Of Big Mind and Cold Butts

I think that Alistair’s Muse is still jet lagged, so I wanted to write a bit more.

The morning is dark and chilly as I make my way from the sangha house to the zendo. The houses are right next door to each other; the path is a series of stones set into the front garden to avoid the extra few steps to the sidewalk and back again. In this short path I already feel a tranquility in the setting. But because it’s cold AND dark, I’m feeling grumpy. The cold doesn’t lessen by entering the zendo. That’s because it’s not heated. Ever. So I start practicing letting go of expectations, repeating to myself “be content with whatever arises”. Great practice but I’m still freezing my ass off.

I go up the stairs into the darkened zendo. There is nothing but a single candle on the altar, giving soft light to the space. There are several people already there, seated on their cushions. Some of them are civilians like me while others are monks dressed in traditional robes. But all of them are sitting still and the pervasive air is one of deep focus. But if they're like me, they're listening to an endless internal chatter like snow on TV.

I bow to the altar, I bow to my meditation bench and bow to my companions before I seat myself. As I sit down, I notice that the window behind me is open. I silently curse and let go once again. There’s a lot of letting go in this business, it seems. And I’m still freezing my ass off.

As we sit, the light outside the windows brightens as night transforms into day. The metaphor isn’t lost on me.

Yesterday afternoon, after much anticipation, we finally met The Big Man – Genpo Roshi. Not one for preliminaries, he launched into one of the voices of the Big Mind process. He asked us each one of us in turn to come up to the front and speak with the voice of The Boaster. All of us newbies have been asked to sit at the front, and so we spoke right away. What came out was almost exactly like telling our stories at a Shalom Retreat. People spoke of all the glorious as well as the painful places in their life. Only this time, they spoke of the painful places with pride and a sense of accomplishment. Some people bragged outrageously. Some people told their story quite simply, giving themselves permission to boast about important parts in their life for the first time. It was great community building.

And there are remarkable people here. Many of whom speak with the same voice as I hear at Shalom very often, about how this process – and, often, Genpo Roshi – has changed their lives. Many feel that the practice and the zendo are home.

There’s the monk who came to Kanzeon at a time when he was ready to kill himself. Now he is still a monk but has left the monastery to marry and have a child, the which has equally completely changed his life. Now he calls himself the greatest bodhisattva ever.

There’s the woman who was named several times over as THE extreme skier in North America. Now she runs a ski instruction school informed by zen. It’s already received rave reviews in the major ski magazines.

There’s the man who had a peak experience in the Himalayas and is here to try to understand what happened to him.

There’s the man whose awakening caused his life to fall apart. He’s excited by having the tool of Big Mind to help others to awaken.

There’s the woman who is a life coach and exhausted from giving to others and struggling to know her own boundaries, and hoping that Big Mind might help.

There’s the MTF who is as brilliant as Ken Wilber and with a new body.

Last night, a woman sitting next to me in zazen passed out and several of us helped her out of the zendo and into the helping hands of paramedics.

People’s lives are front and center in this process of awakening. I am quickly learning that it is, as Roshi says, the path of the human being. He says that our ordinary mind is our awakened mind, we just don’t recognize it. That makes my conceptual mind (not to be confused with the thinking mind) screech like a banshee, yet my body feels a profound sense of relief.

And me? I’m here to keep waking up. I, too, am excited to find a tool that gives people an experience of awakening. I've been crying with gratitude to find something so easy yet profound, that comes seated in a solid foundation of a practice and lineage.

I am considering taking refuge by the end of our time here, and coming back on a regular basis to study with Roshi. I am coming to a knowing that Roshi is my teacher, something that I’ve shyly suspected for a few months now. I am going to have a conversation with him so that I can look directly into his eyes, see the clarity of him, and feel him with my entire being.