Big Mind, Big Heart (Dennis Genpo Merzel)
Big Joke, Big Farce
[My 1-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way” by Dennis Genpo Merzel.]
I first reviewed this book in 2008, then deleted the review (along with my other Amazon reviews) in 2011. I deleted my reviews (only four at the time) because I was planning to become a self-published author and I had been told that such reviews would prove detrimental to my success. I eventually rejected this advice, and returned, with a vengeance, to writing book reviews—180 now, and counting.
I received this book from storage a few months ago, and now that I’ve reread it, I’m ready to review it.
Before I begin my review, I’m going to quote Ken Wilber, from the book’s foreward:
“Let me state this as strongly as I can: the Big Mind process founded by Zen Master Genpo Merzel is arguably the most important original discovery in the
Last two centuries of Buddhism… We at Integral Institute have found this process to be close to 100% effective, and that is why I feel comfortable promising, or darn close to promising, that by the time you finish reading this book, you will be among the enlightened ones, even with beginner’s eyes.”
Wilber’s foreward was written in 2007, so the world must now be teeming with enlightened integralists, right? Hardly. In fact, Wilber apparently is no longer even on Merzels’s bandwagon, because in his latest, 2014, book, “The Fourth Turning: Imagining of Evolution of an Integral Buddhism” Wilber only mentions Merzel and his Big Mind method once, in a single sentence. If this method is as great as Wilber says it is in his foreward, why doesn’t he laud it as the seminal Integral meditation method in “The Fourth Turning”? Because Wilber is full of you- know-what, and the Big Mind process is a joke, a poor, or incomplete, imitation of True Prayer.
The method couldn’t be simpler. Here’s an excerpt from the book that summarizes it:
“So the moment you are asked, ‘May I please speak to the voice of Big Mind,’ or Non-Seeking Mind, or any other voice, you are there. Because it is always there, it’s always present. It only seems a mystery because we don’t know how to access it... That moment when we transcend this and that, self, and other, me and you, we’re there.”
First off, Big Mind cannot be accessed as an Object. All that can be accessed as an Object is empty space, which for those who are literally Blessed, comes alive as the Sambhogakaya, Clear-Light Energy, which is the same Divine Power as the Holy Spirit. When this Energy, this Shakti, crashes down to one’s Heart-center, the Tathagatagarbha, and unites with and en-Light-ens one’s soul (the contracted Dharmakaya), then one awakens to Big Mind—one’s soul de-contracted, or expanded, by the Sambhogakaya. Because this “expansion” takes place in the Heart-center, or Tathagatagarbha, (Big) Mind = (Big) Heart.
But Merzel doesn’t have a clue about any of this. He has no idea what Big Mind and Big Heart really are. And if he or the other modern/postmodern Zenists had a clue, they’d realize that once you connect to “Big Mind” (Luminous Presence), it must be received and channeled as Light-Energy, or Spirit-Power, into the Heart-center (located two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest), where one awakens to the real Big Mind/Big Heart—Bodhicitta: Conscious Light, or En-Light-ened Consciousness.
True Prayer goes beyond the Big Mind process because it connects one to the Now, Presence, and then channnels it as Power into the Heart-center, where Big Mind/Big Heart shines as one’s Self, or Buddha-nature.
Merzel rightly identifies “Please” as the right word or attitude that opens one to the Transcendent, but he errs when he claims “The beauty of the Big Mind experience is that it enables us to hold the shutter of the lens open as long as we want.” The “shutter” is dependent on Grace, and if the shutter stayed open constantly, one would get fried by the Divine Fire.
Beyond invoking “Big Mind,” by asking to speak to it, Merzel has nothing to say about the En-Light-enment process. His teaching is exoteric to the max and is simply half-baked, recycled invocation of the Numinous, which he fails to describe because he clearly is an Un-initiated (or Un-baptized) disciple.
Merzel’s Zen master was the infamous Maezumi Roshi, an alcoholic who drowned in a bathtub after a night of drinking. And like Roshi, Merzel’s reputation has suffered because of inappropriate sexual conduct. Perhaps that is why Wilber, seemingly, has bailed from his bandwagon. But my one-star rating of this text has nothing to do with Merzel’s behavior and everything to do with the Big Mind process’s pathetic superficiality. In other words, Merzel’s Big Mind is a Big Joke.
[My 1-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way” by Dennis Genpo Merzel.]
I first reviewed this book in 2008, then deleted the review (along with my other Amazon reviews) in 2011. I deleted my reviews (only four at the time) because I was planning to become a self-published author and I had been told that such reviews would prove detrimental to my success. I eventually rejected this advice, and returned, with a vengeance, to writing book reviews—180 now, and counting.
I received this book from storage a few months ago, and now that I’ve reread it, I’m ready to review it.
Before I begin my review, I’m going to quote Ken Wilber, from the book’s foreward:
“Let me state this as strongly as I can: the Big Mind process founded by Zen Master Genpo Merzel is arguably the most important original discovery in the
Last two centuries of Buddhism… We at Integral Institute have found this process to be close to 100% effective, and that is why I feel comfortable promising, or darn close to promising, that by the time you finish reading this book, you will be among the enlightened ones, even with beginner’s eyes.”
Wilber’s foreward was written in 2007, so the world must now be teeming with enlightened integralists, right? Hardly. In fact, Wilber apparently is no longer even on Merzels’s bandwagon, because in his latest, 2014, book, “The Fourth Turning: Imagining of Evolution of an Integral Buddhism” Wilber only mentions Merzel and his Big Mind method once, in a single sentence. If this method is as great as Wilber says it is in his foreward, why doesn’t he laud it as the seminal Integral meditation method in “The Fourth Turning”? Because Wilber is full of you- know-what, and the Big Mind process is a joke, a poor, or incomplete, imitation of True Prayer.
The method couldn’t be simpler. Here’s an excerpt from the book that summarizes it:
“So the moment you are asked, ‘May I please speak to the voice of Big Mind,’ or Non-Seeking Mind, or any other voice, you are there. Because it is always there, it’s always present. It only seems a mystery because we don’t know how to access it... That moment when we transcend this and that, self, and other, me and you, we’re there.”
First off, Big Mind cannot be accessed as an Object. All that can be accessed as an Object is empty space, which for those who are literally Blessed, comes alive as the Sambhogakaya, Clear-Light Energy, which is the same Divine Power as the Holy Spirit. When this Energy, this Shakti, crashes down to one’s Heart-center, the Tathagatagarbha, and unites with and en-Light-ens one’s soul (the contracted Dharmakaya), then one awakens to Big Mind—one’s soul de-contracted, or expanded, by the Sambhogakaya. Because this “expansion” takes place in the Heart-center, or Tathagatagarbha, (Big) Mind = (Big) Heart.
But Merzel doesn’t have a clue about any of this. He has no idea what Big Mind and Big Heart really are. And if he or the other modern/postmodern Zenists had a clue, they’d realize that once you connect to “Big Mind” (Luminous Presence), it must be received and channeled as Light-Energy, or Spirit-Power, into the Heart-center (located two digits to the right of the center of one’s chest), where one awakens to the real Big Mind/Big Heart—Bodhicitta: Conscious Light, or En-Light-ened Consciousness.
True Prayer goes beyond the Big Mind process because it connects one to the Now, Presence, and then channnels it as Power into the Heart-center, where Big Mind/Big Heart shines as one’s Self, or Buddha-nature.
Merzel rightly identifies “Please” as the right word or attitude that opens one to the Transcendent, but he errs when he claims “The beauty of the Big Mind experience is that it enables us to hold the shutter of the lens open as long as we want.” The “shutter” is dependent on Grace, and if the shutter stayed open constantly, one would get fried by the Divine Fire.
Beyond invoking “Big Mind,” by asking to speak to it, Merzel has nothing to say about the En-Light-enment process. His teaching is exoteric to the max and is simply half-baked, recycled invocation of the Numinous, which he fails to describe because he clearly is an Un-initiated (or Un-baptized) disciple.
Merzel’s Zen master was the infamous Maezumi Roshi, an alcoholic who drowned in a bathtub after a night of drinking. And like Roshi, Merzel’s reputation has suffered because of inappropriate sexual conduct. Perhaps that is why Wilber, seemingly, has bailed from his bandwagon. But my one-star rating of this text has nothing to do with Merzel’s behavior and everything to do with the Big Mind process’s pathetic superficiality. In other words, Merzel’s Big Mind is a Big Joke.
