Big Mind with Zen Master Genpo Roshi (dharmapalooza ‘06)

Yesterday I attended Dharmapalooza hosted by Stuart Davis and featuring Zen Master Genpo Roshi.

Genpo discussed his Big Mind technique. Although “Big Mind” it is not Zen, I found it very useful in exploring all the dimesions of the self. As well as a very good compliment for Eastern enlightenment as a Western therapeutic perspective.

Here is what I got from it:

A person is a jumble of many different emotions, repressed desires and fears. There is seemingly no order in this soup of conditioned responses and (worse) no release for those we hide from the outside world.

Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind technique gives each of these feelings, fears, and passions a first person voice. Why is this powerful? It is self therapy that allows some repressed emotional mechanisms within us to have a place without conflicting or resurfacing as stress or (worse) cancer. The best way to understand how powerful this technique is is to allow some of those pent up emotions, such as Anger to speak freely in the first person. Repressing Anger (or any other emotion) is not health.

The real power is in giving each of these parts of you a title and a role. The Big Mind Technique works because it allows you to not only fully own them (instead of disassociating them or displacing them as someone else’s fault), but also organize them into efficient manageble states of shades of your self and realize that you are NOT your anger although you may have anger at times.

more details about Big Mind.

I would strongly recommend sitting in on a live Big Mind session or buying the DVD on Big Mind.