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Doing The Impossible: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler

Working skillfully and effectively with difficulties and challenges. Training ourselves to meet and transform difficulty. Marc begins with a short guided meditation followed by a talk on the topic of meeting challenge. This session’s Zen puzzler is “Can you step from the top of a one hundred foot pole?” – a traditional Zen teaching about doing what looks impossible.

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[music]

Marc: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership.

In today’s practice episode, we begin with a short guided meditation with the theme of working with difficulties and challenges and working with the ordeals of our lives doing the impossible. A meditation practice itself, I think of as training to work skillfully effectively with difficulties and challenges.

I then do a short talk about this topic of seeing our lives, seeing meditation, seeing everything through this lens of challenges, and doing what is impossible. Training ourselves to do things that seem difficult. Building the courage to meet whatever comes our way, whether it’s parenting or relationships or work or politics. Integrating our genuine selves, our full selves into all parts of our lives. Impossible and yet.

Today’s Zen puzzler is also on this theme, and it’s stepping from the top of a hundred-foot pole. Practicing with what seems inconceivable. Training ourselves to cut through challenges and difficulties, and seeing how this is where the real beauty, the real sacredness, the real insights of being human are, by meeting what feels difficult or impossible. I hope you enjoy this practice episode. Thank you.

[music]

Let’s do some sitting practice together. I invite you to pause, to stop, and bring your attention to the body. Just noticing, finding a way to sit in a chair or a cushion or standing, maybe relaxing the muscles in the face, relaxing the jaw. Opening the chest and shoulders and arriving. This practice of arriving. Checking in with the body, noticing any places where you may be holding, restraining, and giving that place a bit of attention. Relaxing and noticing the breath, bringing attention to the breath. Breathing in, breathing out, and being aware of our thinking minds. Checking in.

Just being curious whether the mind is busy or calm, and gently bringing attention back to the body, to the breath. Just being here. In some way, I think of this practice as doing the impossible. Training ourselves to do what doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t seem possible to be here. Our minds are usually very, very busy, very active, and it takes some effort to be here. Impossible. Can I be fully here? It’s the practice of accepting what is, and allowing our own insight, healing, learning through this practice of stopping, pausing. Allowing the great wisdom of our bodies and minds.

Impossible and yet just being here. How simple, just breathing and noticing anytime we are distracted, great to notice and coming back. Allowing breathing to be breathing. Allowing thinking to be thinking. Allowing our feelings and letting go. Letting go of our to-do lists. Letting go of expecting anything. Impossible to let go of expecting anything and yet this is our intention. This is our aspiration to be fully here. Curious, alert, relaxed, kind, kindhearted, warmhearted. Bringing a sense of warmth, bringing a sense of self-love and open openheartedness, open-mindedness, and keeping it simple.

Coming back, can always come back to the breath, can always come back to the body. Breathing in, breathing out. Simple. Impossible. Impossibly delicious to enjoy and appreciate our own breath. Please feel free to continue this practice, or you can join me for what’s next. Coming back.

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I’m going to talk about this practice of doing the impossible. It was several years ago that I was designing a program aimed at training mindfulness teachers. I asked an old, old friend and mentor for some ideas on what elements he thought should be included in this endeavor. The aim was to train teachers to have the presence and confidence and competence to work with groups of business leaders and to teach meditation practice that included mindfulness and mindful leadership, as well as ways to develop emotional intelligence skills.

My friend’s advice was short and sweet and surprising. He said, “I suggest that you design an ordeal. Give them something that at first might seem impossible.” I was surprised and somewhat resistant hearing this advice. I wasn’t expecting to hear the word ordeal. However, the more I reflected on his advice, the more it fit. I realized that I had gone through somewhat of an ordeal in the process of developing my own confidence as a teacher, as a trainer, and as a leader as a CEO. I often felt like an imposter in the early days of standing on the stage of auditoriums at Google headquarters in Mountain View, leading meditations and mindfulness exercises for really bright and achievement-oriented engineers. I had a good deal of meditation experience, but I had very little experience in teaching meditation and very little track record of working in corporate settings.

It was intimidating, a lot walking through fire, but little by little through practice and a good deal of support, a good deal of learning and failing and growing I learned and I grew. In a way, this was my ordeal. It included my fears and mistakes and mustering the courage to keep going, even when I felt terrified.

I think we need these kinds of ordeals in our lives. I now begin my day with a comforting hot shower, but I’ve added the routine of turning on the cold water for several minutes, and each time it seems impossible and ridiculous as I watch my hand turn the shower knob from hot to cold. It’s shocking at first, and it wakes me up and it feels great. My whole body tingles with energy and a sense of accomplishment, like having gone through my fear, having gone through my resistance, even in this somewhat minor self-inflicted way, this ordeal.

I have a similar experience most mornings during my morning meditation practice. The idea of sitting still, aspiring to let go of my usual judgments and to focus on being curious and kind and loving. It feels impossible at times. My mind resists, my body resists, my mind continues to jump around and there’s voices of judgment.

Oh, what am I doing here? I have so many things I could be doing, and yet this is an important practice for me. Another one of my self-imposed, self-made ordeals. I’ve done many meditation retreats and there are a variety of motivations for engaging in these activities. One is this sense of doing what feels challenging, difficult, perhaps impossible. It’s a way of creating a fresh space, both ordinary and extraordinary, just sitting still and seeing what happens. In some way, these activities of cold showers or meditation retreats are warmups.

They’re relatively easy practices for dealing with the more impossible activities of our daily life and the ordeal of being human. How do we keep our hearts open in the time of war? Feels impossible. How do we take care of our aging parents or guide and protect our children? Again, feels impossible. How do we live our daily lives knowing that we will say goodbye to everyone and everything that we hold dear? Again, impossible.

We are impossible beings living during impossible times. I think it’s important to train ourselves to work through whatever challenges and ordeals help us to keep our hearts open, even and especially when it’s hard. This might include cold showers or meditation, or maybe for you, it’s sports or music or whatever activity is important. In our daily lives, raising children is an important impossible activity as is working and developing a career, making money, being in healthy intimate relationships, integrating our spiritual practice into our work, into our daily lives.

All extraordinary. And it’s all about I think the approach. How are we entering into all of these activities of our lives? It’s all impossible and it’s all easy and sacred and beautiful when we pay attention, when we bring our full selves, our full heart to our activities. Here’s a poem I want to share by Robert Bly about doing or thinking impossible things and this poem is called Things to Think. Think in ways you’ve never thought before. If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message larger than anything you’ve ever heard.

Faster than a hundred lines of Yates. Think that someone may bring a bear to your door, may be wounded and deranged, or think that a moose has risen out of the lake and he’s carrying on his antlers. A child of your own whom you’ve never seen. When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about to give you something large, tell you you’re forgiven, or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s been decided that if you lie down, no one will die.

Please, let’s all practice with doing the impossible, thinking the impossible. I love this line to tell you that you are forgiven. Possible to be ourselves, to forgive ourselves, to give others, to find the courage, to be our full, genuine, authentic selves. Thank you.

[music]

Welcome to the Zen Bones puzzler, where I will regularly be presenting a story or a Zen koan or a poem. Something to contemplate, to think about a story that has purpose. It’s about developing greater insight and reflection. Not so much for a solution, but as a way to support your practice, a meditation in daily life

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I’m very pleased to introduce today’s Zen Puzzler and this comes from a very traditional Zen koan. It is about stepping from the top of a hundred-foot pole. What happens? Can you step from the top of a hundred-foot pole? This is it. This is the puzzler. What is it like? What is it like to be perched on top of a pole? It looks dangerous. We can be completely filled with fear. Can we be relaxed? What to do? What do you do?

How do you respond? What is there to learn? What insight might you have from this Zen koan? This Zen Puzzler? You are perched at the top of a hundred-foot pole. This is a puzzle, a challenge that Shunryu Suzuki liked a lot and spoke about often during his talks.

There’s no real answer to this. In the zen tradition, these koans or these puzzles are meant to be considered, meant to be embodied. You might practice with what does it feel like. What is there to learn from being on top of a hundred-foot pole? This is a lot like the theme of this session about doing the impossible. This is an impossible situation. Again, I think much I was presenting earlier in meditation practice feels impossible. Taking a cold shower, raising our children, going to work, there’s so much that is seemingly incredibly challenging, incredibly impossible.

The question I think is, do we give into it or do we rise up? Do we use our hearts and our minds to look at things from a different perspective and even embody that we can do, we can go through, we can use these ordeals? This is a kind of ordeal being at the top of a hundred-foot pole. Yet, we can find our own sense of courage, our own sense of equanimity.

One of Shunryu Suzuki’s teachings about this particular puzzle is just say yes. The practice of just saying yes. Someone says, “Someone has made us breakfast,” and they say, “Breakfast is ready.” Instead of saying, “No, I’m reading the paper,” just let go of our own to-do lists. Let go of our own small minds. In a sense, this particular puzzle is an invitation to open to our bigger minds, to open our hearts, to just step in and say, yes to our own well-being. Yes to our meditation practice. Yes to integrating our genuineness, integrating our sense of wanting to make the world a better place, right in the midst of the divisiveness and impossibility of all of the challenges of this, the challenges of our inner worlds, the challenges of our outer worlds, the challenges of relationships impossible.

Being perched, stepping from the top of a hundred-foot pole is a reminder and encouragement to not be too caught by what looks impossible. We’re not on top of a hundred-foot pole. There is no pole. We’re right here on this earth, this ground being supported. Feeling and leaning in to the support, mustering our own confidence and humility. You might practice with this. See what is there for you to learn. What insights might you have from practicing with being perched stepping? Can you step from the top of a hundred-foot pole? Thank you very much.

[music]

Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations, you’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:24:13] [END OF AUDIO]

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Transforming Resistance To Finding Freedom with Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg has become America’s meditation teacher. In this episode Sharon talks about places of resistance as “tight spots” and methods of transforming resistance to more openness and freedom. Marc and Sharon discuss the practice of loving kindness as well as shame, an emotion that has positive and negative qualities. They discuss the power of presence and the role of meditation.

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Sharon Salzberg is a New York Times bestselling author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts. Her emphasis is on Vipassanā (insight) and mettā (loving-kindness) methods, and has been leading meditation retreats around the world for over three decades. Her books include Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, A Heart as Wide as the World, and Real Happiness – The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program among others.

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:02] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. I’m really pleased to welcome Sharon Salzberg. Sharon is one of the most well-known and reviewed mindfulness and meditation teachers in the world today. She’s written many books, including a very popular and wonderful book about loving-kindness.

In our discussion, we talk about tight spots and resistance and methods and ways of transforming tight spots to openness and freedom. We talk about loving-kindness, the practice of loving-kindness. We get into the topic of shame and how shame can be negative or positive depending on the approach. We talk about presence and meditation. Then Sharon leads a powerful, loving-kindness meditation. I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times.

This is Marc Lesser, and I am really happy this morning to be here with my dharma sister friend, Sharon Salzberg. Good morning, Sharon.

[00:01:47] Sharon Salzberg: Good morning or afternoon? Well, morning. Late morning.

[00:01:52] Marc: Well, time has taken a whole different sense because people can listen to this in the middle of the night or early in the morning, or driving or walking or, who knows?

[00:02:03] Sharon: That’s true. Two years from now.

[00:02:06] Marc: Two years from now, 10 years from now. Who knows? Well, Sharon, I was thinking about the last time we were in person, was at a book reading here in Mill Valley when your book about real love had come out. I was just looking at your book that’s about to come out called Real Life. One of the things that really got my attention was you’re talking about the power of our imaginations and having the courage to imagine. As you and I were preparing, I was saying, let’s imagine this conversation being life-changing, earth-shattering.

Let’s. Tell me a little bit about this new book and what you mean by having the courage to imagine. Where does that come from and how might people practice with this in their lives?

[00:03:07] Sharon: It’s so interesting. I actually have a book in between. It was a book I wrote called Real Change on the real train. I wrote real change before the Pandemic. It came out during the pandemic. I wrote Real Life during the Pandemic and it will come out wherever we are, which is very interesting. It started in a way because on April something of 2020, so it was newly into lockdown. I watched a thing on YouTube called Saturday Night Seder. It was one of the first productions I think that was created entirely on Zoom and so the writers were never in the room together.

It was beautiful and it was rabbis, opera singers, performers, and comedians. It was a reminder to me that in that story, the story of the exodus from Egypt to Jerusalem was the story of the movement from oppression to freedom. That the word Egypt, I was really pushing people in reading it not to get lost in geopolitics. That’s not what it’s about. It’s all symbolic and the word Egypt actually means narrow place like confined, constrained, held in place. It’s that movement from contraction to expansion, to openness.

First of all, what it takes really struck me to have that kind of audacity to imagine life can really look different, don’t have to feel stuck here. Then to take the journey. Of course, the Seder ends and this is the end of the book with aspiration where everyone says next year in Jerusalem, So what if Jerusalem is not a place, but it is that world that doesn’t have people hungry and doesn’t have war and doesn’t have the things that very real in but possible. These are not impossible dreams. What’s it like to have that kind of aspiration, beginning, middle, and end take the journey?

[00:05:37] Marc: I love the word often come back to the word aspiration, which includes breath. When we think about these ancient practices for modern times, and here you are talking about the ancient Passover Seder and Egypt and these traditions of this focus on tight places. Interesting. The relationship between right tight places, aspiration, and imagining and moving toward real freedom or of your forthcoming books Real life, Real Freedom.

[00:06:17] Sharon: It’s the first time I say this to you as a fellow writer, it’s the first time I’ve written a book without also traveling all the time myself because I was in lockdown. It was such an interesting experience to be stable in a way, and not moving around, and to be writing about movement and change and so on. It was really good experience.

[00:06:45] Marc: One of the descriptions of this book is to take some risks with what we dare to imagine an interest in states we might normally try to avoid. I think we normally avoid those tight places and yet there’s something so profound and useful about those tight places. It’s interesting that meditation practice is like sitting still, and I’m aware of how it’s hard for me, it’s hard for most people to sit still and actually access those tight places. At the same time, this really feeling these tight places and then imagining what’s possible or feeling how we can transform those tight places into greater freedom.

[00:07:45] Sharon: Well, I began to see just in that process it’s almost like daydreaming or it’s just like being in the neighborhood of your topic. You’re not actively writing maybe, but you’re just there. You’re seeing what moves through you and what appears but you end up channeling it away and how many of my own teachers or teachers from other traditions had the same advice, more or less poetic, which was exactly what you just said. Instead of trying to dismantle the particular habit structure that has you feeling a certain way or thinking a certain pattern, be open to it.

In a way, maybe it’s all about balance, like many things, because sometimes we have a tendency to get immersed and overcome and really defined by what is really a passing emotional state, like agreed or jealousy or something. Instead of realizing what we need is a little bit more space. Other times we’re so distant, we’re so unwilling to feel or recognize or acknowledge, “This is what’s going on right now.” That what we need to do is come a little closer but if you just use the word like openness or open to, then covers both imbalances, which is really what we need.

We need a presence in the face of whatever that’s very different from probably our normal conditioning.

[00:09:26] Marc: It sounds a lot like a pain and possibility or tightness. The balance but it’s interesting. I think it’s not about finding the middle ground, but like really feeling the tightness. Again, this being really open to imagining what’s possible. Like this journey that you were describing, the journey out of Egypt into freedom. Again, these are symbols of being constriction and openness. It’s a little bit. One of the exercises that I’ve seen done is making a fist, feeling in your body what it’s like to constrict and then literally to feeling what it’s to open your hand. That bodily sensation of constriction and freedom and openness.

[00:10:28] Sharon: Part of our problem, I guess, is that we don’t feel that that’s a big part of our problem. [laughs] We’re disconnected and we don’t recognize that we’re not being asked to get angry at what we’re feeling or have a hostility toward it or hate it or be ashamed of it, but to relinquish the hold because it’s actually painful. What we don’t feel is the pain of it. If we can feel that it’s a very natural movement. It’s not coerced or even overly fierce.

It’s just like, Oh, yes, we just open and we’re able to let go in a different way and able to come back to a state of balance and more presence than maybe we had before. It’s all to the good.

[00:11:25] Marc: The other statement from the description of the book Real Life is taking interest in people we might normally try to avoid. Where does that come from and what do you mean by that?

[00:11:41] Sharon: I think it’s the same movement of this is the same gesture. It’s almost a gesture of generosity, although we don’t think of it that way of loving-kindness when we are working with internal states and we say, oh, yes, this is what’s happening right now. That’s not an easy thing. I think about the various points of view about the popularity of the word mindfulness, for example. Being as old as I am, having watched this popularization of this movement happen, it’s been very interesting because there are a lot of qualities implied in the word mindfulness.

Which I would define it could be defined a lot of different ways. I would define it as a quality of awareness where our perception of what’s happening in the present moment is not so distorted by bias, old fears, projection into the future, whatever it might be. It’s not easy because that’s where we tend to go, just out of habit. One of the things implied there is the kind of love or loving-kindness or tolerance of, “Yes, this is what I’m feeling right now.” These days a lot of people are trying to bring that out and not have it be implicit but explicit.

You hear these conversations where people say, mindfulness is such a cold word, it sounds so clinical and cold. Let’s call it kindfulness instead of mindfulness or call it loving awareness or something like that. I don’t know that you need to change the word, but understand how much is there. Just as we work internally with those states, it’s the same gesture externally, like all those many beings. I think that was one of the striking things for a lot of people in the pandemic, depending on how you were living.

That ocean of beings that we are generally indifferent to, that we look through that we don’t look at that. We can call them essential workers all we want, but they’ve not felt very essential to our lives, and how many we miss in having that kind of dreamlike existence where we go to the supermarket, where we go somewhere. You can just feel these flickers of wakefulness as people were recognizing, “Oh, I live in an interdependent universe. I don’t grow my own food. There’s lots of beings involved in my being able to eat.” Look at that.

It’s a whole of the universe.

We had imagined maybe, and it’s fascinating also watching the interplay and the external and realize, oh, we’re developing the same qualities no matter where it’s directed. Internally, it’s the various forces that arise in our minds and come and go. Externally is the various beings in our lives that we make assumptions about or we cut off before they really present themselves or we’re not really paying attention to. The question becomes, what happens when I do pay attention after all?

[00:15:25] Marc: It’s interesting. Paying attention both to the restrictions and the possibilities. Expanding, how can we? A bit paradoxical. Expanding our worlds through what’s possible. It also makes me think, Sharon, of the book that was I think a powerful part of your becoming more known was the book about loving-kindness. Which in some way it maybe catches people’s imaginations. The possibility that we can practice loving-kindness and the need to practice loving-kindness, maybe as a way of touching and melting or transforming our tightness.

We’re tight and where we’re narrow. Loving-kindness maybe as the path from restriction to freedom.

[00:16:27] Sharon: That was my first book and covered within the Buddhist context of four Brahmaviharas or four about the states of loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy or joy in the happiness of others. Then equanimity or the articulation of wisdom as balance and mostly about loving-kindness. As though you are doing that practice where you make that offering of paying attention differently and care and so on to yourself and then a variety of beings. Those you feel close to, those you’re more distant from, and so on until we come to all beings everywhere to all of life.

It’s all based on a recognition of intraconnection that our lives have something to do with one another. I found that a tremendously profound practice and not that easy to understand even because we tend to confuse, say, loving-kindness with liking somebody or approving of them or giving into them or something like that. It doesn’t mean any of that. It isn’t even necessarily emotional. For those who use the word love, that’s really confusing which always seems emotional to us, but it isn’t necessarily.

It could be that moment of inclusion, that moment of listening and realizing, “Oh, I haven’t been listening to this being,” something like that. That was such a hugely important practice for me when I did it intensively in 1985 when I went to Burma for three months to do that practice. From that point on when I was teaching it because then I was with others as they went through their own process in doing it. I was really happy to write about it. It was my first book and it was a long time ago.

In those days I didn’t know how to use a personal computer, and I hardly knew anybody who had one. I did notice that the few people I knew who did have one never talked about anything else. It was such a magical thing and I was so scared or so intimidated, I thought I could never learn how to use it. It’s like was so beyond me. I was at IMS at the Insight Meditation Society and we had a visit one day from a 94-year-old Sri Lankan monk. We were just hanging out together and he mentioned that he was learning how to use a computer.

I thought, “Okay, he’s 94 years old, he’s learning how to use a computer, maybe I can’t too.” Then he said he’d like to go into the meditation hall, we had a retreat that was happening. He’d like to go into the home hall and you talk. I thought, he’s 94 years old, it’s not going to be a very long talk. How long could it be? It turned out to be an endless talk. It was so long because he had more energy than all of us put together. During the course of the talk, he said, “I want to teach you my favorite meditation,” which was a combo.

We would say a body scan as Jon Kabat-Zinn later popularized the term, moving your attention through your body, picking up these different sensations that might be appearing. His favorite meditation was a combo of the body scan and loving-kindness meditation so that he might start with like, “May my head be happy, may it be peaceful.” Would run through his eyes and his ears and every organ. I sat there and I thought, “Oh, maybe that’s the reason he has so much energy because this is his favorite meditation and he must do it sometimes.”

It was very beautiful to think of relating with the body in just that way. Through the years I’ve seen the healing potential and the transformation as people deal with. The body’s extremely inconvenienced as you get older, it is a tough road. The scarring and the hurting and the everything, it can be very hard to deal with. Seeing there’s no choice. It’s not like we’re given a menu.

[00:21:20] Marc: I’m staying with your statement, the body is very inconvenient and hearing about this 94-year-old do this meditation that I haven’t heard that before. The combination of integrating a body scan, as you said that Jon Kabat-Zinn popularized, and which now everyone does, or at least I see a lot of people doing it. Combining it with loving-kindness seems really profound, right?

[00:21:52] Sharon: I think it’s very beautiful. First listening, of course, it seemed very elementally, may my eyes be happy, may my nose be happy. Was this kindergarten? Actually, it’s mostly through the years, seeing people practice it and seeing the really profound effect. It’s also a deeper understanding of loving-kindness because it can’t possibly mean, “May my terrible diagnosis flourish,” that’s not what we want. That marshal attacking part of my body as it goes into revolt, that’s not what we want necessarily either.

We want a different kind of holding environment for every experience that can be present because guess what? Our awareness is stronger than this disease process or whatever the body is undergoing. It’s hard to trust that, there’s no reason to just trust it on, my saying so, but we experiment. We keep paying attention and we do these things and see what the effect is.

[00:23:02] Marc: This simple practice of bringing attention and love to our bodies. Loving, it seems so obvious, and yet as you said like kindergarten, so elementary, I love loving my eyes, loving my nose. I wonder, Sharon, if you would– First maybe is there anything else you would like to bring up or say here in this conversation? I’m also thinking it would be great or we’re ready to close if you would lead maybe just a short loving-kindness meditation of some kind.

[00:23:45] Sharon: I would be happy to. I’m thinking about real life, what’s in that book anyway?

[laughter]

[00:23:52] Marc: Yes, what’s in that book? How would you describe what’s the essence of this book real-life?

[00:23:59] Sharon: I tried to make a point that when I say moving from constriction or narrowness, when I say narrowness, I don’t mean intentionality or conviction. Or a lot of the times we think about being focused as being narrow, but that’s not what I mean. I mean really those times we feel trapped, we feel like we are imprisoned in something and hell, so many of the things that we get that feeling from being entrapped, being closed in, you could say again, from the Buddhist point of view, the three basic issues of grasping aversion and delusion.

Aversion being anger and fear. Just two different forms of the same mindset basically, and how these manifest in everyday life. In talking about grasping, I talked about addiction and talking about aversion I talked about shame. That was a really interesting journey because all of these things of our elements, their habits, their forces in our minds that we picked up because we had a lot of hope about them. This is going to make me happy or this is going to be the way out, and sometimes they work for a period of time, they do work.

Of course, we know that from psychology, they don’t work always, and then they get old. Then it’s the go-to place and it’s like, I’m here again. Again, which means it’s another reason we can forgive ourselves for whatever we’re feeling because it was a survival mechanism often. Then there’s delusion, which is just delusion and confusion and numbness. I also wrote about how in the teachings, there’s some aspect of delusion that leads us to a kind of fundamentalism, because being out in the wilderness, so to speak, we usually hold on tight to something, if we can find it.

That becomes a fundamentalist stance.

[00:26:13] Marc: Shame, which you mentioned is really interesting. In Buddhist psychology, of all the different emotions, I believe that shame is the only one that is listed as both unwholesome and wholesome. There’s an unwholesome kind of shaming, but there’s also a wholesome kind of shame as there’s a depth to it. It makes me also think of, I remember in a conversation I had some time ago with Bill George, who wrote True North about leadership.

One of the things he talks about is how CEOs and leaders, his experience is they need to touch their shame and transform a sense of shame in order to be more effective and skillful leaders. I think of it as maybe a deep sense of humility, it’s very humbling. The shame that we can’t change everything or that maybe that we’ve done things inadvertently that have been hurtful. I think is the wholesome side of shame is this recognition that we’ve caused some harm despite our best intentions.

[00:27:35] Sharon: One of the things I feel looking back at my writing, especially, of course, has been that part of what I’ve gotten really excited about and inspired by is the ability to redeem words. These words are complex and these states are complex, loving-kindness or love of faith. I wrote a book on faith, which no one understood why I was writing a book on faith. People would say to me, “Why are you doing that?” I’d say, “I want to redeem the word. I don’t think it has to mean a state where you’re not allowed to ask questions, for example.

Or where you’re silenced in some way. Partly that passage or that section happened, because just before– I spent February of 2020 traveling and teaching in California, not knowing what was coming is we didn’t. I was with this small group of people in someone’s house teaching one night, and it was a psychologist present who made some comment, the brain that’s filled with shame cannot learn. That was a particular meaning of shame in a certain context and it was a very interesting context. I thought about knowing what we want out of a situation.

Maybe what we really want is behavior change and if you can’t learn when you’re filled with shame, that’s probably not the best place to be, and trying to affect some change, there was that. Then thinking how do we learn? How do we let go of these habits? How do we, without hating ourselves and without carrying on? So then I got entangled because in some schools of Buddha psychology, the distinction would be between regret or remorse, which is painful. It’s like what you’re talking about, it’s psychconscience.

Where we do recollect the harm we caused or the way we behaved that wasn’t that great, but we can let go of it with some imagination about the possibility of change. Or we stay stuck there and that would be guilt. The distinction is between guilt and remorse, and with guilt, we just go over it and over it and over it, and over and over and over. We can’t move on. It’s exhausting, it’s demoralizing and it’s not considered that wholesome because we’re stuck.

Then in being home and talking to psychologists, therapists, and people, they would say to me well in western psychology the distinction would be between shame and guilt. Guilt would be considered positive because it’s in contrast to globalizing. Instead of saying I did something reckless or I said something inappropriate or unskillful at that meeting, it would be, “I’m a bad person.” That was a whole other angle for me.

[00:30:47] Marc: Yes. I would think the unwholesome the distinction I think is for any of these whether it’s shame or even remorse or guilt that there’s a fixed quality to it versus a recognition that these are tentative states or temporary states that we can learn from and grow from. Again, this full circle here in this conversation starting with Egypt, the tight spots. Seeing the tight spots as opportunities for learning and growth because they’re not fixed. We’re not stuck in Egypt.

[00:31:26] Sharon: That’s right. The imagination.

[00:31:27] Marc: The imagination. Yes. Not avoiding or grasping onto the tight spots. Well, it’s so great to get to hang out with you, Sharon, I must say.

[00:31:41] Sharon: It’s fun to hang out with you.

[00:31:43] Marc: [chuckles] Is there something, maybe a short again in a few minutes? Does that work for you?

[00:31:49] Sharon: Oh, yes. You wanted a loving-kindness meditation.

[00:31:52] Marc: Yes, just–

[00:31:53] Sharon: Great, let’s go for it.

[00:31:54] Marc: Let’s do it.

[music]

[00:32:02] Sharon: You can sit comfortably and if it’s appropriate, close your eyes or leave them open and depends on how you’re comfortable. There are many ways of doing loving-kindness meditation. I was taught and therefore teach the silent repetition of certain phrases. The phrases are a different way of paying attention. You don’t have to force or manufacture any kind of feeling or emotion. The power of the practice is in the complete wholehearted gathering of all of our attention one phrase at a time. Phrases need to be big enough.

There are gestures of generosity. It’s offering it’s gift-giving. We start with offering the phrases to ourselves and go through a variety of different relationships. Those we feel close to those we don’t feel that close to until we come to all beings everywhere all of life. Now that’s an awful lot to do in one session. We don’t try to do every single thing in one session but that’s okay too. The phrases need to be general to reflect that. Common phrases starting with ourselves are things like, “May I be safe be happy be healthy, live with ease,” which means in the things of day-to-day life.

Like livelihood and family may not be such a struggle. May I live with ease. May I be safe be happy be healthy live with ease. People often say to me,”Who am I asking?” My response is, “We’re not asking anybody anything. We’re gift-giving we’re offering.” You can repeat these phrases over and over again with enough space and enough silence so that it is a rhythm that’s pleasing to you. Crucial is when your attention wanders, you fall asleep. You’re totally lost in thought spun out in a fantasy. Don’t worry about it truly.

Do You realize you’re gone. You’ve been distracted. See if you can let go gently and simply start again. Come back to the phrases. Okay beginning with oneself may I be safe be happy be healthy live with ease. See if you can think of someone who’s been a benefactor for you. They’ve helped you. They’ve helped you directly they’ve helped pick you up when you’ve fallen down. They’ve inspired you from afar you’ve never even met them. The tech says this is the one who when you think of them you smile. Could be an adult could be a child could be a pet.

It’s like an embodiment of the force of love in this world. Is there someone you think of them and they just lift you lift your spirits? If so bring them here. You can get an image of them or say their name to yourself. Get a feeling for their presence and offer the phrases of love and kindness to them. Even if the words don’t seem perfect, you’re carrying the energy of the heart so they’re serving us. May you be safe be happy, be healthy, live with ease. A friend who not doing so well right now, maybe let’s bring them here.

See what happens as we offer the phrases of loving-kindness to them. May you be safe, be happy, be healthy live with ease and in all beings everywhere, all people, all creatures, all those in existence, near and far known and unknown, may all beings be safe. Be happy be healthy live with ease. When you feel ready you can open your eyes or lift your gaze we’ll end the meditation.

[music]

[00:37:25] Marc: Thank you. May you be happy and healthy. May you live with ease and what a joy to have this time together. Really appreciate it.

[00:37:38] Sharon: Well, thank you so much.

[music]

[00:37:44] Marc: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, influence your organization, and help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:38:08] [END OF AUDIO]

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Ordinary and Sacred: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler

We are all ordinary human beings living in an ordinary world. And yet, we are also sacred, extraordinary beings, living in an extraordinary, sacred world. Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki says that we usually only see one side and ignore what is sacred and mysterious. During this session we have a short guided meditation, followed by a talk on living in both the ordinary and sacred world.

This episode’s Zen puzzler is based on a traditional Zen koan: A buffalo goes through a window, and every part of it goes through, except for the tail. Why doesn’t the tail go through?

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[music]

[00:00:02] Speaker 1: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting. Now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. In today’s practice episode, the topic is we are ordinary and we are sacred or we are ordinary and we are holy. We begin with a short guided meditation to experience both our ordinariness and our sacredness.

I do a short talk on the topic, emphasizing something that Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki says where he talks about don’t be a board-carrying fellow. Here he’s suggesting, don’t leave out the sacred and holy. Take the board off of your shoulder and see from a wider perspective. Then we do the Zen puzzler, which for this episode it is about a buffalo that jumps through the window and everything goes through the window except for the tail. This is one of my favorite Zen stories. I talk about it and do a little commentary.

Again, the overarching topic is experiencing ourselves as ordinary human beings and as sacred and holy. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Let’s do some sitting practice together. Just this simple, ordinary practice of stopping, pausing, and noticing. Checking in with the body, so finding a way, however, you are sitting, bringing awareness to the body, noticing and relaxing the muscles in the face, relaxing the jaw, and any place where there might be a holding, so relaxed. Relaxed and alert.

Sitting may be a little more upright than you may have been. Lengthening the spine, opening the shoulders. Checking in with the body, checking in with the breath. This ordinary and extraordinary act of breathing that we so often don’t pay any attention to or take for granted. Noticing. Noticing, giving some attention to the body, the breath, whatever is happening with thinking, mind, whether the mind is calm or not so calm, noticing, and gently letting thoughts come, letting them go, and if possible, bringing attention back to the breath, to the body.

That’s something, I think, both potent, miraculous, and useful of being completely here with your experience, with your sensory experience, noticing what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing, what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, and at the same time recognizing how extraordinary it is to be alive, how extraordinary it is to be here right now, dropping into both. I think it’s using one’s imagination and embodied sense of living and feeling this extraordinary sense of being here alive, having life, having consciousness, being in relationship with all of life.

Can you feel it? Can you feel it? Can you drop into this sense of the ordinary and the holy or the extraordinary right now, right here? Whatever you might be doing, can you feel it? This breath has never happened before and won’t ever repeat again. It is distinct, it is unique. This moment is completely ordinary and holy and extraordinary. It’s not something we need to pretend. It’s more like we’ve been conditioned to only see the ordinary side of things.

It’s recognizing that and stepping in, stepping into seeing with clearer, fuller eyes and at the same time, keeping it simple, breathing in, breathing out. Then, whenever you’re ready, coming back and bringing your attention to doing whatever you are. The activity of the day, but bringing this sensibility of ordinary and only ordinary and extraordinary into each movement, into each conversation, into your work, into your relationships.

I think this is such a core part of the practice of Zen Bones, the practice of being human. I hope it goes well bringing the ordinary and extraordinary into each moment, each activity.

[music]

We are ordinary and we are holy at the same time. Sometimes I find it challenging to go about my ordinary days, my ordinary routines, my ordinary life, while I’m seeing images of despair and death and destruction in Ukraine and in other places around the world. I want to not turn away. At the same time, I don’t want to be consumed or hardened by the events of the world. I wonder how not to turn away, how to find some hope, some optimism, and at the same time, a sense of meaning and depth.

In one of my favorite books, Not Always So, which is a collection of talks by Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, he mentions that there is a Japanese expression, a tambankan, and it’s a person who carries a board on his shoulder. This is someone who understands things from a limited perspective, a person who holds tightly to a particular view. I think he’s suggesting that we are all such people when we think that we are only ordinary humans. When we remove this board from our shoulder, we can see and feel and experience that we are also holy, sacred, connected to the cosmos with vast abilities including the ability to shape our reality.

You may think that you are an ordinary human being with ordinary work and ordinary problems and possibilities living an ordinary life, and this is true. We are all ordinary. We are all born. We love and we work and we struggle. We get up, we fall down, and we will die. More difficult to understand and experience is that you are anything but ordinary. You are not merely you.

You are the result of many events, including from more than 13 billion years ago known as the Big Bang, followed by a most mysterious coalescing of matter and energy here on this tiny planet called Earth. In the midst of billions of stars and planets, we humans are the result of molecules forming complex structures. It’s estimated almost 4 billion years ago.

We don’t always experience it or believe it but we are a most remarkable work in progress. Shunryu Suzuki goes on to say that during meditation practice, you are both independent from everything and related to everything, both at the same time. He says, you are not just you. You are the whole world and the whole cosmos. When you sit, you are not the same being as you were before you sit.

As ordinary human beings, we plan and assess and measure. We love, we hate, we succeed and fail. We can feel confused, we can lie, we can hurt each other, even betray others. Within our organizations and beyond, we are accountable for our actions and we can hold others accountable for their actions. This is an essential part of living together, of working together, creating, innovating, and solving problems together. As sacred holy beings, we have the profound ability to literally feel the feelings of others. A friend of mine was walking toward me the other day, and her foot missed the curb, and she stumbled. My body ached from the pain of her stumble.

We have the potential to feel, to understand and to misunderstand, to help each other or to destroy each other, or we can be caring and curious. We can see from others’ perspectives, we can help comfort and heal each other. I think that experiencing ourselves as ordinary and holy is a profound important way to not get caught or consumed by the events of the world, a way to help and support us to not turn away from the world.

It’s a way of letting our hearts connect and break open, a way to help us remain present, alive, and cautiously optimistic right in the midst of the pain and difficulty and possibilities of our lives. Here’s a short poem that I like that cuts through this duality, I think, of ordinary and holy. It’s a poem by Lynn Ungar called The Way It Is.

One morning you might wake up

to realize that the knot in your stomach

had loosened itself and slipped away,

and that the pit of unfulfilled longing in your heart

had gradually, and without your really noticing,

been filled in, patched like a pothole, not quite

the same as it was, but good enough.

In that moment, it might occur to you

that your life, though not the way

you planned it, and maybe not even entirely

the way you wanted it, is nonetheless

persistently, abundantly, miraculously

exactly the way it is.

May you bring this sense of ordinary and holiness into every part of your life. Thank you.

[music]

Welcome to the Zen Bones puzzler, where I will regularly be presenting a story or a Zen koan or a poem, something to contemplate, to think about, a story that has purpose. It’s about developing greater insight and reflection, not so much for a solution, but as a way to support your practice, a meditation in daily life. Today’s Zen Bones puzzler is one of my favorite traditional Zen stories, traditional Zen koans. It goes like this. A buffalo jumps through a window and the head and shoulders and body, arms and legs all go through the window, but the tail doesn’t go through the window. Why?

I think this is a great image and one that I recommend you maybe what do you think? Buffalo jumps through the window and all the different parts of it go through, but not the tail. Why? This is a Zen story, a Zen puzzler that has been around since the fifth or sixth century China and has been passed down over these many years as worthy of questioning. There’s no right answer to these koans. I certainly don’t want to say that there is an answer but my thoughts on this– this puzzler actually reminds me a little bit of being at the birth of my children. To see that watching the amazing birth of a human being coming out of a woman’s body. I’ve been at the birth of both of my children and also watching my daughter give birth to her son. It’s a lot like this koan. The head, the shoulder, the body, everything there is this human being but there’s some connection with some other world that you can feel in a birth.

Some sense of the miracle, the mystery, the complete lack of explainability of this being. Where did this being come from? Some connection. I have a similar image of when I reflect on this puzzler, this story of being around death. Particularly I thinking of holding my mother’s hand and breathing breath by breath as my mother was dying here in my home, literally on my living room couch. That experience of that last breath and yet there she is. There’s my mother’s body, there’s whoever we might be with. Something about the way that we look at birth, and life and death and some connection with many worlds that are beyond the ordinary, beyond our experience. That’s what comes up for me in this puzzler. Maybe in more simple way too, it’s that the world is not what it seems. I once spent a week in a sesshin, a retreat in which the theme was that inanimate objects are our teachers. We were studying some of the teachings of Zen teacher Dōgen. It was a wonderful week of study, but a lot of it was very difficult and very intellectual.

At the very end of this retreat, I asked the teacher, I said, “What am I going to tell an ordinary person? What do I tell my brother who’s a electrical engineer, how did we spend this week studying? What we can learn from rocks and pebbles and bamboo, the inanimate objects preaching the dharma, inanimate objects being our teachers?” Without hesitating the teacher said, “Just tell your brother that the world is not what it seems. The world is not what it seems.” Something potent about that understanding and bringing that understanding into our daily lives. The buffalo goes through the window, the head, the shoulders, the body, arms, legs, tail, everything goes through except the tail. The tail does not go through. Why is that? You might see what you come up with for your response to this Zen puzzler. Thank you.

[music]

Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations, you’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:23:01] [END OF AUDIO]

The post Ordinary and Sacred: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler appeared first on Marc Lesser.

The Power of Belonging with MaryAnne Howland

MaryAnne Howland, storyteller, entrepreneur and social change agent, talks about the game-changing work that she is doing for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. Mary and Marc talk about the power of belonging and mindful listening and about the importance of dreaming.

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

MaryAnne Howland is the founder and CEO of Ibis Communications, a branding marketing solutions firm in Nashville, Tennessee. The success of her business has been recognized by the Clinton administration and she has attended several summits at the White House. In 2012, she launched the Global Diversity Leadership Exchange, a forum to facilitate dialogue on diversity, sustainability, and inclusion, which has held annual summits at the New York Stock Exchange and the United Nations.

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones. Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage our essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. In my conversation with MaryAnne Howland storyteller and social change agent, we talk about the work that she’s doing, that she uses the acronym, JEDI Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. We talk about belonging, we talk about listening, and we talk about the power of dreaming.

I hope you’ll enjoy the episode and conversation as much as I did.

[music]

I’m really happy today to be here with MaryAnne Howland, who describes herself as a storyteller for social change, a facilitator for open dialogue as a way of elevating human value. I love also that she does culturally-inclusive communication that helps to build bridges, spark relationships, encourage collaboration, and inspires transformative change that will improve lives and well-being for all of us. She says, my mission is to be that change, and most of all, I want to welcome MaryAnne as my friend, my buddy.

We’ve done some really fun things in the past together, including, facilitating some social venture network sessions and some diversity sessions. MaryAnne has brought me in to do some work in Tennessee with some wonderful groups, culturally diverse groups of business people. Welcome, MaryAnne. It’s lovely to see you.

[00:01:55] MaryAnne Howland: Thank you, Marc. It’s lovely to see you too. Yes, I cherish the memories of us working together at Social Venture Network and then so much respect for the work that you do on a day-to-day basis. I know that so many people need to have this moment in their lives to just breathe and think and replenish. I’m looking forward to this conversation, and I really thank you for reaching out to invite me to be part of your journey here.

[00:02:23] Marc: Yes. This Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. To me, Zen is a placeholder for what it means to be human. People use the word Zen as chill or cool, but I’m afraid often as a protection for not feeling the pains and challenges and difficulties of the world. To me, Zen is anything but that. In fact, it’s how to find joy and effectiveness in the middle of this world. I love the work that you do. You were just telling me about your JEDI work, the Justice, Equity, Dignity, and Inclusion.

You were talking a little bit about using the D is often translated or used as diversity, but you use it as dignity. I feel like, in the work that I’ve seen you do, you bring such grace and dignity into everything that you do, that you really do embody. I love your aspiration to embody this work. How’s it going? What’s happening? I know you, in addition to your public relations company, you also launched a company making products. How’s that all going?

[00:03:36] MaryAnne: Okay, let’s see. One question at a time. Let me first talk a little bit about JEDI and the work that I’ve been doing. I’ve been at this now for more than a couple of decades. I’ve watched this work evolve when we first began working with Ibis Communications, which is a branding and marketing solutions firm. By the way, we’re not really PR. PR is a discipline that fits under the umbrella, but our focus is really around branding. What that means is really connecting to your target audiences, whoever they may be.

The work began, it was first just called Diversity, and then it was Diversity and Inclusion, and then it was Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Throughout the years, a couple of things were happening, one is I wasn’t satisfied with the progress we were making. As I said, I’ve been doing it for more than two decades. I know lots of people have been doing it for longer and yet, look where we are. What was missing is the component, the centers around policy.

Policy is what leads to development of justice or implementing justice inside, whether it’s a company or an organization where you’re really carefully examining what are the systemic issues within your organization that need to be addressed. I call it a corporate colonic, where take a look at everything, every layer of your business, every silo of your business, through the lens of what is it equitable? Is it just? That has led to this work that I now call JEDI. I replace the word diversity with dignity because being a language expert, as I’ve mentioned before, use improperly.

I’ll get clients who come to me and say, “We need diverse candidates,” but that makes no sense. There’s no such thing as a diverse person, not in the way that they’re tended. Diversity inclusion is a process. Diversity is a result. How do you achieve the result that you’re looking for? It’s through how you treat people. It’s through fairness, it’s through belonging, developing that sense of cultural belonging within your organization. How do you get there, by treating people with dignity.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion to me, are the four tools that are necessary for helping to achieve this goal where we are all equal. Given equal opportunity, and a chance to really begin to– rather injustices in a system that create the systemic issues and problems that we have today. That’s what JEDI work is for me today. It often comes in the form of facilitation and consulting. One of the things when you were asking me about where I’m at today in Zen, what is Zen?

When I begin a conversation, there are three terms to educate my audience about that I use common or woven through any conversation that we’re having. One is Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is Yoruba for “I am because we are”, which is about our human responsibility to one another. I believe if there’s any reason why we’re here on earth, why all these people, why it exists the way it is, because we’re supposed to be here for each other. I can think of no other reason than why we are here, but if I’m in community, I’m here for you.

Then another term is Takiwatanga, which is in the Maori language in New Zealand is the word for autism, but it actual meaning is “in my time and space”. I think that’s so beautiful because, at the end of the day, everyone is different. Everybody communicates different, and everybody needs to be allowed to be able to participate. I practice Takiwatanga, and I will claim, okay, I’m on the spectrum. I think all of us are. If at any point when you’re in conversation with someone or doing whatever you’re doing, aren’t there times when you stop listening to somebody speaking to you because you’re so busy wanting to just jump in and say what you got to say?

You’re cutting somebody off. You’re not really listening, you’re not really present. That’s on the spectrum. That’s how they define autism as a social disorder. Then the other term that I like is wabi-sabi. That’s Japanese for embrace the imperfect. Oh my gosh, so if we could just understand that no one’s perfect, especially when we think of ourselves as individuals because I think that we often time stress ourselves out because we because we’re flawed and because we’re always questioning our decisions and our choices. To understand that we’re going to make mistakes.

We are not perfect. We need to embrace the imperfect, not only in ourselves but in others. Those three things are would guide me every single day in how I approach my work. How I stay in my Zen mode if you will, is to just calm down and embrace the imperfect in my time and space. I’m just here for everybody else. We are here for each other.

[00:08:57] Marc: Before you mentioned Ubuntu and Takiwatanga and Wabi-sabi, I heard you use the word belonging. I’ve been really noticing in the work that I do, whether it’s with executives or groups, that it’s not easy people, a lot of people, whether it’s people of all shapes, colors, backgrounds, the sense of profoundly belonging is, I think so key. I sometimes think of it as a developing one’s, maybe inner security, so that even if you feel you don’t belong, you still belong. That you realize everyone to some degree struggles with this.

That you’re not alone with this wanting to belong. I like to think of these that you just named and I think you do as practices. How do we practice, how do we embody these? How do we take these ideas that we can all say yes to and incorporate them, embody them, live them. Again, I think you’re such a great embody of this work that you both aspire to, but you actually are doing it in the work that you do.

[00:10:15] MaryAnne: Belonging. I have mixed emotions about this terminology. This new, it gets in the zeitgeist and everybody’s using it and it’s on corporate spreadsheets and they’re trying to measure. How do you measure belonging? On one end, because it gets so used, what I’m fearful of is that just as in diversity, equity, inclusion, that terminology and how it’s been used really almost as a PR tool. It’s like it looks good on paper and everybody’s committed to it. Belonging it’s– how do you even measure that?

That’s a very human experience. There’s no accountability in that. When I look at it inside an organization and they start talking about belonging, I often wonder, are you using that to replace addressing real issues, centered around justice? That’s the one thing. Now, in the way that you’re speaking about it though, Marc, which is very beautiful, I think that belonging is how I practice it, if you will is by first and foremost listening. I think listening is so key I think to being human and developing empathy.

Empathy is more important to me that you are taking the time to understand or hear or learn, what someone else’s perspective might be. Or lived experience might be if we could do that instead of prejudging and coming to the table with our own personal convictions and thought, just stop. That’s the practice to Takiwatanga, in my time and space and allow the other person to take their time. Don’t cut them off, let them finish. I think if we do those things, that’s when you start to feel like you belong.

If I can go sit in a room, and people are listening to what I’m sharing, and allowing it to sink in and then responding appropriately, however that might be. Whether you agree or disagree, but at least you listened. That’s where I belong.

[00:12:20] Marc: It’s interesting. As I was just listening to you, I was recalling a company retreat that I was facilitating and I was tuning into the quality of people’s listening around the room. It’s interesting. Again, the language is so imperfect, but I was recognizing that the more each person felt a sense of their own– Again, I don’t know whether you call it belonging or security or confidence or empathy. That it was just so interesting seeing how some people were really able to listen and open and other people just really struggled.

Really, they hadn’t done enough of what I think of as the inner work to really be present enough to let go of their own story, their own fear and be really present.

[00:13:17] MaryAnne: That’s the work, isn’t it? That’s the work allowing– Again, this is where Takiwatanga, in my time and space, everybody’s not at the same pace. Everybody has a different point of entry into a conversation or an experience, everybody. What I used to have anxiety around what you’re talking about because you felt like it wasn’t successful unless everybody was engaged. It wasn’t successful and if we didn’t feel like everybody had an equal contribution, all of those things.

I’ve learned that’s never going to happen. The goal in any conversation is there will be people who will walk out of their changed. I’ll never forget at the session where you came and visited us in Nashville, Tennessee at our Global Diversity Leadership Exchange for the new Nashville. Thank you so much again for doing a wonderful job there. I’ll never forget when afterward one gentleman came up to me and he said, “This changed my life.” That day that we spent together had that sort of impact. I was astounded because this was a white male, mid-’40s who had never been in a room like this before.

For me, that whole day of all the time we had spent together, all the investment, it was worth that one person, coming to me and saying this really made that kind of impact on his life.

[00:14:49] Marc: Do you have a sense of what changed for him? What was he saying underneath just that something changed? What was it?

[00:14:56] MaryAnne: I think it opened his eyes to the idea that lots of different people have a lot to contribute and that you just have to be open to listening to other people, share their different ideas and approaches. Given his experiences has just never been in an environment, where there was so much cross-cultural intercultural connectedness. I think he really just loved that. I’ve spoken to him since and he still talks about that day. We’ve not had extensive conversations to know how he’s applied that to his life and you’re reminding me of that.

I’m thinking I need to reach out to him and perhaps go– Maybe you should bring him on your show. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

[00:15:42] Marc: Yes, for sure.

[00:15:44] MaryAnne: Talk about that impact.

[00:15:46] Marc: There’s something I thought that you’re a real expertise in creating safe spaces, but part of it is how do we create a body and mind that allows us to really listen and that people can feel it. Our culture so much seems to emphasize what I think of– I think of as two core skills of communication and leadership especially is advocating and listening. We seem to be really good at advocating. Stating our point of view. Harder to let go of our point of view and listen and be willing to change our point of view is what I was maybe hearing you say from persons’ experience.

[00:16:35] MaryAnne: You’re absolutely right. Creating safe spaces, what to say about that? Oftentimes, I have been met with people seek it. The folks who call and want to bring me in usually comes from wanting to have the conversation. As I mentioned, when I come in and we begin open with– Well, one of the things I do is I open with introducing themselves, but introducing themselves in a non-traditional way. Typically, when we get started in a conversation, it’ll be, “I’m Marc Lesser and I’m president and CEO of XYZ Company.”

This is how people introduce themselves by what they do. I ask people to introduce themselves by who they are. If I’m introducing myself in the, who am I? I’m MaryAnne and I’m the fourth child of Homer and June and who are born in Cleveland, Ohio. I’ve got three brothers and a sister and so, I introduce it in a way where people understand, get some context around where I’m from, what I believe in, and forego the what I do to make money is who I am as a person.

Then I always end it with, “I’m a writer and I’m a global citizen,” so that people understand that when I’m coming to this conversation, what perspective I might be bringing? What kind of lived experience I might be bringing? When everybody goes around the room and introduces themselves that way and they get to talk a little bit about themselves, they show up different. You can be a bit more authentic. You can be more honest. It’s fascinating and I’ve gotten such a incredible response.

Everything from tears it’s imagining when people for the first time get to actually talk about who they are and their family and what their ancestry is. There’s so much dignity to begin to say, I’m from the Lakota tribe. There’s a pride in that. Then you show up authentically because you can be you. I have found that has been very powerful. I think we’re in a time, especially given the division in our country and the lack of understanding and the fear, because I think a lot of this is based on fear of a changing demographic.

Bottom line. That’s what’s happening and a lot of people are just really challenged by that. If we start to talk about who we are and where we come from, what starts to also be revealed is how much we really have in common. I think I came to who I am also because I’m a traveler. I’m an adventurer. I’ve been to maybe 50 countries and what I’ve been able to see and experience, one, I don’t care where you are in the world, people are really the same. Everybody, their first concern is their family, their community.

They just want food on their table, a roof over their head, all the same things that we all want. That’s the first thing. When you recognize that’s the humanity, then I think it allowed me to be more open and willing to explore the vitality and the vibrancy and the offerings of people who are having wildly different experiences than I have. Taking that in to enjoy the wonder of it all, to enjoy the miracle of it all. That’s my joy is I love people. I love the human experience.

I love that people are finding ways to– I’m always interested in learning. How are people dealing with their lives, and overcoming their challenges, and what are their joys? That’s food for me. It also makes me feel more confident in my own choices. It allows me more room to make mistakes. It just helps me understand vulnerabilities. All those things that are really human by– It’s the human interaction. I was listening yesterday. I think it was yesterday or maybe it was of somebody else’s Twitter feed or something, but they were blogging about– I think the topic was walkable communities.

The premise around walkable communities was creating communities where we have more human interaction because we now live in a world where we are trending towards isolationism because of technology. Where the richness of living is the human connection, and we’re losing that. How it’s really important that we begin planners who are planning cities, we need to create what he’s calling– I think he called him as third– What do you call it? Third communities? Where they are centers where people can come together.

He talked about how Starbucks has become that and I’m like, “Really? Starbucks?” We’ve gotten away from the opportunities for us to connect as humans and that’s dangerous, isn’t it? That’s where you get the loneliness and the depression because we need each other. Ubuntu, I am because we are.

[00:21:59] Marc: There is an article this week in the New York Times that I think got quite a bit of traction called, Do Not Bring Your ‘Whole Self’ to Work. I get it. It’s like one can make such an argument. Yes, don’t bring your whole se– Whatever that might mean, but there is something what you were saying earlier about how you create a space by having people show up not just as their roles, but as more their full experience. There is something about designing places where we can connect with each other, whether it’s a Starbucks or in our communities.

I was remembering. I lived for many years in a secluded Zen monastery where there was a community of 60 people in a very small narrow valley. Where you came back to your cabin and just have that regular daily interaction. Somehow there is something very special and very intimate just about seeing a person getting up, leaving, and walking to the meditation hall and on the way back. Those are still some of my closest relationships from people who I interacted with in that way. One of the things that I’m trying to design is how to have water cooler meetings on Zoom during Zoom.

How to get people to not just disappear during breaks, but to put people in a room randomly and find yourself with another person that you can just hang out with in between the agenda. That’s still missing for me and I think for a lot of people in this electronic world. There’s a need for it more in all parts of our communities. It’s so much I think such a core part of these three practices that you raise that I think are beautiful.

[00:23:55] MaryAnne: I’m with you. Zoom especially in the moment when we needed it most because we all had to go into hibernation, and it allowed us the opportunity to stay connected and have conversations like we have in the day. If not for this and us being able to connect from across the country today, I don’t know when I– I’d have to wait until the next time I saw you. There’s that value, but like everything, there needs to be a balance. I think that when we talk about folks going back to work, for example, and I’ve got a couple clients who are dealing with this, which everybody’s– The hybrid model.

A lot of people have been able to find so many advantages to, of course, working from home which are obvious, no commuting, spending time with your family. As we’re talking about, there’s that human interaction that I think is also what we need, and this is the conversations I’m having with my corporate classes, is that you can provide that. Think about that. If you have a space where you can bring people in, and maybe it’s not for eight or nine hours in a day because that was the traditional model. Even if it’s just for half a day but bring people together because we need that.

What do you do with that when people come together? How do you use that? Maybe it’s not– If people are finding ways to work effectively at home, they still– I’ve had one of my clients do a study within in 150 countries and all that were affected by the pandemic, and the productivity level went up overall throughout their company by 3%. Okay, so you don’t want to disrupt that. When you’re bringing them into the office, what are you doing? We’re talking about using that environment to create experiences or to enrich people’s lives in a different kind of way.

Whether they’re organizations like arts organizations that were struggling because they need butts in seats to sell tickets and do show their work. Is there a way to perhaps bring them inside a company’s offices where you– In other words, you take it to them and then create that convening at your office space that’s been sitting vacant anyway. It’s an opportunity to increase morale, to address that need for staying connected, the human connection within your workforce which is necessary. I think that we’re going to have to find a way to balance.

I just think it’s really important that we have to try to maintain that. I think that what has been successful as I’ve seen is the return of some conferences, forms, and events because people are starved for getting back out and being in the same room. To be able to look somebody in their eyes, and give a hug when somebody needs it now. I think that’s just an important aspect of life now, so it’s important to keep this balance.

[00:26:46] Marc: Yes. MaryAnne, I want to thank you for your– The JEDI work that you’re doing. The justice equity, dignity, inclusion, and the deep– this ongoing work of really listening. We use that word as a throw-away word listening, but I think it’s to really listen again and again. Part of it I think is to notice when we’re not listening, be willing to feel that, “There I am,” it’s ongoing work of belonging, not belonging, being comfortable, not being comfortable, and connecting. Lovely, just lovely special to get this opportunity to connect with you today.

[00:27:25] MaryAnne: Any time I have an opportunity to spend sometime with Marc Lesser is just an absolute gift. You mirror. Just as you’re describing what you get from me, I get from you. One of the things that I– It’s also a practice for the listening part because you’re right. It’s very hard to keep– It takes vigilance. You have to really like zone into just listening. One of the other things, in the practice of the work, after a person shares or talks, I insist that there is a 20-second pause before you respond because that way some things are happening, right?

If you know that you’re going to pause, it allows a little bit more time for what someone just shared with you to seep in and sit there. Then that way you’re not automatically just trying to react or interrupt, and because I think the interrupting part, that’s very damaging. Interruption. Oh, my gosh. That’s just a killer. If someone’s talking and you just interrupt them or switch subjects like just abrasively. That’s a killer. You’ve just slammed the door, so it’s really important to not interrupt. Let somebody finish in my time and space, my Takiwatanga. Takiwatanga.

Let somebody just finish what they got to say. Pause, breathe, and then respond.

[00:29:01] Marc: Is there anything else you would like to say? Anything else you would like to bring to this moment?

[00:29:06] MaryAnne: I think that there’s one thing that I’ve been luminating on that I’m starting to try to weave into the conversation is the idea of dreaming. Listening to the news, and all of the things that are going on. We constantly hear this propaganda around American dream. After listening to that over and over again, I said, “What if we just took the word American from it, and just said dream? I want to dream my own dream, and I want everybody to have the opportunity to just take– Stop trying to nationalize it, or live, or work towards or strive towards something that it’s already–

It’s been very defined what that’s suppose to be. Remove that. Just dream. I’d like to challenge everyone, or not even challenge. Just invite everyone to just, what is your dream? What are you doing to work towards that dream or not even work? Just live in that dream. That’s better. See, I’m creating it as we talk. How do we live in that dream?

[00:30:12] Marc: Yes. I say an old– this comes from fifth-century or sixth-century China. This zen guy named Zhuang Zhou I think he was a Daoist actually, who famously said, “Am I Zhuang Zhou dreaming I’m a butterfly? Or am I a butterfly dreaming that I’m Zhuang Zhou?”

[00:30:32] MaryAnne: Oh, I love that.

[00:30:34] Marc: There’s something about dreaming as this dreaming in a way of, that the world is not what it seems. I think is one of the ways, when am I awake or am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Am I awake? In a grounded way and also in a like opening up to all possibilities. Thank you so much. I’m just touched and I feel like, I hope this is part one of many parts of our conversation.

[00:31:00] MaryAnne: I hope so. I love it. Thank you so much.

[00:31:05] Marc: Thank you.

[00:31:05] MaryAnne: Thank you.

[00:31:10] Marc: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:31:35] [END OF AUDIO]

The post The Power of Belonging with MaryAnne Howland appeared first on Marc Lesser.

The World Is Its Own Magic: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler

“The real miracle isn’t to walk on water. The real miracle is to walk right here on Earth” according to Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. In this episode a short guided meditation is followed by a teaching, emphasizing shifting from busyness to being more focused, engaged, and spacious. The practice of spaciousnes is essential in today’s complex world. The Zen puzzler is based on a traditional Zen koan — Is the flag moving, the wind moving, or is it your mind that is moving?

 

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to ZenBones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times, this is Marc Lesser. Why ZenBones? Our world is in crisis and ever shifting and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business and leadership.

In today’s episode we explore the topic of, The World is its Own Magic. This comes from a quote in the book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Zen Teacher Shunryu Suzuki. We start with a short guided meditation on this theme of seeing the world both as ordinary and leaning in and feeling the mystery and magic of our world. Following the meditation, I do a short talk on this topic of the world is its own magic and the power of just being present. Following the talk, I do a Zen puzzler. Today’s Zen puzzler is a famous Zen koan where two monks are arguing about a flag that’s moving or is the wind moving and a Zen teacher comes along and says, “No, it’s your mind that’s moving.” I hope you enjoy today’s episode, The World is its Own Magic.

Let’s do a few minutes of meditation practice or stopping, pausing. Just whatever’s been happening in your day, to pause and bring your attention now to being here. Starting with the breath, starting with the body, arriving, pausing. Something ordinary and magical about our ability to do this, the ability to stop, reflect to experience your experience right now. Again, just taking a few minutes and you can sit longer than my guiding here.

[silence]

The approach of curiosity, bringing a sense of curiosity to the breath, to the body and to our experience. What is it like to stop and pause? What is it like to be here? As much as possible, letting go of our usual judgements, our concerns about the past, our planning for the future, letting go of the to-do lists. One way to do that is to bring attention. Bring attention to the breath, bringing attention to the body. With each exhale a little bit more relaxed and alert and letting go. Letting go of the ordinary day-to-day activities and seeing what it’s like to be here.

I’ve been turning this quote by Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, that the real miracle isn’t to walk on water. The real miracle is to walk right here on Earth. This is the magic of the miracle of being present here. Opening our hearts, opening our minds and allowing our experience. No need to try and change anything. Checking in with the body, checking in with the breath, and noticing a thinking mind, letting our thoughts come and let them go. Checking in with our hearts, our feelings, our deepest sense of what brings us here right now.

What is it like to be here? What is it like to be alive? Taking the board off of our shoulder, the board that keeps us in a more narrow, explainable everyday world. What is it like when we remove the board and open to what’s possible, open to our full experience, our intuition, our imagination and our presence of being fully here, fully alive right now in this moment?

Keeping it simple. Keeping it simple, breathing in and breathing out, the real miracle. The real miracle is to walk right here. The real miracle is to be present, curious, kind, here, alive in this moment, appreciating everything.

[pause 00:06:53]

Thank you for your attention. Please feel free to continue sitting as long as you would like. I’m going to, with the next breath, come back here. Thank you very much.

[music]

The world is its own magic. This is one of my favorite quotes from Vietnamese Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, where he says, “The real miracle isn’t to walk on water. The real miracle is to walk right here on Earth.” Thich Nhat Hanh died fairly recently leaving a legacy of what he called engaged buddhism. The practice of seeing reality, the practice of keeping our hearts open and the effort and practice of helping to heal and make the world a better place.

The practice, the miracle to walk right here on Earth is central to our work, to our leadership and all parts of our lives. It takes practice to keep coming back to this moment, this place and the people who are right in front of us without getting distracted by our phones, our social media and our relentless to-do list. Last week I led an in-person mindful leadership workshop for a group of about 50 leaders in the healthcare industry. They had all traveled to San Francisco from across the United States for a company retreat.

As I was preparing to lead the morning session, there was a good deal of buzz in the room about a magic show that they’d all been attending the night before. It was called The Magic Patio. When I heard about this magic event, it sounded really interesting. Then little by little I began feeling more nervous and a little bit daunted by the idea of my mindfulness session following a magic show. Mindful leadership seemed a little bit dull compared to this magic show. I wondered what was I going to do to engage this audience? As I stood up in front of the group to start this mindfulness session, I surprised myself and I looked around and I said, “Well, I’m a magician too.” Then I shared the Thich Nhat Hanh quote about the real miracle being to walk right here on Earth.

As I did this, I deeply felt the magic of just being present and alive in that room with that group of curious and open-minded business leaders. During the workshop we addressed the challenge of busyness, and how busy we’ve all become, especially in this 24/7 always-on business environment. I suggested to the group an alternative way of not being constantly busy and instead to practice being more focused, engaged, and spacious. Focused on what we’re doing right now in this moment, letting go of ruminating about the past and worrying about the future. Wholeheartedly engaged with what matters most and spacious exploring what it feels like to be satisfied and open, feeling the spaciousness in the physical room, as well as the spaciousness with our breath and body.

This led me to share another one of my favorite quotes, and this one is by Shunryu Suzuki from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, where he says, “The world is its own magic.” I asked the people in the room, who were in this mindful leadership workshop, to focus on the magic of being here alive in that room in this moment and it turned out to be an amazing and magical session in its own right. Right now, can you appreciate the magic of being here alive right now? Can you appreciate and practice being a little bit more focused, engaged, and spacious?

To help convey just what a miracle it is walking here on Earth right now I’d like to share a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver called, When I Am Among the Trees. When I’m Among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beach, the oaks, and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I’m so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often. Around me, the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay a while.” The light flows from their branches. And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.” Please, in your daily life, remember, the world is its own magic, and the real miracle is to walk right here on Earth. Thank you.

[music]

Welcome to the Zen Bones puzzler where I will regularly be presenting a story or a Zen koan, or a poem. Something to contemplate, to think about, a story that has purpose. It’s about developing greater insight and reflection. Not so much for a solution, but as a way to support your practice, a kind of meditation in daily life.

[music]

Today’s Zen puzzler is a somewhat famous Zen story in which two monks are arguing. One of them says, as he’s looking at a flag blowing in the wind, one says, “It’s the flag moving,” and the other one says, “No, it’s the wind that’s moving.” The Zen teacher comes along and cuts right through this argument and says, “It’s your mind that is moving.” Of course, it’s interesting, I think, just to spend some time reflecting on this without– Again, our minds tend to go right toward wanting to get it right, or the answer. Is it the flag? Is it the wind? Of course, the wind is moving and the flag is moving but the teacher is suggesting, seeing this issue, this flag and wind, through another lens.

In some way through the lens of that the world is mysterious and magical, and that there’s something sacred and amazing about our minds and about our perception and how we create our worlds. How everything is balanced through our perceptions, through how we see the world, through our body and mind. These monks are a bit caught, I think, in their own narrow worlds of ego wanting to be right.

In some way, Zen practice is seeing the world through a wider lens, through a much wider, deeper perspective through the world of seeing and living in the ordinary world. We do all have to live in this ordinary world of flags moving and wind moving. We should know the flag and the wind, we should study them really well, and at the same time, to be incredibly curious about the world that is more mysterious, the world of birth and life and death.

I think of, early on in the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki says that if you think that when you die this is the end of your life, this is wrong understanding. Then he says, “If you think when you die this isn’t the end of your life, this is also wrong understanding.” It’s the teaching about, that we do live in a dualistic world, but it’s opening up to the world of non-duality, the world that is beyond our usual sense around birth and death.

I think this is a similar teaching, a similar Zen koan, Zen puzzler here about the flag and the mind which are dualistic ways of looking at ourselves and looking at the world, and the Zen teacher here, the mind is moving, the mind is moving, let go of the dualistic approach, open up to the more mysterious and magical approach, it’s your mind that’s moving. One way to work with this in a practical way is to stay with the statement, your mind is moving, your mind is moving, and see how that feels during your meditation. Or any time you’re feeling overwhelmed, or frustrated, or judgmental, or critical you might come back to this statement. It’s your mind, it’s your mind that’s moving, it’s your mind that is creating the world. I hope you can enjoy and appreciate this week’s Zen puzzler. Thank you very much.

[music]

Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself to influence your organization and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:17:40] [END OF AUDIO]

The post The World Is Its Own Magic: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Surprise Yourself: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler

What surprises you about your life right now? For me, the answer is “everything!” This episode of the Zen Bones Podcast features a short talk and meditation on the power of surprise, followed by a Zen puzzler or riddle featuring a quote from Zen teacher Dogen from the 13th century: “To study yourself is to go beyond yourself.” We’ll be exploring what that means and how it can support your wellbeing.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to ZenBones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why ZenBones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting. Now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership.[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: In this practice episode, the topic is surprise yourself. The power of allowing yourself to see the world through the lens of the unexpected, what’s new and fresh, as a way of supporting yourself, changing yourself, opening. We start with a short-guided meditation, and then a talk featuring a variety of surprising poetry and the practice of surprise. And then a Zen puzzler where the quote comes from Zen teacher, Dogen about studying yourself and going beyond yourself. I hope you find this episode useful and surprising. Thank you.

Let’s do a short meditation together. I would invite you to stop and pause, and find a way to sit or stand wherever you happen to be just noticing. Noticing your body, noticing your breath, noticing your thinking, mind, your mood. I would suggest here an approach of being surprised by everything. Surprised to be wherever you might be and whoever you might be right now.

How did this happen? How did you get here? How did you become whoever you are? Amazing, surprising. Just opening, opening your mind and your heart. Letting it in, letting it in, this sense of curiosity, this childlike curiosity. What is it like to be here? What is it like to be alive right now? One of my favorite journaling prompts is what surprises me about my life right now is what surprises me. As a way of letting go, letting go of the past, letting go of our expectations about the future, and finding ourselves new, fresh, open, alert, surprised right now. What a relief. What a relief to be new.

It’s a bit like shedding. Shedding our old skins and emerging new. Shedding with each breath, letting go, and emerging here, refreshed, alive, and surprised. Of course, this breath and this body are actually new and fresh. We don’t have to make it up, we don’t have to pretend. It’s seeing with more clarity, the reality of the freshness, and newness of our lives. Keeping it simple. Keeping it simple. Noticing the breath, noticing the body. Breathing in, breathing out.

Sometimes focused on the breath and the body, and sometimes opening, opening to your full experience, experiencing your experience with an approach of curiosity, here, now, relaxed, and alert, and comfortable with not knowing what will happen next. Opening to being surprised. Now, using the breath in the body as allies, as anchors. Please feel free to continue sitting for as long as it feels right. If this is the right time, let’s go about the activity of our days, but with this attitude, imagine bringing this attitude of curiosity and surprise into everything that we do, into every conversation, into every activity. Thank you very much.

Why is it that we seem to remember events that surprise us more than others? I noticed that I’m surprised by nearly everything in my life right now. These surprises include that I’m a grandfather and that I have two grown children, that I’m a Zen teacher, as well as that I love teaching and speaking to large groups. Growing up in a somewhat sheltered and not very aware child in suburban New Jersey, I never would’ve predicted that my life would have unfolded this way. It really is the surprising things in our lives that prove to be the most memorable.

This, I’ve noticed, is true in prose and poetry, or humor, or language that involve some form of surprise. It’s the unexpected delights that make these things unforgettable. Like, the Groucho Marx joke. Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. Or these lines from a poem by Tony Hoagland, where he says:
“Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds
of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder”

Or these haiku by Kobayashi Issa translated by Hass, where he says, “Don’t worry spiders, I keep house casually.” Or, “The snow is melting and the village is flooded with children,” and a third haiku, “Goes out, comes back, the love life of a cat.” The Zen tradition emphasizes learning, changing, and growing through surprise. This is true of many Zen stories, including the foundational story of Zen, that is based on a sixth-century event that features Bodhidharma, who was credited as being the first Zen ancestor to visit the emperor of China. In this story, the emperor asks Bodhidharma, “What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?” He’s asking like, “What really matters? What is Zen? What’s the secret?”

Bodhidharma responds surprisingly empty without holiness. This was not at all what the emperor was expecting to hear. The emperor then asks, “Who are you? Who is this person in front of me?” Bodhidharma responds, “I don’t know.” Again, a most unlikely response and one which has now been handed down generations for 1,500 years of storytelling. Unorthodox answers like these and going against the grain of convention are a way of setting the tone of Zen, a way to wake us up, to surprise us. Shunryu Suzuki knew the power of surprise when he said, “The secret of Zen is just two words.” He paused and then said, “Not always so.”

Apparently, in his native language, he was thinking of two words, but this was perfect because in English, the secret was actually three words long. In many ways, its meaning also was mirrored in these words. The takeaway from this is that whatever we think is so is not always so. The world is not what we think. When we let go of our usual expectations, everything in our lives can become fresh and surprising. Why not take a moment to think about what has surprised you, maybe even just so far today? Has anything unexpected happened? Have many things unexpected happened?

You might do a little journaling exercise writing down the prompt. What surprises me about my life right now is, then give yourself 7 minutes or 12 minutes to write down what comes up for you. See what happens. It’s a good use of just a short amount of time. It can give you a chance to see yourself in the world through the lens of surprise, something which can be uplifting, informative, and surprising. Here’s a poem by Robert Bly about seeing the world through the lens of surprise. The poem is called Things to Think.

Think in ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.
When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

I hope you can find surprise, the power of surprise in everything in your life. Thank you.

[music]

Welcome to The ZenBones Puzzler, where I will regularly be presenting a story or a Zen Koan or a poem. Something to contemplate to think about. A story that has purpose. It’s about developing greater insight and reflection. Not so much for a solution, but as a way to support your practice, a meditation in daily life.

[music]

Today’s ZenBones Puzzler is a short quote from Dogen, who was the 13th-century founder of Zen in Japan, in which he says, “To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to go beyond the self. To go beyond the self is to feel your oneness with everything and everyone. To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to go beyond the self. To go beyond the self is to feel your oneness.” Again, this is meant not so much to be looking for answers, I suggest bringing this up in your daily meditation. Maybe write about this in your journal. At times throughout the day, especially any time you have a little bit of space or feeling a little bit of stress and tension, I hope you’ll bring up this ZenBones Puzzler, and I hope it is enjoyable and insightful.

[music]

Our ZenBones Puzzler: “To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to go beyond the self. To go beyond the self is to feel your oneness with everything and everyone.” This is a line I’ve been studying and contemplating for many, many years. I think, first of all, the first line to study the way, I think of the way, with a capital W, as to study what it means to be a human being. This really is the way. The way of being fully human, the way of living more in reality, the way of finding your true agency and power.

The study the way starts with the study of the self, the study of our strengths and weaknesses, our tendencies, our intuitions. This is a radical, mindfulness self-awareness. To study the way is to study the self. Then, I love, and it’s wonderful the next line of this quote by Zen teacher Dogen, to study the self is to go beyond the self. To go beyond the self can sound rather mystical. Again, I think part of this is rather ordinary. You could say it’s to help others. Going beyond the self is to be less driven by ego and orienting around self and to widen our perspective.

At the same time, I think going beyond the self also is a radical integration and wholeheartedness. To really be ourselves, to be ourselves fully. Then, the next line, which again, is translated in many, many ways. I’m translating it loosely here, as to go beyond the self is to feel your oneness, lack of separation with yourself, with others, and with all of life, with all of life. This is, I think, a description of freedom to not be separated, a radical sense of belonging. I look forward to continuing to work with this ZenBones Puzzler, and I hope you do as well. Thank you.

[music]

Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:18:48] [END OF AUDIO]

The post Surprise Yourself: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Zen, Acting, and the Power of Ritual

Marc and Peter explore Peter’s story of how he came to his acting path, as well as his path to Zen practice. They talk about “precise forms for a flexible mind” vs. “flexible forms for a precise mind”, meditation, the power of ritual, the liberating effect of mask work, as well as bringing Zen practice into everyday life.

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Peter Coyote has performed as an actor for some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including: Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Walter Hill, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderberg, Diane Kurys, Sidney Pollack and Jean Paul Rappeneau. He is an ordained Buddhist priest who has been practicing for 34 years. Mr. Coyote has been engaged in political and social causes since his early teens and is a long time passionate advocate for wildlife and wild nature.

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to ZenBones: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why ZenBones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting. Now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership.

In this episode with actor and activist Peter Coyote, we dive into Peter’s story and how he came to Zen practice, and his acting path. We talk about meditation, Zen practice, the power of ritual, and the liberating effect of mask work, and as well as bringing Zen practice into everyday life. Lots of great material, so let’s dive in.

Welcome to ZenBones: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser and I am just thrilled and happy to be here today with my friend and colleague, Peter Coyote. He probably doesn’t need any introduction. Peter has done amazing things in his life as an actor and as a writer. Many people will be familiar with Peter’s voice for the many phenomenal voiceovers that Peter has done. Peter is also these days inhabiting the body of a Zen teacher, as well as all these other things. Welcome, Peter, it’s great to see you!

[00:01:49] Peter Coyote: Thank you, Marc. I’m really privileged to be here.

[00:01:53] Marc: Maybe start by saying a little bit about what’s really calling to you these days. I know that you’re involved in Zen teaching, but really, I think of your core work as working for change in the political world and in the world of capitalism. It’s interesting to be all of the things that you’ve done in the world as an artist. In a way, being a Zen teacher is a bit like being an artist in a different way. Holding it all together, I think is… I often think that we all have some deep conscious or unconscious theory of change.

How does what we do help to change ourselves, grow ourselves, allow us to be? You just mentioned the title of your next book (which) makes me think of Suzuki Roshi’s Things As It Is. This expression about reality, living in the (you know)… I often think that what he meant by that was, the absolute world, the world outside of our thinking, of our experience even. Yet, we have to live. This question for me often is, how do we live effectively in both worlds. This Things As It Is— in the day-to-day world, but integrated with the world that I think Suzuki Roshi meant when he talked about Things As It Is.

[00:04:11] Peter: When I first heard that expression Things As It Is I thought it was a charming mistake by a Japanese speaker struggling with English. “Things” is plural, and “it” is singular. I don’t know how many years on my pillow it was before I sat up and said, “Holy shit.” No, it’s the whole ball of wax – there’s only one big thing and it appears as multiple things and he got it encapsulated in a sentence. I was flabbergasted by that. It actually gave me confidence in the applicability of Zen practice to my political aspirations.

I became an actor because, when I came out of the counterculture, I had played every card in my deck and lost. I was a heroin addict, I was a single father, the mother had run away. We hadn’t overthrown capitalism, we hadn’t ended racism, we hadn’t stopped the war, we hadn’t transformed the United States to the degree that I’d hoped. But when I thought about it culturally, I thought, well wait, we did make some dents here. The women’s movement, the environmental movement, the organic food movement, alternative medical practices, and alternative spiritual practices. We did have an effect and people are living that way.

But I was broke, my dad had lost all his money. So I had this skill as an actor and was working for Jerry Brown on some poverty government program, and running a state agency for him, but there was no salary attached. I had to make a living, I had one child, I was married, I had a wife. I gave myself five years to try the movies. I used to be an actor, and I had given it up to overthrow the United States culture. And I got lucky. I became an actor because I didn’t want to write for money because writing was actually sacred to me, or communication was sacred.

It created a kind of conundrum. I had already been at Zen Center, I came to Zen Center in ’74. By the time I started thinking about being an actor, it was ’76, and by the time I got my Screen Actors Guild union card, it was ’79. So I’d had a few years on the pillow, and I had this challenge to face, which is, that I was moving to Babylon. I was moving into a world that was based on ego, and the personality, and ambition, and greed, and all of these things. I thought, “How am I going to do this?”.

And so, I had to analyze: “what are my options?” The first option was, I was going to have very little effect over what film got made. I was basically a Campesino, I was basically up for hire. I thought, all I can do is say yes or no. If the film is too odious, I don’t have to do it. What I could affect was the way I make the movie. That’s within my control. That’s where Zen practice really came to help me. I thought, I can show up on time; I can be prepared; I can be non-competitive; I can treat everyone equally, the star, the director, the PAs, the cook, whatever it is. I can just do my best. Moment after moment after moment. If I take the most enlightened possibility in any moment, I’m doing as well as I can.

I don’t think of that as any grand strategy at world change. It literally was an economy. I did 160 films, most of which I remember as either being called “mortgage” or “tuition.” But the political work and the Arts Council actually gave me a platform and a little bit of celebrity, which I was very uncomfortable with. Because celebrity itself violated my worldview where one person was the center of everything.

I just saw a movie where Tom Hanks is a naval commander, and he basically wins World War II by himself. There’s not even a woman in the movie. It’s just him running back and forth on a battleship, doing everything. And I thought, that’s the worldview of a Hollywood star. But I lived on communes, my relatives were Jewish communists, and socialists, and labor organizers. That’s not my worldview, I don’t like it. And so I kept trying to subsume it and just meld and Zen Center was a community where it was safe to do that. They didn’t care if I was an actor or not, or a celebrity.

I was really changed by Zen Center. I was changed by a number of things that I grew to be a little critical of, but not judgmental. For me coming out of heroin, hair down to my ass, feeling I had lived a life of freedom. I was already enlightened, I just needed a few polishing touches and I’d be fine. To be dropped into this community of somber, disciplined people who might get up and leave the room while I was talking, it made me psychotic. I just kept saying, “What is this place? Who are these people?”

Little by little, there was something about the schedule, there was something about so many people that were just really, genuinely nice and trying to be the best expression of themselves, that I settled into a rhythm. I began to understand the utility of the forms, how the forms give us boundaries and give us a kind of, like you can trust your body, because we have a form of zazen, you can relax and let anything come through your mind. You don’t have to be attached to it. I did that for about eight years, and I was in a funny, privileged position.

I was working for Governor Brown, and then I was a movie actor. My wife Marilyn was very well networked and connected at Zen Center. She ran ALIA, she ran the mailing list in the office, she knew everybody. I was also a peer of Baker Roshi’s and a peer of Governor Brown’s. I was in this invisible university luncheon he ran every week. So, I had a bifurcated view of Zen Center, and the bifurcation bothered me. It bothered me that I would eavesdrop on a conversation of a couple of women debating whether or not which $200 lampshade to buy for an infant’s room.

My wife was working for $200 a month. It bothered me that students were getting up at 4 in the morning to bake bread, but they didn’t have time to sit zazen. All of the surplus capital of their labor was going into a white BMW that the Abbott was driving. It just rankled my commie-Jew sensibilities. But I had enough grounding in Zen to sit with it. I’ll end this monologue and then let you in. As time went on, I began writing these two books called Vernacular Zen, in which I wanted to loosen the gift wrapping of Japanese culture.

In every culture, Buddhism wrapped itself in the gift wrapping of the culture. Buddha was born in Nepal, it was a Hindu culture. All the stuff about reincarnation, that’s all Hindu. Buddha didn’t really teach reincarnation. You don’t have to know anything about it to understand Buddha. Then they went to China and it merged with Daoism, and Confucianism, and went to Japan and merged with Shintoism, and in every place, it changed. Then because we had the good fortune to have Suzuki Roshi and the chain of Japanese teachers, it got kind of crystallized into what I call “high Anglican Zen.”

My friends and my teacher tell me that Suzuki Roshi had almost no ceremonies at all. Everything was very, very informal. Little by little, teachers came from Japan, and they taught what they knew. And at a certain point, I think Baker Roshi decided that it was probably easier to raise millions of dollars to build Tassajara, and City Center, and Green Gulch, if it was this orderly, impressive discipline thing than a bunch of crazed hippies like a lot of the older students were. I thought about that a lot. And because I was so changed by Zen Center, I don’t want to impune the Japanese culture.

I still do a lot of chants in Japanese. I still wear my robes to do ceremonies. I have a little zendo and zabutons and zafus and stuff, but I realize that as long as Zen appeared foreign to Americans, it would subtly exclude people who were never going to shave their head, who were never going to take ordination, and who were never going to hear these very human states translated into plain vernacular English. That’s what I’ve set out to do, to tightrope between my training for eight years in Japanese forms, and then my life as an American with an intention to make it widely available.

[00:14:57] Marc: That’s great. I love hearing your story. I also arrived at the San Francisco Zen Center the same year you did, 1974. A year later, I went down to Tassajara and got this complete immersion. It’s interesting. I’m currently the co-chair of the San Francisco Zen Center Elders Council. I’m really getting to see up close the  enormous transition happening, I think not only at the San Francisco Zen Center, but Zen practice throughout the western world is grappling with, in what way are all of those forms core to Zen practice. And in what way are they… as you, I think were saying, they’re a barrier, they can be a barrier to entry.

I also teach a little bit; I’m teaching a class right now at Spirit Rock. What’s super interesting is that the world of Vipassana, this other form, has this whole other history, which is not through Japan, but more through Southeast Asia. Somehow a decision got made to let go of pretty much all of the forms and ceremonies. One could be critical of all of that. Although it’s interesting.

I’ll share with you, I was co-teaching recently with a Vipassana teacher, and I used the phrase that I’m sure you’re familiar with, that Suzuki Roshi sometimes used was “precise forms for a flexible mind.” This Vipassana teacher turned to me and said, “Here, we talk about flexible forms for a more precise mind.” I thought, “Wow, this is fascinating. These are two different perspectives, two different theories of change, as it were.” In the Zen world, the theory of change basically is just sit down and face the wall and everything will be great. That’s the primary teaching.

The primary theory of change is sit down, be quiet, and everything will reveal itself. I didn’t discover until I started teaching meditation at Google that I didn’t know how to teach meditation to Western people. Google engineers needed a lot more direction and precision than just sit down and face the wall. I had to learn, and I feel like I’m still learning how do you bring these practices into the Western world without all of, as you say, the Japanese gift wrapping, and I love the forms too. In some way, one could argue that they’re important, that they’re vital. I’m becoming less convinced of that myself.

[00:19:08] Peter: I’ve done fundraisers for Spirit Rock. I think of them as cousins, but I firmly disagree with the decision to get rid of ceremony because people need ceremonies. That’s been my intention. Ceremonies, when they’re orchestrated correctly, they actually change you by going through them. There’s a difference between living with someone and being married and having expressed your vows in public to witnesses. I feel that that was a little radical. I also feel that that phrase, flexible practice for precise minds, our mind is wild.

The mind is wilderness, and the idea of rendering it precise is like turning it into bonsai instead of redwood trees. I would argue that if everything is precise, where do we find the freedom? Where do we find the part of formlessness that is just the roiling energetics? To me, I’m very much in the Gary Snyder school that the mind is wild. Maybe that’s my affinity for Zen is that I’ve learned from these forms. You know this yourself, that when people come to you, they’ve said to you probably many times, “I’ve tried meditating, but I just can’t stop my mind.”

You just want to shake them a little bit and say, “No, no, no, that’s not the point. We’re going to teach you how to detach from your mind. Let the mind be the mind, and you put your energy in the body in this form. It will ground you and give you a safe place to let the wildness of your mind, the energetics of your mind be what they are.” The universe is nothing if not diverse, and I certainly don’t argue with other people, but I find that I’d rather have strict form and a free mind than a mind that’s like a bonsai tree.

[00:21:24] Marc: I think that it’s interesting… I notice that in the work that I get to do with executives in the business world, I think there’s something, Peter, about what I think of as perspective taking as a practice. For example, I think one could easily argue precise forms, flexible mind, precise mind, flexible forms, I think actually they’re the same thing. That if we get underneath it, I think what the Vipassana people would say, they’d completely agree with you. However, what they would say is we just need a little bit more form to understand our wild minds.

That without a little bit more precision about how we pay attention to the breath and how… see, whereas, because core original Buddhist teachings– and Buddhist teaching was actually quite precise. The four foundations of mindfulness, for example, now it’s often in Zen practice places, you don’t get to those until you’ve been around for years. Find, oh there is all of this precision, there is all of this instruction. It’s interesting that it’s to me “things as it is” is almost always a “both/and.”

[00:23:24] Peter: No, it is. I think you’re right to stop me. You’re right, it was a little one-sided. Let me loop back to the subject of art for a second. First of all, artists are people who see the world differently than the world is taught to them, and because of that, they’re forced to create their own grammar and syntax in expressing it. Their art form is the grammar and syntax, whether it’s dance, whether it’s song. Whatever it is, is the way they make their perceptions communicable.

One of the things I’ve been doing for about 40 years, and I’ve been doing it with a lot of businessmen, people who are not actors, as I run these improv and mask classes. If I work with you for about half a day, and I stress your sense of self a little bit, I give you exercises that change your posture. I give you exercises that change your status. I give you exercises where you’re in a circle making up a song to a rhythm, and the rhythm is implacable. As soon as the person next to you is done, you have to start and say your line and you have to leap in without thinking.

By the time you’ve done a whole host of things like that, I put a neutral mask on you, and I hold a mirror up in front of you. It’s never failed in 45 years that the person’s personality disappears and they somehow take in a holographic personality from the mask. They get about 10 minutes of gravity-free freedom because with the absence of their self went their self-consciousness, their self-criticism, their second-guessing, and I query them, I interview them. I do three at a time, they start interacting with each other.

Every student will do this three times, change masks three times, and find three different characters. I use this as a loss leader. I call it enlightenment light. This is what sets people up to understand Buddha’s idea of no fixed self. One of the ways it applies to businessmen is it actually teaches people to get out of their own way. To get out of their constructs of mind to try to find actually their authentic voice that comes over the spinal telephone. It’s a weird amalgam of acting and improv and comedy and masks, but it has very practical applications.

For instance, if somebody’s describing a problem that they’re having at work, I’ll say, “How would the guy you discovered in the mask today do it?” All of a sudden, they’re in a different universe and they get a completely different look at the problem. When I’m teaching voiceovers and these guys are trying to be good and professional, and I say, “Do it like you did to this masked crazy woman.” They do that, and all of a sudden everything comes to life. Now the voice might not be appropriate, but they can then do it in their own voice, and all the surprises will be there.

I keep looking back to “wild mind” as the closest image I can get to Buddha-nature. The formless, roiling energy that’s always generating forms. The only way that I can see of approaching it is through things that frustrate your inherent following/believing everything you think. Whether it’s sitting zazen, whether it’s doing exercises that make you uncomfortable, something has to impede habitual flow to put you in touch with authentic flow.

[00:27:45] Marc: I want to come do one of your workshops. Actually Peter, what really struck me is that in a slightly different form, it is so similar to the work that I do in the business world.

[00:28:01] Peter: I bet that’s what made me think of it.

[00:28:04] Marc: That in some way, one way that when it’s done well, meditation practice could be taking the masks off, who are you when you take the masks off. The work that I used to do a lot of work for Google engineers, and they would say, “What we like about these programs are we get to take our game faces off.” There’s a game face that you put on at work and you take it off. Then I’ve often thought that one of the most impactful exercises that we did was just get people into pairs and practice listening.

In order to listen, it means you have to take your own mask off and be curious about who this other person is. I was surprised that was like, and still is, I feel like, my son makes fun of me, he says that what I do for a living is get people in pairs and listen to each other. Yes, that is a lot what I do.

[00:29:20] Peter: Ouch, ouch, ouch.

[laughter]

Marc: Actually, it’s amazingly impactful having, whether it’s using an actual mask or sitting in front of another human being and seeing that you have to remove your own mask to some degree in order to actually listen. It’s like, wow, listening through what ears? Through what heart?

[00:30:05] Peter: Yes, this thing about masks has fascinated me for years. I’ll send you this book, but when I was in the San Francisco Mime Troupe, I put on a mask, and all of a sudden this nice Jewish boy from Englewood, New Jersey, disappeared. There was this cabarrus old curmudgeon with a Yiddish accent, who was wildly inappropriate. I loved this guy, I could say anything. My first line on stage was an ad-lib, where I introduced my daughter, this whiny daughter. I introduced her, I said, “The reason I love my daughter, she killed my wife in childbirth.” [chuckles]

The audience fell out, and I knew I could do it. All the parts of myself that I had tried to polish and tame and make into a nice studious, yeshiva nudnik, is like gone. I got the first glimpse into wild mind. I wrote this book this year where I’ve just written about all these exercises and integrated them with Buddhist theory, and businessmen seem to like it.

[00:31:22] Marc: Beautiful. My similar experience was many years ago taking an improv and writing class. I loved the writing, but the improv piece just frightened me. I remember I was hiding in the back of the room, and the teacher says, “Marc, why don’t you come up here?” She had me come up in front of the room, and she says, “What should we do? What should we do for you?” She said, “Let’s try this. Why don’t you say, ‘I hate.'” Actually, she did it over and over and over and got me really worked up and then let me loose.

Again, this whole, I blurted out, “I hated high school graduation where they lined us up by height, and I was the smallest one, I hated that.” I just went on and on. Then I was surprised how without any thinking or trying, I transitioned little by little into love and into appreciation. One of the more deepest and profoundest ways of feeling it, but I needed to access the hate part of me that I generally tuck away into the corner.

[00:32:51] Peter: Did you ever read this book by David Brazier called The Feeling Buddha?

[00:32:56] Marc: I don’t know it. No, but I will get it.

[00:33:00] Peter: Well, let me recommend it because he has the most logical translation of the Four Noble Truths, much more logical than what we’re taught; suffering exists, there’s a path of the– He goes back to Buddha’s first speech after his enlightenment, and so it’s Dukkha, Samudāya, Nirodha, and Magga. Dukkha, which was translated by a lot of Christian translators as suffering, tends to concentrate on the mental aspects. What Buddha actually defined Dukkha as, was birth, death, grieving, loss, illness, mourning, being stuck in situations that you don’t like. And being held away from situations that you do like. 

And he points out that none of this is your fault. Buddha called it a noble truth. If truth means anything, it means “real,” and noble means, if anything, “worthy of respect and dignity.” The second noble truth, you can’t do anything about either, which is Samudāya, when you’re afflicted by something, things arise. Somebody cuts you off in the car, you want to give him the finger. When you’re too hot, you move away from the fire. What he points out is that these two kinds of global pressures are like the energy that move our life. They just keep the pot bubbling and boiling. 

The third one is the only one where we can begin to actually affect which is called Nirodha. The image is a clay wall that’s built around the edge of a fire pit. It stops the flames from leaping out of the fire pit and burning the village or the crops. It’s like gasoline. If you throw gasoline on the ground, it just creates havoc, or it just burns off harmlessly. If you put it in the container of an engine, it does “work.” Meditating is the containment.

The people who run from affliction and run from what arises, are filling the bars and the mental hospitals. They’re shopping and they’re seeking power, and they’re in the wrong beds, but once you learn from meditating that you can contain anything that arises, they’re ephemeral. Then you can prepare to walk the eightfold path, which is the blueprint for modeling the life of a Buddha in your own. It’s so workable, it’s so useful. It’s so much less metaphysical. I forget why I explained that, but something you said.

[00:35:57] Marc: To me, in some way, I’m thinking about where we started with me asking you about theories of change. In a way, the Four Noble Truths and the eightfold path are Buddha’s theory of change or his experience of change. You talking about the work that you do with executives around mask work, this is another way of cultivating things as, you can say things as it is, but how do you live it? How do you embody it? How do you bring it in? As a person, how do you live it? As a teacher, how do you help open other people’s bodies and minds to seeing it, living it, feeling it?

[00:36:46] Peter: Let me just challenge the word theory for a second because when you first said that, I thought, “I’m going to be a failure at this because I can’t think that I’ve ever theorized the path for myself, had a life plan.” I just stopped me cold. What I love about my whole understanding of Buddhism is that we are modeling the life of a Buddha, who demonstrates to us how we can live a noble and dignified, and helpful life. In the midst of it all, we’re all living in a peppered wind. We’re all afflicted all the time.

To me, it’s less a theory than it is an actual pedagogy of how to do it. At least I’m more comfortable with that because I’m not very good at theory.

[00:37:44] Marc: I’ll go with that. Practices to cultivate change, a way of being to cultivate change. Peter, we could go on, I feel like you and I could talk for days, and we should, I will come to visit you. I’m wondering, would you like to do a three-minute meditation as a way of ending today, just kind of something, just sitting together?

[00:38:17] Peter: Yes.

[00:38:18] Marc: We can just sit quietly. Why don’t we just stop for a minute or two, and then if there’s anything you would like to say, just as we end here today?

[00:38:27] Peter: Absolutely. I was going to say I don’t do spoken meditation. I don’t guide people, but I’m happy to sit always.

[00:38:34] Marc: Sit quietly for two minutes. Two minutes as a way of just taking all this in, taking it in, and letting it go.

[pause 00:38:49]

[00:40:23] Marc: Peter, anything– Closing words?

[00:40:26] Peter: Yes. If we think that the Buddha died 2,500 years ago we’re following a dead man. If we model the life of the Buddha in our own, Buddha is alive.

[00:40:48] Marc: Thank you. What a joy to get to hang out with you. I look forward to visiting you and look forward to reading your books.

[00:41:01] Peter: Thank you.

[00:41:02] Marc: Beautiful. Thank you so much.

[music]

[00:41:10] Voiceover: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[music]

[00:41:35] [END OF AUDIO]

The post Zen, Acting, and the Power of Ritual appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Dealing with Uncertainty

Marc sits down with his friend Leo Babauta. Leo is the founder of one of the most interesting and successful blogs on the internet called Zen Habits. He’s also the author of several books, including The Power of Less. Marc and Leo talk about meaning and meaningful work and the question how Zen practice can be integrated with, and support, our work and our lives. Leo also offers some powerful practices, especially around finding grounding in the body in the midst of uncertainty.

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST: Leo Babauta is a simplicity blogger and author. He created Zen Habits, a Top 25 blog with a million readers, which chronicles and shares what he’s learned while changing a number of habits. He’s also a best-selling author, husband, father of six children, and a vegan. In 2010 he moved from Guam to California, where he leads a simple life. A student of Zen, Leo is on a mission to help the world open through uncertainty training.

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] [music]

Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones. Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership.

In today’s episode, I’m happy to welcome my friend Leo Babauta. [00:00:30] He is the founder of one of the most interesting and successful blogs on the internet called Zen Habits. He’s also the author of several books, including The Power of Less. In our conversation we talk about meaning and meaningful work and the question of Zen.

Leo offers some powerful practices, especially around finding grounding in the body [00:01:00] in the midst of uncertainty. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the conversation. Here’s Leo.

[music]

Marc: I am so happy to be here with my friend Leo Babauta of Zen Habits fame. It’s funny, I almost introduced us as this is Zen Habits because there’s, Zen Habits, Zen Bones, Zen but [00:01:30] Leo, it’s really great to see you.

Leo Babauta: It’s great to see you. It’s been been a few years since we last met, so I’m just really happy to be here with you.

Marc: I think I last saw you as I was leaving the 300 Page Street, Zen Center building and you were sitting in the lobby.

Leo: Oh, wow. You have such a good memory. Mine is full of holes so thanks for reminding me.

Marc: Your book Less and my book Less came out within 30 days of each other, literally.

Leo: [00:02:00] Oh, is that right?

Marc: I remember my publisher calling me and saying, “You should know this,” and that was how I first learned about you and your work. This is a whole another topic, but I feel like I’ve gotten to watch you grow and mature over these last 13 years.

Leo: That’s really nice.

Marc: I hope I’ve grown and matured. I don’t see it, but I’ve certainly seen how much your writing has grown and matured. I think what we should talk about here is [00:02:30] living in an uncertain world, how to find meaning and meaningful work, and what does Zen have to do with it?

Leo: [laughs] I’d be curious to find out.

Marc: Famous Aretha Franklin talk. [laughs] Actually, I’m here today in my daughter’s guest room, and she has a Thich Nhat Hanh, his calligraphy, which says, “Don’t ignore your suffering, [00:03:00] but don’t forget to enjoy your life. Don’t ignore your suffering and don’t forget to enjoy your life.” Which is a great place maybe to start because it maybe connects uncertainty, meaning and Zen.

Leo: Oh wow. That makes a lot of sense to me. Before we actually came on here, we talked about, what we’d like to talk about, and uncertainty has been something that’s really present [00:03:30] for me personally and that I’ve been practicing with. I know it’s very in your face for a lot of people right now [laughs] in the middle of a pandemic as we recorded this people maybe in the future are out of the pandemic. The pandemic and then just world events, really, just all kinds of world events are driving up uncertainty for a lot of us.

Uncertainty, [00:04:00] in my experience, I’d love to hear what your thoughts are about it. Uncertainty is not in and of itself like a cause of suffering or a bad thing or anything to panic about. I think that the human mind, at least the way that I’ve experienced it, does turn that uncertainty into a little bit of panic or judgment or [00:04:30] frustration or resistance. We have a number of things we take from that. It’s just like this feeling of the rugs been yanked out from under us, and we don’t know what to do. We wouldn’t need to grab on to something and seek some control. It’s resulted in a lot of suffering for a lot of people, is what I found. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that as well.

Marc: Oh, definitely. I think that it’s interesting. I was just rereading [00:05:00] some of Regina Pally, the neuroscientist who wrote The Predicting Brain and how we’re wired to predict that things in the past will keep happening in the future. I think the pandemic has been like a shock to the system. The shadow side to that is, yes, I think there’s a lot of stress and anxiety. Maybe the positive [00:05:30] side is it wakes you up to like, we really don’t know. There’s a “how do we find our own sense of balance and possibility?” Even, as you were saying earlier when we were chatting, was how do we actually even find meaning and meaningful work and living a meaningful life right in the midst of uncertainty?

Leo: That’s the exciting [00:06:00] part about it. The Thich Nhat Hanh thing you shared, “Don’t ignore your suffering.” We can’t ignore the suffering that’s springing from the uncertainty. You could look at it as the flip side of it is there’s an opportunity here. Possibility is arising where people are waking up, like getting really present to the uncertainty like you can’t ignore it anymore.

Before it’s like, maybe I had some control in my life, but now it’s [00:06:30] like, “Oh, no.” Uncertainty is very, very present for me. The ways that I respond to it are also becoming much more obvious. Because that’s so clear now, like you can’t ignore any of it, we might be like, “Okay, what is there to do about this? What can I do? Is there a possibility of waking up?” Then once you become awakened to what’s going on, like, “Oh, is there anything else that I might be able to do in the middle of this?” [00:07:00] Like meaningful work.

Marc: I wonder how you, in your own life, how you practice and live with– You found a way to continue going deeper and deeper, I think, into doing meaningful work as a teacher and guide and writer. Then I also wonder, as a teacher and guide and writer, what do you find is the maybe most useful, effective way [00:07:30] to help people? How do you help others to find their own sense of meaningful work and maybe own grounding in the midst of uncertainty?

Leo: That’s so important, such important questions. The way I’ve been personally working with it is, first thing is just noticing that I’ve been unconscious for a little while, like maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, maybe a few days, maybe [00:08:00] a few [laughs] years sometimes. I’m like, “Oh yes, I’ve been just responding to things in habitual ways.” Those are always helpful to me. They’re not necessarily anything to beat myself up about or judge, and so bringing in awareness and compassion are really where I start; the starting point.

Then [00:08:30] after the compassion, I can just start to practice really getting present to the sensation of uncertainty in my body, which is, for a lot of people who maybe haven’t studied as long as you have Marc [chuckles], and practiced as long as you have, the way that they try and get present to uncertainty is in the mind where it’s like, “Okay, here’s all the things going on.” If you ask them to get present to it, they’ll be like, [00:09:00] “Oh yes, I have to do all these things, and here’s what I need to next.” And so I really invite people, and for myself, I invite myself to drop into the body and get really present to the sensations, like: where is it located? How does it feel?

Then it’s just sensation. It’s not anything that I need to necessarily get rid of or fix or panic about, avoid, or judge, or any of that kind of stuff. “Oh, it’s just bodily sensation of uncertainty.” [00:09:30] There’s external events that might be triggering that, but in the end it’s just an experience. I just get present to that and see it as a practice ground. Sometimes breath helps me to relax with it, and then I can even bring some kindness and friendliness and start to shift my relationship to it. I could even find in the middle of it some transcendence. [00:10:00] Some openness and emptiness and love. You don’t necessarily need to get those things. It’s not like those are the solution to uncertainty, but it’s just like they can become available.

Marc: I really appreciate those practices to start with the body. To just notice these are sensations, whether these are fears or concerns or worries. [00:10:30] I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed this for myself, that it’s easy to either catastrophize things or to ignore what’s happening and to say everything’s okay. It’s interesting. Someone asked me the other day, I had lunch with an old friend. She asked me, “Well, what is Zen or what’s the core of what you’re wanting to do in this Zen Bones podcast?” [00:11:00] I said, “It’s something to do with living more in reality.”

When I notice I’m catastrophizing or I notice I’m ignoring, I’m like, “Well, wait a minute. What’s actually happening?” As you were saying, I think starting with the body, starting with the breath, and just noticing what’s actually happening, that’s such a great starting point, and just [00:11:30] again noticing for ourselves. One of the things I’m often saying to myself as I’m doing things, as I’m worrying or catastrophizing or ignoring, I notice it, and it’s like, “Oh, I’m doing that thing that I’m often teaching other people not to do. Isn’t that interesting?”

Leo: [laughs] It’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing that. I so love your intention [00:12:00] here. It’s such a delight to be able to talk with someone who not only has a similar haircut and bushy eyebrows like me, but [laughs] is up to some good in the world. I really love what you’re doing. Same thing. I find myself engaging in catastrophizing or ignoring. Sometimes there’s a fun trick of doing both at the same time, [laughs] [00:12:30] but I definitely do those things. It’s like we’re all humans, right? No one’s above all of this. If someone thinks they’re above all of it, they’re probably ignoring some stuff.

I just like, “Oh, okay, yes, I’m doing it too just like everyone else is.” Then what I try and do is let go of my judgment [00:13:00] of that. Sometimes there’s a judgment, like, “Oh, I should be above this. I should have learned all this already.” I teach it. I’ve been practicing for years but no, there’s just like, “That’s my humanity showing itself.” Then the really fun thing for me is, could I use that to connect me to everybody else who’s feeling similar body sensations, similarly catastrophizing. [00:13:30] Then just feel love for myself and for them.

Marc: It’s interesting in some way, as you started with the body and coming to the body, which I think is a practice in a way- a practice of security, feeling secure. Then what I was hearing you say is then, it’s kind of a [00:14:00] practice of perspective-taking. Sometimes I think of it as these two tensions because perspective-taking is something we do. It’s more logical in our heads, in our minds, but it calms the catastrophizing or the ignoring. I think there’s something [00:14:30] about the importance of keep coming back to finding, building a sense of security, a sense of groundedness in order to be able to take.

It’s hard to start with perspective-taking often. First, we need a little bit of grounding, a little bit of something physical. That’s to me, something about why I often [00:15:00] keep coming back to the importance of meditation practice, is that physical, that physical, what’s happening in the body. Then to be able to, in the midst of uncertainty, in the midst of what’s happening in our lives, to just have enough to be able to do that and not be completely tossed around by whatever’s happening, lost, like you’re lost.

Leo: Lost. [laughs] [00:15:30] It’s interesting that you use the word grounded because I also feel uncertainty as groundlessness. It’s like no solid ground under your feet and so how do you find ground in the middle of groundlessness? That’s just being with whatever arises in your body in the middle of the groundlessness is a grounding practice. It’s a fascinating idea. [00:16:00]

Then your second question was how do I help others with it? How do I teach people? One thing I’ve learned the hard way is you can’t just try and force people to change or see things. I’m really good at pointing out how other people are catastrophizing, and they don’t seem to like it. [laughs] [00:16:30] What I’ve been doing is really – one is to share as I just have, how it’s showing up in my life and invite others to look for themselves. Is there anything there that they see?

Another thing that has really helped is I invite people in through things that they already want. For example, in my website and stuff that I offer, [00:17:00] we do a lot of work around habits, changing your habits, which is like that’s definitely a way to get some control and groundedness. People want that. They want to change their health habits. They want to start meditating. I find that to be like a doorway for people to enter in and take a look at, “Oh, what is this for? Why do you want this? Why are you doing the other things?”

Take a deeper look [00:17:30] because that’s what they’re already looking for, is like, “Okay, I need these things so that my life can feel under control.” I teach from that place of like, “Okay, let’s take a look and see what’s coming underneath your current habits and underneath the difficulty to change to your new habits and underneath your desire to create new ones.” That’s one place that I’ve been helping people with.

Then the other one is meaningful [00:18:00] work. You’re here launching a podcast. You’ve launched a podcast in the middle of a lot of uncertainty. I find that really inspiring. There are people who are saying, “You know what? I do want to do something that feels meaningful to me, bringing my heart and gifts into the world and helping others who are suffering,” and yet they really struggle. We all really struggle in the middle of uncertainty.

So that’s where I’ve been meeting [00:18:30] people. It’s like, “Okay, you have something you want to do. These are fellow Bodhisattvas really to try to alleviate the suffering of all beings and bring compassion. Really boundless compassion is what I’ve seen from people. Then, what is shutting that down? Some of the catastrophizing and hiding or ignoring or avoiding that people have or seeking of control and [00:19:00] perfectionism. We bring in psychology, some of our very human responses to this uncertainty is they come up and they get in the way of us doing our meaningful work.

I’ve been meeting people there just like, “Let’s take a look at what’s getting in the way there.” I really find it fascinating, and I really love helping people to – the way I [00:19:30] phrase it is train in the middle of uncertainty, and then fall in love with the uncertainty. That’s at least a start to the answer of your question.

Marc: No, totally. You’ve used the word compassion a few times, and I think at least once, you mentioned the word Bodhisattva, comes from Buddhist. It’s a Buddhist word, but it’s about someone who- [00:20:00] beings are numberless. I vow to save them, and delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. I think we all swim together in this sea of uncertainty. We’re all swimming together in the sea of uncertainty. To me it’s like how do we train ourselves to be that person on the boat who can be calm enough to be helping others? [00:20:30]

I love that as I think of that particular image of being in a boat of uncertainty where it’s easy to be freaking out because where are we? There’s some leaks in this boat! How can I stay grounded enough and have enough of a sense of perspective to take effective action and to help calm other people down. A lot of the work that I’m doing is [00:21:00] in the business world. I think being able to do these practices of calming one’s self and perspective-taking with compassion, is in itself a kind of teaching, and it’s somewhat contagious. To me this is one of the things that I find in terms of doing meaningful work, it’s so core to that I have to keep working on myself. [00:21:30]

I was saying this earlier, I’ve been watching you. There’s something wonderful about seeing people like you grow and deepen and develop over the years. I think it’s great that you started using the word Zen. There’s probably no accident. Even before it was just, I imagine, there was something that really [00:22:00] attracted you about that word and that tradition. Then over the years, you’ve been really just deepening and deepening your own practice and the whole time, helping others.

Leo: Thanks for reflecting that back to me. The growth and the deepening, I still have a ways to go, but I really have been enjoying the journey so far. When I started Zen Habits, I think it was 2007 [00:22:30] I still don’t know, but I definitely didn’t know anything about what Zen really was. For me it was just a word of like, peace. It still is that, and it’s grown and deepened for me. The frustrating thing about it, I’ll tell you as a student talking to a teacher, is every time I think I understand what Zen is, someone yanks the rug up from underneath me. I still don’t understand it. [laughs]

Marc: It’s beautiful that [00:23:00] we both are practicing in the tradition of Shunryu Suzuki and Sōtō Zen where the emphasis is on beginner’s mind, and the emphasis is on sincerity. I love this particular school which emphasizes not knowing. The practice of not knowing. I sometimes think that Zen could use a little more knowing from time to time. Something about [00:23:30] cultivating the mind of a beginner, I think, keeps us deepening our practice and deepening our ability to live in this uncertain world.

Leo: That’s a fascinating thing that you’ve brought up, the knowing versus the not knowing, because I think for me the power of the not knowing has been letting go of what I think I know if the thing that I think I know is causing me suffering. I just like, “Oh, I thought I knew who I [00:24:00] was, and that thinking has caused me some suffering.” So letting go of that. If you have some knowing that relieves suffering or that helps you to navigate the uncertainty, then I’d say that sounds helpful. [laughs] Hold onto it as long as you need it.

Marc: It’s interesting that Zen emphasizes kind of a precision. There’s a precision especially in the forms which I think can be a way of bringing us [00:24:30] back to what’s happening in the body. How am I moving? How am I walking? What’s happening in my body as I’m walking into the meditation hall?

Leo: I resist forms very strongly. [laughs] I’ll admit that. Confess to it.

Marc: I think in some way that’s almost the point. [00:25:00] I think one of the great things about meditation practice is to become more and more aware and open to our own resistance. In the hero’s journey, that model, the first step in the hero’s journey is starting out and this great attitude of finding my way home, this kind of way-seeking mind. Then, the second step on the hero’s journey is resistance [00:25:30] or not wanting to go there since it’s a little scary. It’s opening up to this uncertain world, and then feeling our resistance and the fear. Then, how do we work with that to do meaningful work and to keep doing meaningful work?

Leo: That’s a beautiful way to bring it back. Actually, could I speak for a minute about resistance to meaningful work?

Marc: Please.

Leo: That resistance, that’s the very thing that people are struggling with, [00:26:00] the people I’ve been working with, when they’re trying to do some kind of meaningful work. Whether it’s write a book that helps other people or start a nonprofit or launch a business or beautiful podcast. They have this great intention, something they want to manifest but then they find that when they have to actually do the work or put something out there, there’s a resistance. [00:26:30] It’s almost like a wall that shows up for them.

The work that I’ve been doing is really helping them to face that resistance as I’m doing in my Zen studies. Face that resistance and then, really bring awareness and compassion and some of this bodily practice as well, and use the resistance as the practice ground. It’s fascinating to help others while I’m also working with my own resistance as a student. [00:27:00] What I do with them, and for anyone who’s listening to this, if you want to practice with your resistance with your meaningful work, is we set some kind of intention like, “I want to create this,” and usually, by a certain date. That really gives a form, really, so it’s like, “Okay, I’ve created that.”

Then, actually, the part that they’ll really resist is – that’s already a place of resistance for a lot of people. But if they can do that, then there’s setting some milestones, [00:27:30] and then setting up some actual sessions where they sit down and focus. Those sessions where there might be, let’s say 30 minutes a day or an hour a day, not a lot of time, but carve that time out and then commit yourself to it and people will resist that just like they resist meditating. It’s like they resist all the – I resist my [unintelligible 00:27:54]. They will find anything else to do. All of a sudden, [00:28:00] their kitchen needs to be cleaned, or they’ll go into it and then, really struggle and then, let themselves out of that uncomfortable place of not knowing.

The support I give them really is to, how do we keep coming back to that? First of all. Second of all, could we take a look at what showed up when you didn’t do it? Or when you did do it and you really struggled there? Then, by taking a look at it, that gives them a place to practice the next time. Then, they go into the next focus [00:28:30] session just like a meditation, like, “Oh, okay. When this is showing up, that’s actually not a problem, that’s what we expect to show up.” That’s the thing that we want to work with or bring awareness to, and even bring some love to and compassion to. That’s the kind of work that I’ve been doing with people, and it’s really fascinating. People have done some really amazing work there.

Marc: That’s great. I’m often saying that deadlines are my friend. [00:29:00] People sometimes ask, “Well, how do you write books?” for example. The two things I do, which I think are two things that you just named, one, is set clear goals, clear deadlines but also find support. I can’t write a book by myself. I need other people too. I need an editor. I need [00:29:30] people to read it and give me feedback, and it’s that combination. Not only for me, is it a deadline but it’s telling someone else, “I’m going to get you these chapters by these dates.”

Similarly, I’ve been stalling in some way. I’ve been thinking about doing this podcast for years, but it’s like what’s making it happen [00:30:00] was putting dates on the calendar and building a team of people-

Leo: That’s right.

Marc: -around me to help, like Sebastian who’s here. There’s something about taking that idea and intention into action, into the world, and then noticing what happens.

Leo: [00:30:30] I’m so glad to hear you reflect that, because it’s probably the most powerful lesson I’ve learned in the last few years, is… I often have this idea that I can do everything on my own. One of the things with my Zen study is, okay, I’m going to meditate on my own. I’m going to sew on my own. I’m going to do all of this stuff on my own. The humbling thing has been the realization that I can’t. [00:31:00] Often, I’ll judge that there’s something wrong with me because I’m not doing it, but when I finally just surrender to that and confess that I can’t do it on my own, what happens is, I open up to the possibility of getting support, being supported by others or doing it in community, the Sangha idea in zen.

What I’ve been encouraging people to do is do the same thing, even if they’re not Zen students. Could we do this in [00:31:30] community or in connection? A lot of times these focus sessions that I talked about, the most powerful ones are actually when we jump on a Zoom call and do it together. We’ll do it on mute, but we’ll be doing our writing or whatever we’re doing in community. Then having a review or some kind of accountability or some kind of call where we all talk about what’s going on is another way that we do that. Every time that we’re struggling on our own, how [00:32:00] can we get supported? How can we do it in community or in connection?

Marc: Well, maybe this is a good place to bring this– I hope this is part one of many, many conversations, Leo.

Leo: I would love that.

Marc: Anything you’d like to do or say just as a way of ending our time here now? Anything you’d like to offer?

Leo: I think the only thing I’d like to offer is wherever you are [00:32:30] right now with the uncertainty that’s been arising in the world and in yourself, in your life, first of all, just know that you’re not alone. We’re all in this together suffering or experiencing this together. Second of all, encouragement for compassion for yourself. I’m talking about this expense of doing meaningful work for others, but really, the place [00:33:00] to start is with yourself. How can you have compassion for yourself? How can you take care of yourself, so that you can then become resilient enough to go out and do meaningful work?

My encouragement to anyone listening or watching is, can you just start with compassion for yourself, taking care of yourself, and getting yourself to the place where you might even consider meaningful work or facing any kind of other uncertainty other than what you’re already facing. [00:33:30] Sending love out through the interwebs right now [laughs] to anyone who’s facing these things.

Marc: Thank you, Leo, and thank you for all of the great work that you’ve been doing over these many years that has touched a lot of people. Really appreciate it and look forward to more. Do take care. We’ll see you.

Leo: Thank you, Marc. Thanks for your great work.

Marc: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided [00:34:00] meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:34:22] [END OF AUDIO]

 

The post Dealing with Uncertainty appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Wayfinding and Navigating Your Path

Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey is a cultural anthropologist, and the first female fellow and Polynesian explorer of the National Geographic Society. Marc and Elizabeth discuss the importance of being your authentic self, and the path and power of wayfinding. They also talk about a favorite saying of one of Elizabeth’s indigenous mentors: “we have lots of clocks but little time.” Elizabeth offers a song/prayer of healing.

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST: Elizabeth Lindsey, PhD is a cultural anthropologist and an award-winning filmmaker who travels to the world’s most remote regions to protect indigenous knowledge. She is an advocate for social, environmental, and cultural justice. She is also the first female fellow and Polynesian explorer of the National Geographic Society.

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to ZenBones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why ZenBones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting. Now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership.  

I’m excited to introduce my guest, Elizabeth Lindsey, anthropologist and National Geographic explorer, a terrific conversation where we discuss the practice of wayfinding. The depth, the spiritual and practical way of finding your way in the world. We talk a little bit about time, in which she describes some conversations with a indigenous teacher who says, “You Westerners have many clocks, but not much time,” and do stay till the end when she does this amazing prayer for wellbeing. Please join me as I have a conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey. 

[music] 

[00:01:18] Marc Lesser: This is Marc Lesser, and I am really thrilled to be here today with Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey. Elizabeth, great to see you. 

[00:01:27] Elizabeth Lindsey: Oh, Marc, it’s a pleasure to be with you. 

[00:01:30] Marc Lesser: Well, I want to jump right in with I’ve been really enjoying watching the TED Talk that you did in Maui, and I found myself taking notes and writing things down like, “We forgot who we are,” and, “Deep knowing,” and, “Find your way home.” I also loved your talking about a indigenous elder who said to you that we, people in our modern world have a lot of watches, but no time. I know this is- a lot of the work that you do is bringing this indigenous wisdom, ancient wisdom into your life and into the world. I’m curious about how you work with that and also how you practice and how you work with this question of having time. 

[00:02:37] Elizabeth Lindsey: It’s something that is a continual process for me, because when I met this chief on this very small island, about the size of an average American parking and shopping complex- I was racing toward an end of the island so that I could meet my crew. It was my first expedition and I wanted to make sure that everyone was safe and racing down this very small and narrow path. This man walked toward me, so serenely and nobly, as I looked like I was a bat racing out of the front gate. I was coming apart at the seams which metaphorically was very interesting to me because there was so much serenity and groundedness in this man, and I was the complete opposite. 

When he looked at me and he said, “Dr. Lindsey, why do you go so fast?” It stopped me. I started to explain that my crew was waiting for me, and I didn’t want anyone to wait on me. It was as if all of my explanation was just washing over him and none of it was really landing because none of it made sense to him. As I saw [unintelligible 00:03:52] to me either. Then he looked down at the ground and then looked at me and shook his head and said, “You all have watches, but you have no time.” Marc, since that moment, it was one of those pivotal moments in my life because I realized that so often I’m racing through getting my email done, my to-do list onto the next thing, not present in anything that I’m doing. 

That one experience brings me back to center, and so where am I now? How do I bring the best of who I am to this moment, because when I’m not present, I serve no one. That was a great teaching. It continues to be a great teaching. Though I’m not doing a lot of traveling right now because of the pandemic I found myself racing through airports, and then I’d hear his voice in my head, and I’d start to slow down, and I’d just pause long enough to take a deep breath and exhale and return to center. It’s a lesson that is continually teaching me. 

[00:05:10] Marc Lesser: That’s beautiful. I think that’s one of the enormous challenges of our life, how our relationship with time– It’s interesting. It’s also one of the– It’s funny, the things I think of as famous are famous in a very narrow world. In the world of zen practice, there’s a story that basically ends with finding the one who’s not busy, finding the one who is the punchline of a long story. I think there’s a sense of, that it’s not about not doing things. It’s not about being- I think the interesting question and challenge is how can we be engaged, active, even productive, effective, without losing ourselves? 

[00:06:17] Elizabeth Lindsey: It’s a very good question. I find that in my experience, I’m much more effective when I am truly present to this experience, for example, being with you. My prayer is to listen very deeply, not only to what you are asking or discussing in any moment, but to the spaces between your words because only then can I serve you. 

[00:06:51] Marc Lesser: That’s great. It’s interesting, what it actually means to listen. The amazing ability we have to listen on so many different levels as you say, the listening on the spaces in between, listening for connection, listening for openness, for possibility. 

[00:07:24] Elizabeth Lindsey: It’s really true because our deepest connection- I was with an elder in Sardinia some time ago. She was 114. I asked her through a translator how she remains so vital at 114 years old. Without hesitation, she said through the translator, “I belong.” It was all about connection, a deep connection. 

[00:07:54] Marc Lesser: I’m curious what your thoughts about daily practice and meditation practice, I think of that in that so many people when I bring up this question about focus and a different relationship with time, and I suggest that- I think it can be important, useful to have some way of stepping out of the stream of our busy daily lives, whether you call it meditation or reflection. I’m often quoting the writer Yuval Noah Harari, who wrote these two bestselling books. One is called Sapiens, and the other is called Homo Deus. Beautiful, really interesting history books. 

He has a perspective on history about looking through the lens of fiction and how humans, somehow something happened to the human brain that made us be able to communicate with each other globally, but having lost sight of what’s real and what’s fictional. In any case, he wrote a third book called 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The 21st lesson is meditation. He mentions that he spends two hours a day in meditation practice and that he couldn’t have written these books without that practice. Now, I was like, “Wow, this is great.” 

I think to what you’re saying, that by having some way to cultivate more presence we can actually be more effective. This is something that I think you have to experience it. I noticed there’s a lot of skepticism about– What do you mean by that? 

[00:10:02] Elizabeth Lindsey: Right. It’s interesting because I spent so much time in very remote parts of the world. My focus, the focus of my research and much of my work is around an ancient practice of wayfinding. What wayfinding means is to gain our bearings and the way that they do it on the ocean, for example, the wayfinders in the Pacific would sail across thousands of miles of open ocean without the use of maths or instruments. The way that we physically wayfind is we synthesize all incoming data and information to gain our bearings. We’re using pattern recognition. 

When we truly become masterful at wayfinding, we go to the intersection of the longitude of the mind and the latitude of the heart, and where the two intersect is the still point. The most masterful wayfinders throughout the world that I have met and I have spent time with, they find that still point, whether they call it meditation or reflection or contemplation, doesn’t really matter what the words are that they use, but it’s a necessary part of wayfinding because they believe that that is where our internal guidance system is and our inner compass exists. The answers that we seek are there at that cross-section between the mind and the heart. 

[00:11:43] Marc Lesser: That’s beautiful. I think there’s something about even opening to the possibility that we can all be wayfinders, that we all have this deep inner intuition. I think we all realize the heart, the power of our heart. It’s interesting in a lot of the work that I think we both do, is working with organizations and with people who are actively wanting to solve real problems and make a better world or maybe even starting– It’s interesting, I was thinking of– I think it’s hard to know, does it start with the individual or does it start with our community and support? 

There’s the individual work, there’s the cultural work of our organizations and there’s how we can have even greater influence. So much of it, I think is the need for more heart, the need for more– I think we still suffer from old, old assumptions that heart gets in the way of business or getting things done, it’s all about the head and drive. I think we’re in the midst of a great turning there, I think and hope. 

[00:13:25] Elizabeth Lindsey: I think a turning and a returning, because these ancient civilizations understood the necessity to bring the two together so that we can– In our modern day world, we prize the mind over the heart, we marginalize the heart and we dismiss it so easily. Yet, science validates the fact that all of the incoming data into our system comes through the heart, then is rapidly transmitted to the brain. With that, it speaks volumes about how important the heart is. Even further, these cultures understood the intelligence of our systems and the necessity that everything is so interconnected, that you can’t separate one from the other, so our knowing becomes very holistic. 

It’s interesting because the more I work with organizations around the world, I am seeing the shift occurring in their leadership. The fact is, all of us are wayfinders, not all of us realize that we are. The question that I’m often asked is- especially right now with the complex challenges that we face at a global scale, how do we navigate these unprecedented times? How do we navigate this complexity? How are we able to find safe harbors? People are seeking stability, certainty, security and organizations as well. Within organizations, the leaders are wayfinders, they must be wayfinders, navigators for their companies. 

Oftentimes I’m asked, “Help me get from where I currently am to where I need to be.” For me as a modern-day wayfinder, it’s essential that they’re able to understand that you cannot do it simply with the mind or with reason and logic. It requires instinct and intuition. When you bring the two together, you’re far more powerful and far more effective. To dismiss the heart is really a travesty in many respects. 

[00:15:55] Marc Lesser: Yes. In a way, it’s so obvious, the concept that you just named of being aware of where you are and where you are wanting to be. Again, that can be from solving climate change to being better at working with conflict in yourself. I think when we step into those gaps- there’s a different language, some people call them creative gaps or creative tension, that it’s uncomfortable when we realize we’re in that sea, it’s a bit unknown. Our emotions, our heart is there and I think there’s a tendency in our culture especially to either ignore it or suppress it or get all embroiled. What I see a lot in organizations is people getting very embroiled in that sea of emotions, and the culture becomes a culture of frustration. I’m often finding myself thinking that with frustration is [inaudible 00:17:35]. 

[00:17:38] Elizabeth Lindsey: [laughs] The frustration, when we really look, when we unpack it, and it is such a drain on our precious life-force. The beautiful thing about wayfinding, whether we’re doing it on the ocean, we look at life in terms of waves and particles. My mentor was able to go into a room of thousands of people and he would read them weather conditions, because he was so masterful on the ocean. What happens is, he would recognize a lot of fear that we then name as other things, frustration, resistance, challenge, whatever it is. 

What he would always say is, “You cannot become a master unless you’re willing to lean into the storm. Do not run from it because fair weather will not make you a master, lean into it.” It requires the daring to say, one, I feel lost or two, I don’t know how to get from where I am to where I want to be. There is a power in feeling that degree of feeling loss, I believe. It breaks, it dismantles these narratives and identities and allow something else to emerge when we’re willing to say, “I feel lost right now,” or, “I feel vulnerable and I don’t know how to find my way,” suddenly something is birthed that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. 

[00:19:17] Marc Lesser: Yes, that’s beautiful. It’s interesting. I think of it also as a practice, one of the things- people come to contemplative practice or meditation practice. There’s something we want, there’s some idea, something we want or we want less stress or different strategies for dealing with anxiety or we want to be better leaders. To me, the practice as you’re saying is to be willing to be lost or to be willing to not know. Right in the midst of our grief and pain and joy and possibility, that sea. I love your image of the reading people, tasting people’s flavors as a way of opening and learning and being curious. 

[00:20:35] Elizabeth Lindsey: I mean, can you imagine, because our experiences are dynamic. We’re dynamic, so we’re constantly shifting, just like waves and frequency. When you’re able to go into a room and you’re able to read and really become- one of the most important parts of wayfinding is this heightened state of awareness. Because that’s the only way a navigator can actually sail. For a very short time, I had the privilege of living with a tribe in the Andaman Sea who are seeing nomads. They’re nomads of the ocean, but they fascinated me because during the 2004 tsunami that killed- and I mean, it devastated Southeast Asia, but it killed hundreds of thousands of people that day. 

This small tribe of 2,000 people didn’t even sustain injury. As an anthropologist, I wanted to know what happened, how they were able to do this and protect themselves and their community. What I learned was that the morning of the tsunami, a few of them had gone ashore to go and gather food to bring back for the rest of the members of their community. In this group was an elder. When they went into the forest to gather food, he immediately realized the birds were not singing. He didn’t know what it meant, but he knew that this was an important sign that they needed to pay attention to. 

He yelled to everyone to get to higher ground immediately. Now, the people who were in their boats on the water, going back to pattern recognition, recognized that the dolphins go into shallow water at this point of the day to rest. They saw the dolphins racing out to deeper ocean. They knew there was a break in the pattern, and they followed, they raced out after the dolphins. The point of all of this is when we begin to see, to really hone our awareness. I believe that meditation and contemplation helps us do that. It cultivates a more subtle and refined state of awareness that we start to recognize things in our lives so that we can be aware that when something happens and when a change and shift occurs, that it means something. 

In today’s world, that could be the volatility of the financial markets. Organizations need to pay attention to this so that they can understand, and anticipate what may happen in the supply chain. For us as individuals, we recognize interest rates are rising, and we need to be cognizant of the fact that that’s going to mean higher prices for us. These are the ways that we wayfind in the modern world. 

[00:23:55] Marc Lesser: There’s so many things that have the unintended consequences of things, like greenhouse gases or guns in our country, and the need for responsiveness and wise action now. Bringing that radical, related radical, but also very simple relatedness that you’re describing. 

[00:24:30] Elizabeth Lindsey: Yes. A deep interconnectedness, this recognition that everything has consequences and that our actions, one of the most beautiful metaphors is that a canoe represents when we’re sailing, the resources on our canoes are finite, and that we are only as safe as the weakest member on the canoe, but how one person uses those resources affects the whole, and I would offer that the planet is our canoe. How one country, or one region of the world, or one community, or an individual uses these resources affects all of us. 

[00:25:18] Marc Lesser: I’m curious, Elizabeth, given, what a world we are living in right now, there’s no shortage of problems and things to be, whether it’s angry about or frustrated about or– What is it that gives you hope in this world now? 

[00:25:45] Elizabeth Lindsey: It’s a wonderful question that you ask, and I can answer it in this way. When I was a very young girl, my parents were educators, and they left my sisters and me in the care of three old Hawaiian women. This was in the very early 60s. The women predicted these times, and they said this, “There will come a time in the world that there will be many troubles. There will be troubles in the environment with storms and radical shifts.” They were very specific. They also predicted that in the halls of big business and politics, there would be great instability and conflict. 

They said, “It will take wisdom from the far edges of the earth to return the world to balance.” At seven, they predicted that I would, that we always have choice, but that my life would, or could involve going to these far away places to help keep this wisdom alive. The part of their prophecy and their prediction that I want to share in answer to your question is this. They said, “As you travel, it may feel like a lonely road, but you will look into the eyes of seeming strangers, and you will find your ohana.” In Hawaiian, that means family. It will take all of you to return the world to balance. 

Mark, I believe that that’s true. For each of us, as we see what’s going on in the world, and we want change, real change can only happen when we shift and we make those changes within ourselves. I mean, only then do we really serve. When I see that my first and primary responsibility is to address any conflict I feel internally, then I can feel greater compassion for everyone I meet, because I understand that war or the conflict is always within. It’s a beautiful, beautiful question that you ask, but this is the way that together we make a change, we bring change about, and together we will bring the world back into balance. 

[00:28:10] Marc Lesser: It’s beautiful. Thank you. I wonder if there’s something you would like to do, maybe lead a short practice of some kind, a guided meditation. I can’t ask you to sing, even though I’ve heard you sing and perform beautifully, but anything that you’d like to offer just as a way of helping to bring people present, right now. 

[00:28:45] Elizabeth Lindsey: Oh, that’s so beautiful. You know what? This is something from the elders in Hawaii, and it’s a chant. What it says is, “Grant that I may hear beyond my physical ability to hear, that I may see beyond my physical sight and that I may know the heart, the wisdom of my heart.” It was a chant that was composed by a magnificent hula master named [unintelligible 00:29:19]. This is a tribute to her, and this is an offering to your audience. 

[music] 

[00:30:00] Marc Lesser: Wow, thank you. Thank you, and what a delight to see you, spend time with you today. [unintelligible 00:30:12] 

[00:30:13] Elizabeth Lindsey: Thank you, Marc, thank you for inviting me to your show. It’s such a joy, one, to see you. I’ve always admired and loved you. I’m so thrilled to be supporting your new show and wish you great success. 

[00:30:31] Marc Lesser: Thank you. Where can people find you, who want to find out more about what you’re doing in your great work? 

[00:30:38] Elizabeth Lindsey: Oh, my goodness. Well, thank you for asking. Marc, my whole prayer is simply to serve. Well, I haven’t been active so much on social media, I’m becoming more active on LinkedIn. They could find me at Elizabeth Lindsey, or at my website. I really want to engage because we’re at a time in the world that people simply want to be acknowledged, and feel like they are part of a fabric, of a humanities fabric and I want to make sure that they’re seen and acknowledged in every way. 

[00:31:22] Marc Lesser: Thank you so much for being who you are, and all of the beautiful energy, healing energy, and presence that you bring into the world. I hope to see you again soon. 

[00:31:35] Elizabeth Lindsey: Thank you, Marc. Best wishes to you. Aloha. 

[music] 

[00:31:43] Marc Lesser: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself to influence your organization and to help change the world. Thank you for listening. 

[music] 

[00:32:07] [END OF AUDIO] 

The post Wayfinding and Navigating Your Path appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Enjoy Your Life: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler

Marc begins with a guided meditation, followed by a short talk on impermanence as a path toward joy. “The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life” according to the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki. Recognizing and embodying the fleeting nature of our lives is a way to practice with finding more appreciation and joy in everything we experience. The episode closes with a bi-weekly Zen Puzzler: Where is the place where there is no hot and no cold?

 

 

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to ZenBones: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why ZenBones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting. Now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership.

Welcome to a practice episode called Enjoy Your Life, in which instead of an interview, it will be a series of practices, a guided meditation followed by a short talk in which the themes will be Enjoy Your Life.

In the talk, the emphasis is on embracing impermanence and how through entering the evanescence of life is the way to find a more sustainable enjoyment. Then I’ll be offering a Zen puzzler, which I’m really excited about — a Zen question or “Koan” or a puzzle that we can bring into our daily lives. This week, the puzzler is: Where is the place where there is no hot and no cold? I hope you enjoy this episode.

[music]

Let’s start with a short meditation. I’m going to begin by getting us started by ringing my trustee bell. This bell has been around the world many, many times. I have no idea where it came from. I think it was back when I was living at the Tassajara Mountain Center, which is now more than 40 years ago.

[bell ringing]

This practice of pausing, this practice of stopping, see if it’s possible. Can you pause right now? Can you stop right now and notice? Notice your body. A simple way to do that is to bring attention to your shoulders, relaxing the shoulders, relaxing the muscles, the upper back, opening the shoulders and chest, and allowing breathing. Noticing any place where you might be constricting and seeing if you can give that place just a little more attention. Relaxing the shoulders, relaxing the upper back, letting the muscles in the face soften, relaxing the jaw. Maybe just taking in the experience, your experience of the whole body, softening the belly, and some energy in the spine. I think of this practice in a way as cultivating being both completely relaxed and completely alert at the same time.

What a great way of being for almost everything in our lives and so cultivating, this way of being relaxed, nothing to accomplish, and nothing to change. What a relief, just feeling that sense of letting down our burden. We don’t need to accomplish anything, change anything, and at the same time, this feeling of aliveness, and awakeness energy.

Then I would invite you to gently bring attention to the breath. And just noticing the miracle that we so easily ignore or take for granted. Can you bring a childlike quality to bringing awareness to this breath right now? This breath that has never happened before and will never happen again. It’s fleeting. The nowness, entering this very moment, being curious about the breath. Again, we’re not going to stop our thinking minds, let thoughts come and let them go. Particularly letting go of the thoughts about our to-do lists, our comparisons, and judgments. Notice them. Enjoy them, whatever comes up. See if you can be curious and enjoy getting to be more familiar with the body, with the breath, with thinking mind. Can you enjoy and appreciate all of it? Whatever it is, whether there’s sadness or longing or calm and settled or whatever’s there. Even all of the unnamable feelings and thoughts, let them come, let them go, appreciate them and enjoy them as much as possible. Noticing the breath in the body and your experience of being here alive, relaxed and alert, curious and filled with appreciation, and keeping it simple. Breathing in and breathing out.

Let’s sit quietly together for 30 seconds of silence right now.

[pause 00:08:35]

Amazing. In just half of a minute, the whole world is right there in our breath, in our experience. My hope is that you can take this way of being, this state of mind into your day, into everything that you do. Relaxed, alert, enjoying each moment even the difficulties and challenges, especially. You can always come back, even during your work, daily activities, you can always come back to the body and the breath. [silence] Breathing in, and breathing out, [bell ringing] and gently coming back and bringing attention to being here. Thank you.

[music]

I just want to talk this morning about the practice of enjoyment, the practice of enjoying our lives. I was thinking about that I recently returned from a trip to Montana where I was visiting my daughter and her family. There was something really poignant about being with my three-year-old grandson. When I’m with him, I can’t help but wonder how much of his life will I be alive for. How much of his life will I be alive for? In some way, this question is barely conscious and at the same time, very much in the forefront of my thoughts when I’m with him.

There’s something about feeling the evanescence of things, the impermanence of things which can bring up a sense of deep appreciation and actually a sense of joy. I’ve more been taking on this practice of seeing things as what if this were the last time that I was with my grandson.

We can do this practice of — I think of it as the last time practice. Because we never know, when it might be the last time that we’re doing anything that we’re with our partners, or our children, or our parents, or whatever it is, but just thinking of it that way.

I think of Shunryu Suzuki who is the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center. Though I never met him, I came to Zen Center just a few years after he died. I still think of him as one of my core teachers. One of the things that he says in a talk entitled Enjoy Your Life, he says, “The evanescence of things is the reason why you enjoy your life.” I actually needed to look up the word evanescence and saw that it means the quality of things disappearing.

Right now, reality is that everything is disappearing. In fact, everything is in the process of appearing and disappearing, including the garbage trucks right outside my door right now which I think we should keep those in, not edit those out because they’re beautiful. My grandson gets so excited when the garbage trucks come on Friday morning, we go and find them, and he’s like he has just discovered the most incredible jewels that exist standing by the window and just in awe watching the garbage trucks.

When I’m with him, one of his favorite things to do is together, we watch garbage truck videos. If you haven’t done it, I highly recommend. They’re called Thrash and Trash. [chuckles] Anyhow, this quality of appreciating everything. Somehow, we human beings have been given the gift of awareness of time. Somehow, we seem to pay attention to time in a way that can either trap us or free us. We’re capable of seeing, feeling, and living our lives with this quality of evanescence, this quality of appreciating this moment or we can be caught. We can let the sense of our own experience of time trap us and rule us.

This practice, I think part of ZenBones ancient practice for modern times, is training ourselves to be more aware of how we live in time. This practice can provide us with the courage to be our full selves, to appreciate every aspect of our lives, and to work for a greater and greater sense of acceptance and true inner peace.

In this talk that I’m referencing by Shunryu Suzuki, he says “The only way is to enjoy your life.” That is why we practice meditation, that is why we practice mindfulness practice. The most important thing is to be able to enjoy your life without being fooled by things. The most important thing is to enjoy our lives without being fooled. I think time and how we swim in time is one of the things that can really fool us. It’s noticing that, how we can both, of course we have to swim and live effectively in the world of time, and at the same time, can (we) swim and live effectively in a more sense of timelessness.

The point is to see if we can enjoy our lives even when things are challenging and things are messed up but seeing the impermanence of things. Of course, enjoying our lives doesn’t mean to ignore the challenges, the wars, the injustices, the climate crisis. We need to face these challenges and feel the pain of it, but at the same time, it doesn’t mean that we can’t find enjoyment even in the midst of grieving, even in the midst of pain and difficulty. Enjoying our lives does not mean to live in denial, doesn’t mean to let go of the difficulties, but to notice again and again that there are events and there’s how we interpret these events.

I really look forward to as much as possible, continuing to enjoy time with my grandson. He loves hearing stories, especially about my life. One of his favorite stories that I seem to tell him over and over again is the time when a horse got stuck in the mud. He says, “Grandpa, tell me the story about the horse stuck in the mud.” This was a real event when I was a young Zen student living at Green Gulch Farm. Someone ran up to me and said, “There’s a horse stuck in the mud,” and I said “That’s impossible. Horses don’t get stuck in the mud.” He said, “You better come take a look.” We went over to the field and pond and there it was a 2000-pound Percheron draft horse who I used to spend a good deal of time with named Snip. Snip had wandered down a little bit too close to this pond and was up to its chest in mud. I was like, “What are we going to do?”

Somehow, I don’t remember how this all unfolded, but we went down and got some enormous fire hoses and wrapped them around the backside of Snip. We called the community, and we also called the local fire department. I have this picture of 30 or 40 people holding onto the two ends of these fire hoses. Little by little, I think I was holding Snip’s harness and was there in the mud with him, helping to get this horse out of the mud. I guess my grandson likes this story because it’s about doing the impossible and it has a happy ending.

I want to share with you a poem that is about enjoying our lives. This is a poem called The Inner History of a Day by wonderful poet John O’Donohue.

No one knew the name of this day;

Born quietly from deepest night,

It hid its face in light,

Demanded nothing for itself,

Opened out to offer each of us

A field of brightness that traveled ahead,

Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps

And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;

It dwells within the silence with elegance

To create a space for all our words,

Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place

Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,

Transforming our broken fragments

Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides

That is more gracious than the smallness

That fuels us with fear and force,

A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks

For being betrothed to the unknown

And for the secret work

Through which the mind of the day

And wisdom of the soul become one.

At the end of this day, maybe at the end of this day, we give thanks for being betrothed to the unknown and for our secret work, where the mind of the day, and the wisdom of the soul become one. I think this is enjoying our lives as such a core way of being in the world, enjoying our breath, our body, our mind, our families, our work, feeling it all held within this sense of the evanescence of life, this sense of knowing, aspiring and not knowing.

Please do enjoy your day and enjoy your life. Thank you.

[music]

Welcome to the ZenBones Puzzler where I will regularly be presenting a story or a Zen Koan or a poem, something to contemplate, to think about. A story that has purpose. It’s about developing greater insight and reflection. Not so much for a solution, but as a way to support your practice, a meditation in daily life.

[music]

The ZenBones Puzzler for today is: Where is the place where there is no hot and no cold?

The way to work with this and all of these puzzlers is to let them seep into you, let them seep into your bones. It’s why I like these ZenBones. Where is the place in your bones where there’s no hot and no cold? Notice that we all want answers, we want solutions, but see if you can stay with the question. You can do this with some journal writing. You might during your meditation let this phrase, where is the place where there’s no hot and no cold, let it come up, let it rattle around a little bit in your mind and body.

Maybe every once in a while, during the day, you can ask yourself this question. We’re learning from this place of storytelling, but storytelling with a specific purpose around insight and understanding. See what happens.

[music]

The ZenBones Puzzler: Where is the place where there’s no hot and no cold? I can’t help but think of my morning ritual these days when as I’m taking my hot shower, I notice my hand reaching out and turning off all the hot water and feeling my whole body brace in the cold water hitting the top of my head and my entire body. It’s a great time when I’m asking myself this question, where is there no hot and no cold?

This is really about becoming more familiar with our resistance and becoming more familiar with that we all want to find comfort, we have many, many strategies for pushing away discomfort, for pushing away difficulty. There’s a traditional answer, a response to this question in the Zen world, and the traditional response to where there is a place where there’s no hot and no cold is, when you’re hot, be completely hot and when you’re cold, be completely cold. Sometimes it’s translated as when you’re hot, die from heat, when you’re cold, die from cold, that’s a little extreme.

The sense of this is to notice resistance and what it is like when we’re not resisting any sense of discomfort, when we’re letting go of wanting things to be different than they are. A different sense of how we show up, how we live in the world is there. When hot, be completely hot, when cold, be completely cold, when frustrated, be completely frustrated, when happy and joyful, be completely happy and joyful.

It makes me think of how many people I work with, struggle with things like transitions, being all worked up at the end of a difficult work day, and wanting when you go home, to really be home, to be with your partner or your children. You could almost say, when at work, how to be completely at work, when at home, how to be completely at home, when with your child, when with a flower, how to be completely with this flower.

I think this is a wonderful story, a wonderful question, an aspirational challenge. Where is the place where there’s no hot and no cold? When you’re hot, be completely hot, when you’re cold, be completely cold. Thank you.

[music]

Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[music]

[00:26:57] [END OF AUDIO]

The post Enjoy Your Life: Guided Meditation, Talk, and Zen Puzzler appeared first on Marc Lesser.