Paul McKenna and the Zen Master

Loads of stuff bubbling away, so much so I'm behind with the blog, despite now having a load of stuff to post! I just got back from the Paul McKenna/Genpo Roshi Big Mind Weekend, more of which later. Anyway, here's part of an interview I did ahead of the seminar.

http://life.hereisthecity.com/the_soul_clinic/mind_and_body/846.cntns

Zen masters throughout history are known for breaking with convention, and Zen Master DenisGenpo Roshi, a practitioner for almost 40 years, is no exception. He'll be coming to London this weekend as part of the Big Mind, Big Heart Weekend Workshop with guest Paul McKenna.

You’ve been coming to Europe for more than 20 years. This time you are working with TV hypnotist Paul McKenna, who just signed a big deal in the US too. A Zen Master and a hypnotist might not seem an obvious combination. How did that come about?

About a year and a half back, a student of mine got in contact to say he’d heard Paul on the radio in the UK (on Desert Island Discs) talking about books that had changed his life. One of them was my book, The Path of the Human Being. He said he’d found someone really talking to him in a way that made sense and he highly recommended it. So when my latest book (on the Big Mind process) came out, I sent Paul a copy and he got in touch. He said he’d started to come to the States a lot and he was working on a deal in Hollywood. He and his friend Michael Neill came out to Utah to see me, and they said it was the most incredible experience. We’ve met for lunch in Los Angeles and become good friends since. He offered to come along next time I was in London to help promote the Big Mind work. It’s very generous of him to give up his time.

Does Zen or Big Mind have a place in the financial world?

It seems Big Mind is flowing and filtering through to different parts of our society - judges and lawyers, mediators, therapists, psychoanalysts, teachers, educators, the armed services. Buddhist teachers, rabbis, priests, personal coaches and doctors are using the Big Mind/Big Heart work in their respective fields. I was just invited this March to do some work with soldiers who have returned from Iraq, men and women suffering from post-traumatic stress. I have done some teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy too, and some of the people there have become involved with the Big Mind work. I was also invited to share the work with an international group of philosophers two years ago, and with a group of personal life coaches next May.

I think there’s a real appetite for the spiritual in the City. There’s lots of yoga, martial arts, relaxation. The tough part is blending it with the demands of working in the business world. I really struggled with that at first, I saw them as separate, different.

I really want to say I admire those who are doing that. I have great respect for that. I started off with a more or less monastic practice. I made a decision in ‘94 to open up Zen practice here at my Zen Center to the world, to the marketplace. The business marketplace mind and the spiritual mind are two aspects that have to work together. The marketplace mind has to be competitive and get the job done. Then where does that leave the spiritual mind? There has to be one mind, with all the seemingly contradictory aspects working together, otherwise there’s conflict and we are at war with ourselves and that dissipates our energy. If we bring these together, there’s so much energy. I mean, I’m 64, and even after cancer there’s an abundance of energy, and that’s because there’s no conflict. When there’s conflict between the spiritual and the ‘real world’ it is debilitating. My energy is better than it has ever been my entire life.

(Laughs) I’m afraid I’m still very much in the conflict stage, if I’m honest. I’m just going to plough on through it and see how it goes. It’s a journey.

It’s really a matter of owning all aspects of your self, and using them in a wise and compassionate way. Every aspect, every possible state of mind, the worldly and the wisdom of the ages, is in all of us. We just need to own them.

Monk and the Master Part 2: Zen and Sex

As the second part of a three part series for HereistheCity, the website asked me to do a piece on sex, and so in a longer interview Genpo Roshi kindly gave me his views. Loving relationships really are something I'm interested in, partly from Monk-like curiousity and partly due to feeling like I'm on a constant learning curve myself with regards to them. It's a subject I'm sure I'll come back to, I think the Big Mind process and Zen have more to give the West in this area. But for now, here's the article. Enjoy.

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In the next instalment of Monk and The Master, the topic is sex, and how it relates to love and the many facets of ourselves.

The Monk

A therapist friend recently joked with me that everyone outside a relationship is hoping to get in one, and everyone in a relationship is either trying to change his or her partner and/or get out completely. Sex and relationships are no different from any other aspect of our lives in that it's all about how we deal with what is presented to us. To be truly happy - and like anything else at which we want to excel - it requires practice, patience, and maturity. And a lot of mistakes made as sincerely as possible.

The Master

When our walls are down, we are more in touch with our feelings and our emotions, and because we as individuals are based more in trust than in fear, everything is heightened. We are able to be open and vulnerable, having dropped our defenses or barriers, and true intimacy becomes possible. Our sexual life, our ability to communicate and relate is improved. We are in touch with our true self, it’s more tantric, it’s being there with the other person, in a sensitive way. But it’s also being true to ourselves and who we are. It’s a more conscious, awakened state of being, where we are able to use our emotions in a very positive way that gives a richness and fullness to our life. Instead of fearing or suppressing our emotions, we actually use them as the petrol for our life.

In the Eightfold Path in Buddhism, the first is ‘right understanding’ or ‘right view’ and the second is ‘right perception’ or ‘right attitude'. It’s absolutely true that when you have the right view and right perception in a relationship, it’s way beyond being just about sexual satisfaction. Then you are really in a relationship as partners, and it is all about growth - spiritual, mental, emotional, physical. It’s all about both parties doing well because you are attuned to one another, and your sensual and sexual relationship often improves because of the enhanced intimacy.

It’s all about coming from the apex, rather than from a self-centred place in the relationship, from the egocentric corner of the triangle. When you include Big Mind, the other, egoless side of the triangle, then you reach an understanding of both the personal and the impersonal, and you are coming from unconditional compassion as an integrated sexual human being. From here you look at a relationship in terms of how you are supporting one another in growth, maturation, and feelings of love. It’s a much deeper, much more profound place than where we normally come from.

But this doesn’t mean we disown the more sensual, sexual, physical side of ourselves, otherwise it just becomes another disowned voice. So we want to embrace our immature as well as our more mature aspects, and transcend them, which means to include and go beyond both. The moment I knowingly speak from an immature place, I start to acknowledge and recognise my immaturity, and I can see how I can be more mature. We don’t want to disown the immature though, because very often the immature aspect of any voice offers a vitality that may not be found in the more mature. We don’t want to lose this energy. We want to embrace it for what it is, and go beyond.

Zen Master Genpo Roshi will be at the Big Mind Big Heart Weekend Workshop with guest Paul McKenna at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in London on the 24th and 25th of January.

Monk and the Master Part 1 - Shopping

Well I've been working on some new articles, but my main focus for January is the upcoming Genpo Roshi and Paul McKenna seminar in London on the 24-25th . I first went to see Genpo Roshi in January 2006, completely by chance having been looking for Zen groups in London. I went along expecting some sitting on the floor, maybe some dharma talks (buddhist talks), but was slightly blown away by a teacher using a completely different way of teaching, combining Western psychotherapy and a teaching known in Zen as the 'Five Ranks of Tozan'. The Roshi was giving a talk in a central London church on the following Monday night, and so at the end of the talk, and convinced that here was a Western teacher who could really teach, I marched up to the front and asked him to take me on for some traditional Zen study. Roshi kindly offered to do it by e mail and the phone, not necessarily a traditional Zen way either! 

Anyway I've been to see him a couple of times since, and he didn't come to London last year, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Between now and the seminar the seminar I've co authored 3 articles with Roshi on shopping, sex and money (all the good stuff!), one of which was published the week before Christmas. Anyway, it still applies for the sales season, so if you are feeling in the grip of the desire to 'buy now, pay later!' and you haven't read it before, enjoy.
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In the run-up to Christmas, there is no one better to advise us on shopping than Zen Master Genpo Roshi, author of Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way, and pioneer of the Big Mind Process, a mix Eastern Zen with Western psychology. But first as usual, the Monk.

The Monk on Shopping

There’s a lot of pressure this time of year, buying for the kids, the boyfriend or girlfriend. Things are a little tighter, too. The old saying about it being better to give than receive is true, but the reality of explaining that to an irate partner come Christmas morning is best avoided.

But it’s not wrong to desire. Desire just is what it is. It’s such a powerful emotion. Ask yourself to identify with the one who desires, and feel the grin on your face! You literally feel the energy jolt through you. It's so powerful, it can be wild and consuming. Now identify with the mind of no desire. The difference is incredible. It’s peaceful and complete. But it also isn’t very sexy. A healthy integration is necessary.

The fully integrated Christmas shopper is at the top of the triangle, like the star on a tree. It knows what it wants, but it is comfortable whether it gets it or not. Its elbows are less sharp, its heartbeat less panicky, and it probably hasn’t left its shopping till lunchtime on Christmas Eve.

The Master on Shopping

The Big Mind work or meditation allows us to become aware of what our real desires and our real needs are. In his final talk, Buddha gave eight brilliant teachings that we now call the Eight Awareness of the Buddha. With regard to shopping, I want to emphasize the first two.

The first is 'to have few desires'. The second is 'to know how to be satisfied with what you have'. I think these two can really help us in the marketplace world. We don’t need to want everything, but we can learn to prioritize what we really do need, and what we really do want. To have fewer desires. The major cause of suffering is not being satisfied with what you have, and wanting what you don’t have. Learn to be satisfied with what we do have, not dissatisfied by wanting what we don’t have.

So how can we get to this place of satisfaction and sufficiency? Think of yourself as the sitting figure outlined by a triangle in the illustration, with the left corner (knee) representing the self that desires, the right corner (knee) representing the one that has no desire (pure being, free from desire), and the apex as that which includes and transcends both of them.

At the apex, which is our True Self, we can recognize the old patterns and habits of desire without having to be run by them, and we can see more clearly what we really need and what is sufficient. We can also be in touch with the mind of unconditional satisfaction that does not require anything to be whole and complete. From here we can appreciate who we truly are and enjoy what we do have, which in itself is a great gift.

Genpo Roshi will be at the Big Mind Big Heart Weekend Workshop with guest Paul McKenna at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in London on the 24th and 25th of January.

Zen, Warren Buffet, Green and the Credit Crunch

Been itching to post something else all day, and the credit crunch is at the front of my mind at the minute. It's only the big businesses going under that hit the press, but there must be smaller businesses, shops, restaurants, cafes, bars etc all feeling it hard now, and having been a full time barman in a previous life, I know how quiet and low on custom January is, sometimes into February too. Anyway, I'll be writing more on the crunch in the future, but here's the piece I did back in November for HereistheCity:
http://life.hereisthecity.com/the_soul_clinic/at_work/771.cntns

Many thanks to Genpo Roshi for his assistance and inspiration.

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'Life is suffering' is the first noble truth in Buddhism, but it’s a slightly misleading translation of the word 'dukkha' in Sanskrit, which might be better translated as 'stuck-ness'. Imagine a wheel stuck, with an axle that cannot rotate. That’s the state of mind the Buddha was referring to.

It won’t have escaped your attention that the world economy appears to be in a state of stuck-ness at the minute. As usual much of the media is doing their bit to intensify the gloom, and over the past few months, the markets and we have moved from a global economy in crisis to talks of desperation and recession. To a large extent, that is where we are all collectively stuck
Picture:Craig Jewell
Step forward in the last week or so to Sir Phillip Green and Warren Buffet. Green, the greatest force in British high street fashion, announcing a 40% drop in profits, told people to cheer up." We need people to write the world isn’t closing down."

Warren Buffet is an entrepreneur and philanthropist with an approximate net worth of $60 billion. Although admitting he has no idea which way the markets will go, Buffet has a track record that suggests he has more of an idea than most of us on the planet. His recent comment:


“Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful", was an interesting one, but he used history to back him up. The Dow hit its low of 41 in July 1932, the pit of the great depression. By March ’33 when FDR took office, it was up 30%.

So why are these two bucking the trend? They may both be billionaires, and perhaps not feeling a pinch let alone a crunch like the rest of us, but they speak with conviction and a track record that suggests they are worth listening to.

Zen Master Genpo Merzel illustrates states of mind in his book Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way by way of a triangle. These triangles can be created for almost any scenario, but the one here illustrates what I will call ‘The Crunch Mind’. There’s always a balance to be had - a light with the dark - and then a state that ‘goes beyond’ the two. On your left is the ‘human’ part of us, the part prone to fear. On your right, the ‘being’ part, the infinite. The apex of the triangle is always the perfect combination of the two; it includes each polarity and transcends them, goes beyond. It is the fully integrated ‘human’ and ‘being', free-flowing and ‘unstuck’.

So sit for a minute and experience the fear. To do this you simply become that voice within yourself. Say to yourself “I am fear” and see what comes up. Feel it, and take a few deep breaths. Next simply shift your body slightly, tell yourself “I am no fear” and sit with that. Notice how different that feels. Notice how big you feel, how big you become. And then without getting stuck there, shift your body again and say ‘I am the transcendent’. And feel what that is like.

That’s where we all need to go next, neither stuck in one state or the other, just free-flowing. That is where the wheel is no longer stuck, and we all become Zen masters of the markets.

A Monk in the City

New Years day;
The hut just as it is,
Nothing to ask for.

Nanashi

Ok here we go, new blog for a New year. I'll be posting my articles from the Hereisthecity, interspersed with a few other bits and pieces, hopefully on a weekly basis.

Anyway, here's my first piece from April 08 by way of introduction. Happy New Year!

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When Zen started to trickle through to the West in the last century, it was in the traditional Japanese sense. Monastic living, away from the hurly burly, dudes in robes with bald heads. But as Zen has taken root in the West, something new is forming.

The new practitioners are moving towards a new hybrid, doing jobs, getting married, having kids. So monks are becoming un-monk like.

There are even monks in the City. It's a nice little paradox.

Zen is really nothing complicated at all, it's just the study of the self. To study Zen is to study the self. At first, you sit down and turn your mind inwards. Drilling into the workings of your own mind, a bit of inner exploration. And what you find is that it starts to affect other parts of your life as well.

Most of us have come home from work in the City, or woken up in the morning and wondered "What does this all mean?", or "Who am I?" or "How can I be happy?" Of course some people never ask and ignore these questions. Some find ways to blot them out, replacing them with 'stuff' - driving towards the next bonus, getting that project done, focusing on the kids, the lover, friendships.

None of these things in themselves are bad things, but they don't immediately answer the question of who we are, or what we are doing cramming ourselves on to the tube/bus/train every morning. But a little meditation on the tube can work wonders, a little letting go, a little relaxation, jammed in someone's pits. It just takes a little of what we call practice. You can do it anywhere - on the trading floor, in the restaurant, sitting at your desk, waiting in a queue at the bank, or if the markets continue to tank, the DSS. It's just dropping into a different state of mind. Peace.

So as a monk in the City, it's about learning to live life joyfully and freely, with absolute you-ness. You just need to know and be the true you. In all your lovely complexity! My me-ness at this moment means that I wear a suit rather than robes. No need for the buzz cut.

In the coming weeks, I'll be giving you a few tips that will hopefully put a well-needed spring in your heart as well as in your step, and help you roll with the punches that come with City life.

http://life.hereisthecity.com/the_soul_clinic/mind_and_body/531.cntns