Big Think Interview with Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi | Big Think

Big Think Interview with Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi

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Dennis Genpo Merzel:

Born in Brooklyn NY, Dennis Merzel grew up in Southern California where he was both a high school and college champion swimmer and All-American water polo player. He earned a Bachelors Degree in Economics from California State University at Long Beach and 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 Zen Master Bernie Glassman. He received Inka (final seal of approval as Zen Master) from Zen Master 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, now centered in Salt Lake City, Utah, with affiliates in France, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Germany, England, and Malta. He has fourteen Dharma Successors, and has given Inka to eight Zen teachers making them Zen Masters. For eleven 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.

Genpo Roshi is currently conducting workshops throughout the world. His publications include The Eye Never Sleeps, Beyond Sanity and Madness, 24/7 Dharma, and The Path of The Human Being, and many DVD's. His latest book, Big Mind/Big Heart: Finding Your Way, published in 2007, is also being published in translation in the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Russia, Poland, France, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What was your first experience of spiritual awakening?

Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi:It happened back in February of 1971; I was having some difficulties in my relationship with the woman I was living with, and I decided to go out in the desert with two of my friends to get a little space for 3 days. They walked off to do a hike together: they were a couple and so I was left alone. I hiked to the top of a mountain.

This is in the Mojave Desert in California near Jawbone Canyon and I was sitting there on top of this mountain and I was contemplating my life; how could I have screwed up my life so badly? I’m only 26 years old. I’d already been divorced. I was in a new relationship. The relationship seemed perfect—and I started to feel the same suffocation, the same feeling of being trapped, being bound, and not free, not liberated.

I was sitting there contemplating, “What this is all about?” What I came up with—and it was very spontaneous—was a question. I don’t know where it came from, but from deep within me, and the question was, “Where is home?” So, I began to—and I was not a meditator, I never meditated before—really contemplate, or meditate, as I was sitting there in a cross-legged Indian fashion, this question, and I had a spontaneous awakening and body/mind dropped off. I became one with the cosmos. I lost the self and had an experience of being one with all things.

It was such an abrupt and immediate experience that was so transformative. I knew from that moment I would never be the same again, and I saw that my life up to that moment had all been pushing forward, going ahead full steam, whether it be as an athlete (I was a swimmer, all American water polo player I played in the Maccabean Games in Israel in 1965. My College teams, 3 out 4 were champion, American champion or state championship teams), everything was about winning, about gain, about fame, about security. I’d already got a Masters degree. I was already tenured in my work. I was teaching school. And all of a sudden, that all seemed very empty, very meaningless and the only thing that seemed to really matter at that point was to continue to wake up, to continue to clarify what this life really is and to share that with others. So, I began immediately sharing it with my friends and anybody who was ready to listen. I went back to teaching on Monday. I shared it with my team teacher, shared it with the kid—I taught them how to meditate, and I hadn’t ever had any instruction, but from that experience I learned how to sit still, do nothing, and be quiet.

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