When Dennis Merzel began his formal Zen studies three decades ago, his Japanese Zen master's methods left him perplexed.

 "DIE ON YOUR CUSHION!" Koryu Roshi exhorted his novices who sat cross-legged on cushions facing a wall at the Los Angeles Zen Center.

"BECOME THE WALL!"
"I don't know what the hell he's talking about," Merzel remembers thinking. "And even if I knew, I'm not doing it."
From that unlikely beginning, Brooklyn-born Merzel has gone on to become spiritual leader to thousands of Zen Buddhists around the world.
But Merzel -- now called Genpo Roshi -- always knew the traditional Eastern approach to Zen didn't work for many Westerners. They don't like being told to die. Although he eventually realized the Zen master was commanding him to "die" in order to be reborn as a more compassionate being, he thought there had to be a better way to unlock the Zen door to Westerners.
For decades, Genpo searched for the key to enable Westerners to shift from identifying with their own self to being identified with the whole cosmos -- to the Universal or Big Mind. Three years ago, he finally found it.
Call it the Western path to enlightenment.
Through a combination of Western therapy and Zen practice, Roshi now shows Zen beginners in one-day seminars at Salt Lake City's Kanzeon Zen Center how to achieve an awakening that has taken many Zen practitioners years.
And it's all possible, he says, because Westerners are suckers for a magic word: Please.
"We'll do anything for anyone if they say please," Roshi says.
At recent Saturday seminar, Roshi -- wearing khakis and a short-sleeved black shirt -- strode into an airy upstairs room to take his place in a director's chair before a room of 60 people sitting in padded chairs grouped in a half-circle.
"This might seem bold, this might seem strange," he tells the group, "that you will have in one day -- before lunch actually -- the clarity and experience that a Zen master has. But Zen is seen as the school of sudden enlightenment. And we're just making sure it remains sudden."
His technique to temporarily silence the "controller" -- one's ego or commanding voice -- is so simple that it's surprising it wasn't discovered earlier, he says. But such an insight wasn't possible as long as Zen remained an Eastern-centered discipline.
"What we're going to do is get permission from your ego to abandon itself, to stay in cold storage for a while," he says.
Roshi assures us we are not being shown a shortcut that will rob us of our own struggles. "You will still have to walk your path," he says. "All this will do is give you some wisdom as you walk this path."
After spending as much as 10 hours a day, nine months a year, sitting in meditation, Roshi wondered if he was making enlightenment too easy.
"That's a lot of time on a cushion," he says. "And to think someone dares to have this experience in a day?"
But then he realized his struggles served a purpose. If a group climbing a mountain ran out of water and sent a couple of stronger members ahead to find more, do they then bring the water back to the group, even though no one else has climbed the mountain?
Of course they do. Even after the group drinks the water, each member still has to climb the mountain.
"When I realized the folly of where I was stuck, this process came like that," Roshi says with a snap of his fingers.
And the more people who live in a state of compassionate awakening the better, he says. Consciousness shouldn't be limited to monks, Zen centers and a smattering of individuals.
Then Roshi asks to speak to our "controller." To signify our willingness and readiness to allow him access, we are to shift our chairs a few inches to reinforce the shift in our perspective.
"Who am I speaking to?" he asks.
"Controller," we say in unison.
The controller's job is to control, he says. What functions might the controller serve, he asks?
"Protection," someone answers. "Survival," says someone else. "Somebody needs to be in charge."
Roshi then asks the controller for permission to speak to the voice of the skeptic. We shift our chairs.
"Who am I speaking to?"
"Skeptic," we say.
"Your job," he says, "is to be skeptical, to doubt, to question."
When invited to express our doubts, the answers pour out: "Should I even be here?" "Enlightenment just can't be this easy." "Am I really going to get my money's worth?" "What if I find enlightenment?" "What if it's not what I want to know?" "Zen mastery in Salt Lake? Uh huh."
We check in with the voice of trust, establishing that that voice, at least, believes people are basically good, then return briefly to the controller -- "I feel better," says one wag -- before Roshi asks us for a clear channel to Big Mind.
We're right on schedule. It's not yet lunchtime.
"Who am I talking to?" asks Roshi.
"Big Mind," we answer.
Prodding us, Roshi asks us to note the shape, size, form and colors of Big Mind.
"Can you find a boundary? Can you find a limit? Can you find a beginning? When were you born? When will you die? Can anything hurt you? Can anything destroy you?"
Incredibly, less than three hours after meeting Roshi, everyone in the room seems to be identifying with the cosmos. For participant Sally Small, Roshi's questions seemed irrelevant. "Big Mind is an all-inclusive frame of mind," she said after the seminar. "It doesn't get stuck in one shape or one color or anything."
For Michelle Larsen, Big Mind mirrored a near-death experience she survived after a motorcycle accident a decade ago. "I've tried to explain it for 10 years," Larsen later said. "To know it could happen to everyone else. . ."
We return to the controller. After experiencing Big Mind, what advice would you give to the self, Roshi asks?
"Release," someone says. "Relax," says another. "Die on your cushion," says a third, to laughter.
We switch to the voice of Peace, then to God, or the creator, before Roshi advises us to go to lunch as the integrated self. "Be mindful of all the voices," he says.
"I don't know whether I'm in Zen class or in therapy," says one participant as we file down the stairs.
After lunch, we voyage through the voices of non-seeking, Big Mind, big heart and peace before Roshi calls us back to the voice of the controller. For Larsen, the return was traumatic. "It's like you're being crushed," she said. "It's almost audible."
We then look at the voices of wisdom and compassion, and examine the difference between acting in the voice of the controller -- the voice we probably consider our own -- and the voice of the Master.
"The Master should be the owner," said Roshi. "The controller should be the servant. If you're run by the controller, you're run by greed. If you're run by the Master, you're run by wisdom, compassion and responsibility."
But we can't live our Western lives -- balancing marriage, religion, sexuality, children and home -- in the voice of the Master, as can Asian monks in monasteries.
"Trust me on this one," said Roshi. "I was Master before I got married. I had to drop that one. I'm saving you a lot of pain. You'll thank me in five years. Don't go home in the voice of the Master. Go home in the voice of the integrated self."