Dennis Genpo Merzel offers a practice to work with our shadow sides and awaken our enlightened nature.
IMAGINE YOUR very body-mind-spirit as a company, like General Motors, Ford, or IBM. You’re a company with many employees, and not one single employee knows his job title, job description, function, what the product is, or who the CEO is. To make matters worse each employee thinks that he’s the boss, the one in charge, and all the other employees are working for him.
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Comments
This is actually quite controversial...
*Thinking* "Big Mind," or *pretending* that you're speaking from "Big Mind" isn't actually *mu gen ni bi zes shin* - "no eyes no ears no nose to tongue no body no mind no searing no hearing no smelling no tasting."
Folks such as Brad Warner have also expressed reservations about it.
The thing is, much of practice is not about getting an experience as one more "thing" to have. There's also an element of the cultivation of discipline; that's why someone drew Oxherding pictures way back when.
That's why they invented koans.
The "small mind" wants to keep wanting, and without discipline, no degree of quickie gimmicks will suffice to truly aid in the cultivate wisdom, compassion and generosity.
And this is in no way to say bad things about the people who participate in this, and indeed, some may be helped by it.
But this does not seem to jive with what other Buddhists talk about when they discuss enlightenment (e.g., see the Lankavatara sutra).
controversy is a way of defining a self
I think the important part is: "Is there a boundary, is there a limit; is there some kind of edge to me, some kind of beginning? And all of a sudden, what I realize is that I include and embrace all things, that there is nothing that’s not me."
And I suppose that means this "controversy" is also included. The "controversy" is a boundary; it's a way of defining a self by declaring- Wait a minute! (You're wrong.) I'm right. I see it this way.
Same old. Same old. Same old. Same old. Same old. Same old. Same old...
Seems like Lankavatara is to just live, letting go of word jousting. Hard to do when you're so attached and embroiled in "the Buddhist community".
Big Mind
Today's daily dharma seems to speak to the subject and comments that have been expressed..... The first noble truth recognizes that we also
change like the weather, we ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and
wane like the moon...even in brief moments or prolonged moments of an "enlightend mind" we wax and wane because we are human
and because we do not live in the world alone..."The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it"...our own BIG MIND is not the only BIG MIND around..or is it?
Questions of attachments:
shingo:
Don't be attached to no-boundaries. Transcending suffering is transcending suffering; right speech is right speech.
For $150, you too can cease to word-joust.
Or less.