There are certain voices that we have all disowned. The clue to discovering that a voice is disowned is when we can’t get in touch with it. We just have a difficult time. For example for me it was the voice of the Judge. I discovered that I had disowned this voice back in 1983-84, when I was practicing Voice Dialogue with Hal Stone and a facilitator asked to speak to the Judge in me.
My reply was, “The Judge? It doesn’t exist. I never judge. I haven’t judged since I awakened in 1971. I don’t judge people. I never judge anyone. Now, my wife on the other hand, judges everybody.”
On that same day when I was asked to speak as the Judge, the person who was facilitating me, (who later become a Zen Roshi) flew backwards in her chair when I finally spoke as the Judge. The energy was so strong, that it knocked her over. The whole chair just fell over backwards because there was such force behind that repressed Judge in me. A week later, my wife said to me, “Have you noticed, I haven’t been judging as much?”
What I found was that by my owning the voice of the Judge that it allowed my wife to be less attached to judgment, to her judgments. This we will find in relationships very often, that one partner will actually carry a certain element for the partnership. So one might be more judgmental and the other less, one might be more frightened the other one less, one might be more jealous the other one less, because one will hold it to compensate for the other one that has disowned it. So if let’s say you’re in a relationship where your partner has a lot of fear, maybe your voice of fear is disowned, and maybe you need to own more of your fear so your partner doesn’t have to hold an unfair amount of the fear in the relationship. And it goes on and on and on.
It can seem overwhelming how much there is to accomplish, because our practice is endless and continuous. The beautiful part about this is that the more we begin to own these disowned voices, the more complete we feel, the more complete we are, the more whole our experience is. So I think this is a really beautiful way to discover our self.
In Buddhism, the great Zen Master Dogen Zenji, who lived from 1200 to 1253, said “To study the Buddha way is to study the self.” And that’s what we’re doing here; we’re studying the self.
By studying one’s self what happens is we’re able to then relinquish the self, forget the self, drop the self. This is what allows us to be free, to be enlightened, to be enlightened by what we call the ten thousand phenomena’s. We become the ten thousand phenomena and then we manifest that in our life.
Genpo Roshi founded the Kanzeon Sangha, an international Zen community in 1984, with groups and centers throughout Europe and the U.S., and is abbot of Big Mind Western Zen Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, which he founded in 1993, where he leads ongoing Zen Meditation Retreats. He discovered the Big Mind process in 1999. His newest book is Big Mind Big Heart: Finding Your Way.
Visit his website at: www.bigmind.org
About genpo.roshi
Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi is a revolutionary in the tradition of the old Zen Masters who so embodied Buddhist teaching that they were able to revitalize and transform it for their own day and age. As Buddhism moved from India to China to Japan and other Asian cultures, it found unique expression in each culture that made its fundamental teachings resonate for a new time and place. Genpo Roshi is working to transmit the essence of the Buddha’s teachings in a way that is readily accessible to Westerners and relevant to our everyday life.The core of Genpo Roshi’s teaching is the unshakeable and contagious certainty that every one of us, regardless of our socio-economic, cultural or religious background, can instantly awaken to our true nature, like the great masters of old — like the historical Buddha himself, whose essential teaching was nothing less than this. This experience helps us shed anxiety and fear and learn to live more purposeful, compassionate and joyful lives. Roshi combines Zen tradition with the insights of such visionary western figures as Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, and Hal Stone, enabling virtually anyone to realize their true nature, a realization they can further deepen through meditation.Dennis Genpo Merzel comes from a long line of Rebbes. Born in Brooklyn NY, he grew up in Southern California where he was a high school champion swimmer and All-American water polo player. He earned a Masters degree in education from the University of Southern California and was a teacher and lifeguard before ordaining as a Zen monk under Zen Master Taizan Maezumi in 1973. Completing formal Koan study in 1979 he became Maezumi Roshi’s second Dharma Successor in 1980, the first being Bernie Tetsugen Glassman. He received Inka (final seal of approval as Zen Master) from Roshi Glassman in 1996, thereby becoming one of a small group of Westerners recognized as lineage holders in both the Soto and Rinzai Zen traditions.In 1982 Genpo Sensei began teaching throughout Europe and founded the international group he named the Kanzeon (Love and Compassion) Sangha, centered in Salt Lake City, Utah, with affiliates in France, Holland, Poland, Belgium, Germany, England, and Malta. He has eleven Dharma Successors: Catherine Genno Pages, John Shodo Flatt, Anton Tenkei Coppens, Malgosia Jiho Braunek, Daniel Doen Silberberg, Nico Sojun Tydeman, Nancy Genshin Gabrysch, Diane Musho Hamilton, Michael Mugaku Zimmerman, Richard Taido Christofferson, and Michel Genko Dubois. He has given Inka to seven Zen teachers: John Daido Loori, Catherine Genno Pages and Anton Tenkei Coppens, Jan Chozen Bays, Charles Tenshin Fletcher, Nicolee Jikyo McMahon and Susan Myoyu Andersen. For ten years, until 2007, he was the President of the White Plum Asanga, the worldwide community comprising all the Dharma heirs of Taizan Maezumi Roshi, their successors, and the many groups they lead.Roshi’s publications include The Eye Never Sleeps, Beyond Sanity and Madness, 24/7 Dharma, and The Pah of The Human Being, and several DVDs. His latest book, Big Mind/Big Heart: Finding Your Way, published in the Fall of 2007, is also going to be published in translation in Holland, Spain, Germany, Russia and Poland. He is married to Stephanie Young Merzel, co-administrator of Kanzeon Zen Center International, and has two children, Tai Merzel, an aerospace engineer, and Nicole Merzel, a mathematics major at the University of Puget Sound. Website: www.bigmind.org
good article.
Genpo – great post – you are one of the wonders of the world – I know because of your teachings — and Deb and I interviewed you for latest book that will be published October 2009 along with other luminous people.
In the dharma,
Jygpo (Ed)
To know is gain and to know the difference between judgement and discernment makes our world less judgemental.
Ed