Voice Dialogue.  According to Genpo, “The Stones recognized that all you had to do was reveal the disowned voices, bring them to light by having a facilitator ask to speak to them, and they would once again be owned.  Genpo then goes on to say, “The Big Mind process also uncovers these disowned voices yet it is much more than that... it was the key that actually unlocked the door to the transcendent” (39–40).

To reiterate, Genpo is saying that the Big Mind process unlocks the door to the transcendent.  Here we arrive at a most critical juncture.  Now the important question is this, is the transcendent that Big Mind reveals the same as transcendent Mind found in the Lankavatara Sutra and other Buddhist works?  The answer has to be in the negative.  Or putting the question this way, is Genpo’s transcendent mainly about having certain important maturing experiences?  If this is Genpo’s idea of the transcendent, then this is not transcendence—not in the true sense of the word.  As a matterof fact, the transcendent of which Genpo seems to speak for, doesn’t get us beyond the pale of our psychophysical being, namely, the Five Aggregates which constitute the psychological self or satkaya.  Thus, as ever, we are still attached to the suffering machine, stuck in samsara.

At least in Buddhism, the Five Aggregates have to be transcended because they are suffering.  Moreover, they are regarded as attributes (skandha) while the substance is Mind which the suffering of the aggregates cannot reach so that liberation for mind will consist in its becoming fully itself as self-realized Mind.

Turning to Zen Buddhism, our initial awakening to Mind (bodhicitta) is what Zen teaches us to accomplish.  Having such an initial awakening, we can actually begin to shed our attachment to this illusory body and its attendant psychological phenomena.  Short to this, without a glimpse into what transcends the psychophysical, our efforts will be pretty much in vain.  Making this even worse is clinging to the belief that psychology can transcend the psychophysical.  It can’t.  As Siddhartha discovered before he became a Buddha it is by putting aside the psychological in meditation (dhyana), so as to transcend it, that final awakening was accomplished for him. 

A post script.  A number of years ago I read The Psychological Society by Martin Louis Gross.  The book covered just how much psychology had penetrated into every facet of American society.  It was a warning to me that eventually Zen would become psychologized.  Unfortunately, I was right.

Comments

[Hokai]

Thanks for the post, I respect what you're trying to do with this blog. Big Mind process was expected to provoke all sorts of reactions. Have you tried Big Mind yourself, i.e. experienced the various states/voices through that process? If not, have you at least talked to trustworthy people who have? Is there no room for novelty in authentic Zen, even if it's cloaked in therapeutic garb and distributed by facilitators? Even so stable, permanent realization remains a dream for those unwilling to pursue lifelong cultivation. Gassho!

[Jamie G.]

I wonder if this is the same thing that has infiltrated the Insight Meditation Movement as well?

[Huanshen]

What I find scary here is that Genpo Roshi claims that "Big Mind is a process intended to allow anyone —including non-Buddhists—to experience the enlightenment of the Buddha". There are only two possibilities. Genpo is either a crook, or he is sincere. If he is sincere and believes that the Buddha experienced a psychological “awakening”, speaking with the voice of the Big Mind, I sincerely doubt the validity of Genpo’s dharma transmission. Was Maezumi Roshi so drunk that he could not evaluate the level of attainment of his students?

Huanshen