Maybe I've been too soft on Dennis Genpo Merzel

Although Aaron/gniz's posts here and here and here seem a bit like guilt by association, they're not, because it's clear that the unsavory people around Merzel are an ongoing nexus.

I'd like to go somewhere slightly different here: how the hell could they have had the cojones to trademark Big Mind? Now although the recommended uses seem to be currently suppressed on the Big Mind website, a trip to the US patent office website will readily reveal that as of today, "Kanzeon Inc." holds a trademark on "Big Mind," for "Education services, namely, conducting workshops and classes in the field of psychospiritual processes that facilitate a shift in human consciousness." (I'd hyperlink but hyperlinking from the US patent office is notoriously unreliable.)

The mark includes:

(3) DESIGN PLUS WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS
26.01.03 - Circles, incomplete (more than semi-circles); Incomplete circles (more than semi-circles)
26.01.21 - Circles that are totally or partially shaded.
26.01.28 - Circles with irregular circumferences; Miscellaneous circular designs with an irregular circumference

So what they did was take a term that had been in use for at least 30 years within the American Zen community (at least since Shunryu Suzuki's book came out), along with the classic Zen enso and claim that is a distinctive identifier of Merzel's organization's "Education services, namely, conducting workshops and classes in the field of psychospiritual processes that facilitate a shift in human consciousness."

I do not have the time and money to challenge this man's appropriation of what I think rightly belongs in the public domain, and the fact that he, and others have tried to conflate Merzel's marketed "shift in human consciousness" with satori (as has been copiously documented by Warner & gniz) really does appear unethical, and is certainly in the direction of being a fraud, if not an outright fraud itself.

Now, of course it might be "my word against Merzel's word" as to whether or not he's selling the real deal or a cheap fake, except for one or two other things: 1) There already have been others speaking out about this (namely Ven. Warner), and 2) You don't see a whole lot of other Zen masters (even the ones on the "Big Mind Advisory Board") lining up to give inka shomei to those folks who paid for "Big Mind^TM" workshops.

Actually, I haven't even seen where Merzel's done that.