The Middle Way, You're Soaking In It

I would like to indulge your imagination for a moment, with your kind permission. See a tall mountain, lightly capped with snow, its peak above the cloud line on a bright cloudless day. See the very tip, a jagged platform of rock stabbing heavenwards from the bowels of the Earth. See, balanced on that tip, me singing the praises of the Big Mind process.

A bit much, yeah maybe. But, seriously, the Big Mind process as discovered by Genpo Roshi is, in Ken Wilber's words, "Let me state this as strongly as I can: the Big Mind Process is arguably the most important and original discovery in the last two centuries of Buddhism."

Some have called the discovery of this process the fourth turning of the Dharma wheel. I am no Buddhist scholar, but I would not hesitate to take that claim seriously.

So, what is it? Put simply it is a blending of the current leading edge of techniques from the contemplative East, and the rational West. It combines the 30 years of dedicated Zen Koan study and mastery of Genpo Roshi with the Voice Dialogue technique of psychotherapy founded by Hal and Sidra Stone. Voice Dialogue is a therapeutic modality where the various aspects of personality, or voices, that each of us is capable of taking are invited to speak. What Hal and Sidra Stone discovered was that by acknowledging these voices and identifying oneself as them, a great deal of work could be done on integrating those voices, especially the disowned shadow elements of one's psyche.

What Genpo Roshi discovered was that one could choose to call forth directly the non-dualistic as well as dualistic voices of the mind, and ultimately the integrative voices as well. A facilitator might start with the voice of the Controller, move to the Skeptic, the Damaged Self, then to the Seeking Mind. Then you could cross over into the non-dualistic minds such as the Non-Seeking Mind, the Master, and, of course, the Big Mind. Finally you could call on the integrated minds, such as Big Mind/Big Heart, Fully Free Functioning Human Being, and the Ordinary Mind Way.

Genpo Roshi uses this modality in his Zen talks and Koan studies, and always begins with the dualistic minds to the non-dualistic minds and finally to the integrated mind which he often calls The Apex. In this way he builds a triangle of realization where you have the dualistic as one side of the base, the non-dualistic as the other, and finally the apex which transcends and includes both.

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