Real Self Empowerment

Ordinarily, we don’t see from a non-dual perspective. That’s what’s eluding us, and that’s what we’re yearning for. We’re yearning to be closer to truth, closer to reality, to God, to nature, to our true nature, to our self, to others. It’s as if we’ve frozen our self into a solid chunk of ice, taken the natural, fluid flow of the universe and frozen it, and called it ‘my self.’ Then we start relating with other chunks of ice and we want intimacy, we want closeness, and we can’t ever have it because it’s like two blocks of ice trying to make love, and it just doesn’t work. I mean, we manage, we make love, but we don’t get what we’re yearning for, which is the true intimacy that we all seek so desperately. We don’t see that what is creating the problem is none other than the self. I am the problem! Once I see I am the problem, I am empowered. Until then I run around as a victim, or I walk around, or —more often the case – I lie around as a victim, and blame everyone and everything else for my problems. As long as I can’t see I’m the problem, I’m at a loss for what the problem is, and there’s nothing I can do about it. When I see that I am the problem (in Zen terms we could say I am the koan), then I have the power to solve it, by ceasing to be so identified with this limited and restricted self, which is the cause of all the problems. How? Simple: identify instead with that which is beyond the boundary of self. Well what is that? The no-self, or Big Mind, or no mind, or the true self, whatever term we want to use. Once I’m identified with, let’s say, Big Mind, then I see everything is Big Mind, that I am all things and all things are me. Everything, from the infinitesimally small to the infinitely large, it’s all me. In traditional Zen training that’s what is meant by breaking through the first barrier. We break out of the limited perspective, where we see the self as the center of the universe, and therefore everything out there as dangerous and threatening to the self. Break through, though, and we stop living in a state of fear, anxiety and stress, and start living as we were meant to live, which is free from fear, unbounded, unobstructed, responsible for our lives, and not laying blame on everybody and everything else for the condition we find ourselves in. Zen Master 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. He discovered the Big Mind process in 1999. His newest book is Big Mind Big Heart: Finding Your Way. You can visit his website at: www.bigmind.org