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Every Day Is A Good Day

In this episode of Mindful Leadership, Marc delves into the timeless Zen story emphasizing how we can navigate life’s challenges and opportunities without avoiding difficulties. The episode begins with a guided meditation to center ourselves, followed by an insightful discussion on the Zen teaching that every day is a good day. Marc shares personal anecdotes and reflections on how this philosophy has influenced his journey as a mindfulness teacher. Tune in to explore how embracing a mindset free from judgment and comparison can transform your daily life. Support the podcast by donating at marclesser.net/donate.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[music]

[00:00:00] Marc: Welcome to Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser, a biweekly podcast featuring conversations with leaders and teachers exploring the intersection of keeping our hearts open and effective action in these most uncertain and challenging times. Please support our work by making a donation at Marc lesser slash donate.

[00:00:36] Marc: Hi, this is Marc Lesser, and welcome to Mindful Leadership. Today’s episode is called Every Day is a Good Day. We’ll start with a short guided meditation, and then I’ll share a brief traditional Zen story about a dialogue between a. A teacher and a group of students in which the teacher asks about, what do you have to [00:01:00] say about yesterday?

[00:01:01] Marc: What do you have to say about tomorrow? Anyhow the teacher’s response is, every day is a good day. And it’s a sense, it’s a different way of relating to our challenges and opportunities without without avoiding difficulty, but also without avoiding all of the. Wonders of life. I hope you enjoy this episode.

[00:01:28] Marc: Let’s begin with a few minutes of doing some sitting practice, and I’m gonna ring my trustee Bell to get us started.

[00:01:59] Marc: And so the [00:02:00] invitation is to arrive to bring yourself here noticing, noticing what it’s like to be here alive. Breathing,

[00:02:18] Marc: Letting go as much as possible of the activities of the day and nothing to achieve, right? Just that that attitude can be supportive and transformative. Nothing to achieve. Nothing needs to be added on or changed right now. How does, how might that feel? How would it feel in the body to be

[00:02:51] Marc: safe? Satisfied, connected, deeply connected with yourself and with [00:03:00] everyone and everything.

[00:03:05] Marc: Can you feel it?

[00:03:09] Marc: It’s just about letting go of our usual judgements and comparisons.

[00:03:33] Marc: I’ve been turning this zen, little zen poem. When the wind stops, flowers fall. When a bird sings, the mountains become more calm. Right When the wind stops, flowers fall. So flowers fall. Whether there’s wind or [00:04:00] not. We can hear, we can feel the quiet and calm, whether it’s quiet and calm or not.

[00:04:09] Marc: Sometimes the the contrast can be helpful to us. I.

[00:04:25] Marc: Yeah. So right now, dropping in finding, finding your own ground, your heart, noticing whatever it’s like to be here alive breathing.[00:05:00]

[00:05:03] Marc: I think of this part of a Mary Oliver poem, right? This is what I was born for to look, to listen. To lose myself and to find myself inside this soft world this this practice. Simple timeless, just breathing.

[00:05:57] Marc: Just appreciating the quiet. And [00:06:00] this morning I’ve also been appreciating the dogs barking. Airplanes flying overhead.

[00:06:14] Marc: Sometimes I can hear the train in the distance. But just noticing how beautiful these sounds can be. Are they interruptions or are they here to support us?

[00:06:42] Marc: Again, breathing in, I’m noticing that I’m breathing in and breathing out. I notice that I’m breathing out.

[00:06:56] Marc: So as a way of ending, I’m gonna ring, ring my bell, but do [00:07:00] feel free to continue sitting or join me for as I make this shift in gears here.

[00:07:29] Marc: So I wanna talk about one of my favorite Zen stories, little Zen parables, which is every day is a good day. And I can picture this revered Zen teacher looking out over his group of students, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of students in a field somewhere in China. And, he looks out over the over them.

[00:07:49] Marc: And he does this in a very challenging, challenging way. He says I’m not talking about, what happened yesterday and I’m not talking about what might happen [00:08:00] tomorrow. What is it that you what do you say? What do you say? And no one knew how to respond to this.

[00:08:08] Marc: And they were all silent. And he looks over and he says every day is a good day. Every day is a good day. And this somehow, this particular phrase has come down, thousands of years as a teaching story. And of course, every day has its ups and downs, has its surprises, has its positive things and negative things.

[00:08:28] Marc: There’s always the question do we have enough? Am I enough? How’s my life going? How’s my relationships? My work? The world is a mess, right? So we can’t help it, right? We can’t help it. We live in the world of comparison in the world of judgment. But, of course, zen practice, which is really this human practice offers us this other way.

[00:08:52] Marc: Another way is where we can let go. We can actually live and be outside [00:09:00] of the world of comparison and judgment and beyond. Is it enough or not enough? And this is the every day is a good day. And it, so it’s not about, it’s not about ignoring or avoiding anything, but, and this this story, this sense story reminds me of a time.

[00:09:20] Marc: Many years ago when I was designing a program to train mindfulness teachers and I asked a friend and mentor for some ideas on what elements he thought should be included in this training. And and the aim was to train these teachers to be more present and confident and the competence to work with groups of business leaders and to be able to teach meditation practice.

[00:09:47] Marc: And mindful leadership, and I was surprised at what my friend suggested. He said that you should design an ordeal, give them something that at first might seem [00:10:00] impossible. And I was surprised at hearing this word ordeal. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that. I had gone through my own ordeal in order to gain more confidence as a mindfulness teacher.

[00:10:17] Marc: I was finding myself standing in front of groups of Google engineers. People thought I was much more experienced than I was, but really I was new and learning, and it was quite the ordeal and how much I often felt like an imposter in those early days of standing, in front. I Google headquarters in Mountain View, leading meditations and mindfulness practices for really bright achievement oriented engineers.

[00:10:47] Marc: And even though I had a good deal of meditation experience, I really didn’t have all that much experience in teaching meditation and being in, in front of business people. So this was this my [00:11:00] own ordeal. Was really Im important and in some way our lives. We can’t help face the ordeals of whether it’s raising children or our jobs.

[00:11:10] Marc: Reading the newspaper can be an ordeal these days, and it’s easy to get caught by the day-to-day enough or not enough good or bad imposter or not imposter. And what if what if you. Today, what if today you have everything you need? What if today? Every day is a good day. Every day is a good day.

[00:11:36] Marc: Thank you.

[00:11:46] Marc: I hope you’ve appreciated today’s episode. To learn more about my work, you can visit Marc lesser.net. And if you’re interested in enrolling in a self-directed course called Seven [00:12:00] Practices of a Mindful Leader, please visit Marc lesser courses.thinkific.com. This podcast is offered freely and relies on the financial support from listeners like you.

[00:12:13] Marc: You can donate at marclesser.net slash donate. Thank you very much.

[END OF AUDIO]

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Relax Into Your Creativity with Ruth Ozeki

In this episode, Marc speaks with acclaimed novelist, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki about her journey into Zen practice and her life as a writer. Ruth shares how her grandfather sparked her interest in meditation, her transition from Tibetan Buddhism to Zen, and how Zen helped her overcome writer’s block. They explore themes of timeless being, selflessness, and creativity, and how her spiritual path continues to shape her writing process.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc: Ruth, it’s such a treat to get to be here with you.

[00:00:02] Ruth : Yeah. Thank you, mark. Thanks for inviting me.

[00:00:06] Marc: Yeah. So I I, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard from you your, what I think of as the origin story. How did you come to be practicing Zen?

[00:00:18] Ruth : Yeah, well. I mean, the origin story story really is kind of an origin story, , because, , my, my mother’s Japanese and my Japanese grandparents were both Zen practitioners.

[00:00:31] Ruth : They were both meditators. And I only met my grandfather once when I was three years old. And my first encounter with him I, I, it’s my first memory as a, as a little human being, , they had arrived at night and they had they were sleeping in my parents’ bedroom. And so I woke up in the morning and went to the kitchen and my mother told me to go wake them up and, and tell them to come to breakfast.

[00:00:59] Ruth : [00:01:00] And so I went to the bedroom and, I remember, ’cause , one of the memories is of reaching up for the doorknob right? To open the door. And I, so I opened the door and I. Took a step into the room and confronted this man who was sitting on the floor cross-legged on the floor, and, this was in East Haven, Connecticut, and grownups didn’t sit on the floor.

[00:01:24] Ruth : That it just, that’s not what grownups did. And so I was really, , startled and and he had his eyes closed and his legs crossed and he was rocking, sort of slowly back and forth. And when he heard me, he opened his eyes, right? And he looked right at me. Right? So there was this like moment of like direct eye contact, right?

[00:01:46] Ruth : And , and of course I was terrified, right? So I went running back out to the kitchen and I think I must have, I told my mother and. What I remember, and I think this was just the

[00:01:56] Ruth : story that she used to tell me, was [00:02:00] that she didn’t use the word meditating ever. She, she said that he was doing breathing exercises, and, . And, she had, she didn’t really know that much about it. She wasn’t raised Buddhist herself. She was, , raised in Hawaii and, uh, the community there was a more Christian community, so she didn’t really know that much about Zen. But in any case, that was my first encounter and it was kind of, , face to face.

[00:02:22] Ruth : Sort of one of those face-to-face transmission moments. And, , but then, I think I was, , it was the 1960s, so I was really interested in, , everybody was meditating and, so when the Beatles started meditating, so did I, and , I didn’t know how to do it or what I was doing.

[00:02:38] Ruth : But I, I, I was like nine, 10 years old maybe, and would sit on the floor in front of a candle and stare at the flame and think that I was meditating. And, . And then I think when I was 14 I was initiated, , I got my transcendental meditation, , mantra. So I did that for a while. Much later.

[00:02:58] Ruth : I mean, I kind of had this off [00:03:00] and on meditation practice, but in my. Late thirties, I started practicing Tibetan Buddhism and did that for several years and then, , moved to the West Coast and then finally. I, , I sort of lost touch with the Tibetan Sangha and I was here on Cortez and, , Norman Fisher came, uh, for a workshop called Compassion in Action, and he he had a, he had a back injury.

[00:03:31] Ruth : There were several other teachers who had come to, and he had, he had, , a, , herniated disc or something in his back, and he didn’t wanna come. He tried to cancel, but, , the organizers kind of were pressuring him to come and they said, , if you come, we’ll give you, , somebody will take care of you.

[00:03:46] Ruth : Right. And so they gave me that job. , My job was to take care of this man, Norman, Norman Fisher, who I’d never heard of before. , I was still more aligned with the Tibetan teachers and, . So I took care of him for like five days or something like [00:04:00] that. And, just drove him around and, and we got to know each other and it was, , it was just this lovely kind of friendship that, , started that this way.

[00:04:09] Ruth : And when, , when he left, I knew that he was going to do a shin, which I didn’t, I didn’t know what a sine was, but he was going to do a retreat. And so when, when we parted, I gave him a copy of my first novel, which. , I knew he was a, a writer. And it had just been published, , maybe earlier that year, and he gave me a maah, right?

[00:04:30] Ruth : And so we exchange, we exchanged gifts and then parted. And then three weeks later, four weeks later, I got a little package in the mail and it was a cassette tape and it was a Dharma talk. Unlabeled. It was a dharma talk that he, I realized that he had given at this shin, which was in Bellingham and. In the talk he, he talked about how he had met, he had just been to this conference and he had met a real live Bodhi Sattva.

[00:04:59] Ruth : And he talked [00:05:00] about how this Bodhi Sattva had driven him around the island and taken care of him, right? And then he said, and then he said something like, , and this Bodhi Sattva is a novel. And she gave me a copy of her novel. And so since my job is to entertain you all this week, I’m gonna read a chapter of her novel to you.

[00:05:18] Ruth : And he did, he read, he read this chapter from the novel and he read it so beautifully and it was, he read it in a way that made it so funny, right? And everybody was laughing and I just thought. This obviously is my teacher. Anybody who can read my work, and get this much of a reaction from a crowd, this, , this is it, right? Yeah. And so that’s, I started showing up for Shin and that was my introduction to Zen. So it was, I started out with my grandfather from Japan and then ended up with, , a teacher who’s, , a Jew from, , Pennsylvania, right?

[00:05:50] Marc: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s great.

[00:05:52] Marc: I love the story. And just to fill in, so. People listening might not realize that. Uh, you are talking about, uh, [00:06:00] Cortez Island, British Columbia.

[00:06:01] Ruth : That’s right.

[00:06:02] Marc: Holly. Holly Hawk.

[00:06:03] Ruth : That’s right.

[00:06:03] Marc: And, and, uh, and Norman Fisher. I I, I actually first met Norman. We were students. We were students together.

[00:06:11] Marc: Tasajara back in the, way back in this, yeah. Late seventies.

[00:06:15] Ruth : Yeah. Yeah. ,

[00:06:16] Marc: Yeah. And Norman, I was ordained. I was ordained as a priest by, by Norman.

[00:06:21] Ruth : Right. That’s right.

[00:06:22] Marc: So I’m, I’m now, so many things I want to ask you. I, I wanna, I do wanna ask you your origin story as a, as a writer as you were, uh, that’s simple as, as you were describing.

[00:06:34] Marc: You, you, I’m sure you don’t know this, I’m often reading a piece that you wrote. It starts with the zen nun, Chico Ya. Satani once told me in a dream that you can’t understand. What it means to be alive on this earth until you understand the time being.

[00:06:52] Ruth : Yeah.

[00:06:52] Marc: I love, I love that. I love that. That’s

[00:06:55] Ruth : from, isn’t that the, it’s one of the appendices from, uh, A Tale for the time being.

[00:06:59] Ruth : Right?

[00:06:59] Marc: [00:07:00] Exactly. It’s one of the appendices. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And that, and yeah. So the, I’m also, I’m assuming is, was, . Is all over creation your first novel?

[00:07:10] Ruth : No, my year of meats. Oh, my year of meat meats

[00:07:13] Marc: that

[00:07:13] Ruth : came,

[00:07:13] Marc: that

[00:07:13] Ruth : came first. That’s right. That was the first one that right.

[00:07:17] Marc: Uhhuh. Which I know.

[00:07:19] Marc: I was, , I was tickled to learn that my, my daughter had. No known of you before I knew of you through, through having, having read that book.

[00:07:27] Ruth : Yeah. That was the first one. That was in 1998, I think. Uhhuh. Yeah.

[00:07:32] Marc: So origin story with you as a writer. Yeah,

[00:07:34] Ruth : I mean, it, it’s, that’s easy. , I, I started writing when I learned how to hold a pencil and, , , and I never stopped.

[00:07:43] Ruth : It just was always what I love to do. And, , I always felt that I could. I could think better with a pencil in my hand or a pen in my hand. So in a way I think writing and thinking became different [00:08:00] aspects of the same thing. , When I was a little kid, I I was an avid reader and what I loved were, , I loved, thick, juicy novels.

[00:08:08] Ruth : Mm-hmm. And, , and I really wanted to write novels, but , again, it was a. , I, I guess I was growing up in, in, on the East coast, there weren’t a lot of Asian Americans around. I, I didn’t really have a cultural context that. It led me to think that I could write novels. , And so, I remember thinking, like, people who look like me don’t write novels, so, what do they write?

[00:08:33] Ruth : And, , and, and of course, , it was more things like haiku, right? And so I remember at, I went through this period where I thought, okay, well I’m, I’m, I’m gonna write Haiku, but I’m not, as you can tell, I’m a very verbose person, right? So, . 17 syllables doesn’t quite cut it right.

[00:08:49] Ruth : And so, , but I, I tried, at first I wrote a lot of poetry. Right? And then little by little, I mean, ’cause when I was a kid, , there weren’t any Japanese American novelists [00:09:00] or, at all. I think Amy Tan didn’t publish Joy Luck Club until, , I was in my thirties, right? So I just didn’t, there was no precedent for, for, this person that I wanted to be.

[00:09:12] Ruth : But in any case, I, , it was always drawn to the longer form fiction and, , and I tried writing short stories in college and, and, , and then tried writing novels several times after that. And, but never really, never really knew how, or, , it hadn’t really come together. I, I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to do it right.

[00:09:33] Ruth : And so then I got into the film business and, , and so I was hired to make, and to direct and edit at films. And it was really editing images was where I learned to write. It was, , editing television. Where you have to, you have to be very succinct and you have to get to the point very quickly.

[00:09:51] Ruth : And, , and really, and, and , you’re just relying on visuals to tell a story. And that was really what did it for me. And after that [00:10:00] I suddenly realized I, I know how to do this now I know how to write a novel. And so I wrote my year of meats and , and that was the first one, and I’ve never looked back.

[00:10:10] Marc: That’s great. That’s great. I often describe, uh, a tale for the time being as, , maybe my favorite novel. I, I don’t, I don’t read, I, I mostly read nonfiction.

[00:10:22] Ruth : Yeah.

[00:10:23] Marc: Although at the, I, I find myself now reading more and more novels, but I when I, I think I read the first, I don’t know, three pages or five pages of a tale for the time being, and I was just so.

[00:10:36] Marc: Hooked by, by the, the voice of this teenage, the, the, the creativity that went into creating the voice of this teenage girl.

[00:10:46] Ruth : I didn’t really feel like there was anything creative about it. I, it because. , She now, and, and sometimes this happens with characters, it’s almost like they’re coming from some other [00:11:00] place, ?

[00:11:00] Ruth : And, and that I really have very little to do with it. , I just kind of have to show up and be ready and, , and if I do that, then, suddenly this character starts to speak to me. And, , when I say that, I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds like really kind of, like woo woo or something, ?

[00:11:17] Ruth : . Uh, and I, and I understand that it’s not, , it’s not like a PI play where there’s all these, , characters out there in search of authors and they see one and they, , it’s like, oh look, , she’s paying attention. I think I’ll go inhabit her. Right? I know it’s not like that.

[00:11:31] Ruth : I think it’s more that. We all, all of us, have different facets of self, right? This thing that we call self, right? And we have all of these different facets of self and different facets of self emerge in relationship to others, right? And so, if you pay attention to that, , if you’re kind of tuned into the different facets of self that you have been over the course of a very long lifetime.

[00:11:58] Ruth : That’s what I [00:12:00] think, that’s where the material comes from. And so at, there was a point where I was a an unhappy, right. 16-year-old girl who had lots of suicidal ideations and who also was very dramatic about her life. And, and I think that is where, , the impetus for the voice of now comes from.

[00:12:20] Ruth : It’s, and, and I think too, , in that book there’s a character named Ruth. Right. So that’s clear where that Ruth comes from, ? Yes, yes. And then there’s old gco who is 104 year old, great grandmother. And , I think that’s a kind of aspirational, , aspect facet of self.

[00:12:37] Marc: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:38] Ruth : So, I mean, I guess, , in Buddhism we talk about no self, and maybe this is exactly the same thing. There is no fixed self, it’s all relational, right?

[00:12:45] Marc: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I love in your writing though, the obvious and not so obvious kind of weaving, , zen zen practices, zen selflessness in, into, [00:13:00] into your, into your writing, right?

[00:13:01] Marc: That, like, you, you just, you just threw out that this character’s name is now.

[00:13:06] Ruth : Right. NAO. But of course there’s a pun. That’s right. Right. There’s a pun on NOW. Yeah. Yes,

[00:13:14] Marc: yes. And, and then the, uh, the grandmother, old Gco and the kind of relationship of, , kind of time and life and death, and of course in the bringing, bringing the teachings of Dogan into Right.

[00:13:29] Marc: Time, time being.

[00:13:31] Ruth : Yeah. Well that was a, , , that I wrote that book at a point where, at a period in my life where and it was a fairly long, I mean, it took me about 10 years maybe to write, maybe even longer. This was right after my, so that was my third novel. And it was. After my mother died in 2004, , that’s when I was getting more serious about Zen and I went through a [00:14:00] period there.

[00:14:00] Ruth : Where I just, I, I just had a kind of writer’s block, right? I’d published two novels. I just couldn’t get any traction. On a third, I think I started and stopped many different, , many different books during that time. And I really was feeling like, I don’t know whether I’m gonna be able to continue to do this.

[00:14:18] Ruth : I just, , I, and I, I know that this was, , I, I had lost both parents by then. Life was. Life was hard. And , and so the one thing that was, that felt helpful to me was, was the Zen practice. And so I got quite serious about it and I was living up here on Cortez Island in the middle of a rainforest.

[00:14:37] Ruth : And there’s not much to do here during the winter. And so I set about, I di I was, I, I was really getting interested in Dogan then. And, , I think I had read, I had read Genjo Koan and I started to think very, much about time. And, and of course, because I had just had this, sort of very intimate confrontation with [00:15:00] mortality taking care of my mom.

[00:15:01] Ruth : She had Alzheimer’s and so she really was like a time being who was, very gradually. Dropping out of time. And . And so I was thinking a lot about that and I started reading uji, the Time Being Dogen’s Fale, the time being or being time, depending on how you wanna translate it. And I started.

[00:15:22] Ruth : Kind of doing an experiment with time. And one of the things I did was block off. I, I got rid of all the clocks in the house and even on my computer I put a little piece of tape over the, the time. , And just because I wanted to see what it was like, , the days are very short in the winter up here because we’re so far north, and I just wanted to see what it would be like to live in a kind of timeless.

[00:15:46] Ruth : Way and to take cues from my body rather than the clock. Right? And so, and I was doing a lot of meditating then, and I think, and, and I was reading the, the Fal Ji [00:16:00] time being. And I think it was really from that experience that the book started to grow the phrase. Time being the way that Katana Hashi translates that phrase he translates it as the time being.

[00:16:16] Ruth : And there’s something kind of weirdly unstable about that phrase in English, because depending on how you pronounce it, it can mean two different things, right? It can mean temporarily, , for the time being right? For, , for now, for the time being, , or for the time being. And if you emphasize the first, and certainly in the context that he puts it in it sounds like a being like a, like an entity, like a, like a time Lord, or, , an alien being made of time.

[00:16:46] Ruth : And, and that really intrigued me, that I loved that, the kind of instability of the phrase, and I think, , it was kind of like a loose tooth every time I ran across it. It would kind of, , I would have to kind of play with it a little bit and. [00:17:00] That I think lodged itself in my brain.

[00:17:02] Ruth : And then one day I just, , this voice came to me and it was a voice of this 16-year-old, , teenager living in Tokyo. And , and she introduced herself to me and she said, hi, my name is now and I’m a time being, do what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you a time being is someone who lives in time and that may, , and she just.

[00:17:24] Ruth : Boom, she was off and running, right? Yeah. Yeah. , So it all came from that, it all came from that little bit of that little phrase and then the, , the kind of experiment that I was doing around it with time.

[00:17:35] Marc: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love, , I feel like I don’t even need to ask you about your creative process.

[00:17:41] Marc: It’s just kind of seeping out, seeping out of you. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s interesting, especially in today’s, today’s world where. Time and we’re so right that you, that you needed to, I love that you, uh, even put a put, blocked it out even on your, because every, everywhere we live, everywhere

[00:17:59] Ruth : there’s [00:18:00] clocks.

[00:18:00] Ruth : Yeah. There’s s there’s, there’s, yeah,

[00:18:02] Marc: there’s, there’s clocks. Yeah.

[00:18:03] Ruth : Yeah. Well, I mean, we live in a relentlessly capitalist society and capitalism and t , and time. It’s all about monetizing time, right. And, and, , turning time into a commodity and. That seems like a really limited way to live a life, right?

[00:18:17] Ruth : I mean, it’s, it’s not that time is a construct, right? Blocks are constructs. Money is a construct. So, why not just let go of it all and see, I mean here too, the wonderful thing about living as remotely. A as we do up here is that there’s really nothing to buy, right? And so, , I, when I lived here, I would go for weeks and weeks without ever handling money, right?

[00:18:45] Ruth : I mean, I would lose my wallet and then suddenly have to go to town and realize like, oh, right, I need money. And, , and I’d have to run around, , trying to find my wallet. Of course. Now the problem is that you can actually get [00:19:00] Amazon here, even here on Cortez. So all of that’s, all of that’s ruined, , but

[00:19:07] Marc: So do you, , do you have a ritual these days around around writing that’s either time bound or not time bound, and how do you, how do you practice?

[00:19:20] Ruth : Well, usually, , . Usually when I’m writing, I’m in North Hampton, Massachusetts, which is where I’m living these days. And I have an office there and this is a new, this is new for me. I’ve never had an office before and I love my office and I have no internet there. If I need to, I can get on, get on on my phone, but generally I don’t, I don’t have internet there.

[00:19:47] Ruth : And , and I just go there in the morning. Spend the day there and, yeah, and it’s a place that is, , where I only do writing. I don’t do I, I try my hardest [00:20:00] not to do email, not to do all of the business stuff that one has to do. , It’s just a kind of creative space. And that’s been.

[00:20:08] Ruth : That’s been really, really wonderful. I tend to write best in the mornings. And so my, , my ideal situation is, get up and go to the office and and write, and then by around , by around, , one or two o’clock, I’m, I’m kind of winding down a little bit. So I’ll do other things.

[00:20:27] Ruth : , I like to kind of work out in the afternoons or, , do something kind of more energetic in the afternoons. Yeah, and that’s, that’s basically it. It depends on where I am though in a project, right? Sure. First drafts are, are rough and I, I, don’t usually work more than a couple of hours, but once I’m on to kind of editing and, which is the really fun part right for me I can, I can work for.

[00:20:50] Ruth : 10, 12 hours at a time.

[00:20:53] Marc: Right. Interesting. How different, right, the Yeah, yeah, yeah. The blank, the blank pages compared to,

[00:20:59] Ruth : it’s [00:21:00] very intimidating. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. Even, , even after all these years. Yeah.

[00:21:05] Marc: Well, I’m, I, I, I’m guessing, although I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that you don’t think of yourself through the lens as a leader so much.

[00:21:16] Ruth : Oh, no, I don’t at all. No. See,

[00:21:17] Marc: but see, so I wanna, I wanna give you some different context here.

[00:21:21] Ruth : Yeah.

[00:21:21] Marc: I think of you, I think that as a, as a writer and as, so like the, , some of the key, key components of leadership are one, is, uh, there’s having a vision of what you want to accomplish.

[00:21:37] Marc: There’s actually accomplishing something. Mm-hmm. And, and probably. You end up working with, in leading teams. Mm-hmm. , That you, you, you have your, your, your agent and your editor and your publisher and various, and that you might not. And you’re probably leading in a, in a, , in [00:22:00] more of a kind of a zen way of leading.

[00:22:03] Ruth : I just do what they tell me to do.

[00:22:04] Marc: Well, exactly. That’s what you think.

[00:22:06] Ruth : Yeah. And

[00:22:06] Marc: they all think, they all think they just do what you tell them to do. Probably.

[00:22:10] Ruth : Well, I think actually they might know that they have to tell me to do things, but, no, I think you’re right. You’re right. But it’s a, I guess, I.

[00:22:21] Ruth : Personally have a, a slightly like aversive reaction to the idea of leadership. Because, , my relationship with the, with the work itself. Which is what I feel like my real work is. My real work is is solitary. It’s, it’s what I do, on the page. It’s, uh, relationship between me and the language and me and the characters and me and the book.

[00:22:50] Ruth : , The book eventually starts to have its own persona and so, , it’s, it’s this very intimate relationship between me and the work. Itself, , this book. [00:23:00] And it’s all about following. Mm-hmm. If I try to lead, that’s when I, that’s when I screw up. Mm-hmm. , And so it’s really about, really trying to kind of drop any sense of my own.

[00:23:13] Ruth : Conscious preferences, right. And follow a, a much, different kind of intuitive relationship with the material itself, with the art itself, right? And so there’s that. And then in terms of, sort of that, and that’s being a writer. Right. And I differentiate that from being an author, right?

[00:23:30] Ruth : Being the, being an author is outward facing work. And that’s a job. That’s not work. To me, that’s a job. It’s something that I have to do. , I’m, , responsible for the material that I, the books that I put out into the world, , they’re like, children, I have to take care of them. But that’s a job. That’s not, that’s not the work itself. And so, and, and there are, I think, leadership components, , in the more traditional idea of the word leadership. But even there, I, I feel I [00:24:00] feel like it’s more, and, and I’m sure you would agree with this, that it’s relational that my relationship with my readers is.

[00:24:11] Ruth : Collaboration. It’s not me leading them anywhere. It’s, , they happen to pick up my book and then we have this conversation that takes place over time and, but that’s it.

[00:24:22] Marc: Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, this is, this is, I would say the, well you might say it’s the great, the great aha of, of modern leadership, but it’s the same.

[00:24:32] Marc: It’s the great aha of lasu. Who that. This idea, that leader, that leadership is primarily relational.

[00:24:43] Ruth : Mm-hmm. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And that it should be anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And

[00:24:47] Marc: that, that, , what’s, what’s quite beautiful is the way you describe your relation to your characters. I’m also thinking about the way you were [00:25:00] describing.

[00:25:00] Marc: Your relationship to self and kind of mi listening or mining, the various selves, which in a sense is a kind of practice of selflessness. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There’s not any one particular self. And, and I’m also what I read last night I thought is somehow seeming appropriate for right now is this, , this zen poem.

[00:25:22] Marc: When the wind stops flowers fall. When the bird sings, the mountain becomes more calm. That’s nice. Well, it’s ju and I feel like I’m just mirroring what I’m hearing from you. Yeah. About, le it’s, it’s a little bit like you could say, when when I stop leading, beautiful temples are built.

[00:25:45] Marc: Mm mm mm-hmm. Or, , or something, something about this playing, playing with. Leading and following, or doing, doing, doing, and, and not so much doing. And

[00:25:56] Ruth : that, that, evokes for me the, , [00:26:00] Dogen’s teaching about the backward step. Mm-hmm. , And how important it is to, , to take the backward step and shine the light inward.

[00:26:08] Ruth : Right. I think is what he, , he, and that’s his instruction, part of his instruction for meditation. And, . And I think that’s a, , I, I found that to be a beautiful instruction for everything, for life, for certainly for relationships, rather than, , a. Leaning in, stepping forward, dominating kind of relationship with people and with time and with your to-do lists and , everything else.

[00:26:32] Ruth : Right. This idea of productivity, I mean, you used the word mining earlier and I would object to that because I don’t think of it as mining that that’s too object oriented. That’s too, acquisitive. No, it, it’s, it’s more just, , it’s kind of widening and observing and receiving. Mm-hmm.

[00:26:49] Ruth : ? But yeah. Yes. I guess, I mean, I just have a very passive, approach, which is actually not passive, but it

[00:26:57] Marc: right. Passive. Passive does not feel [00:27:00] like

[00:27:00] Ruth : Yeah.

[00:27:01] Marc: How I would des Right. So, yeah. But

[00:27:02] Ruth : it’s a kind of active passivity.

[00:27:05] Marc: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s sounds like, , it’s, it’s a, it’s allowing, it’s deep listening.

[00:27:13] Marc: Yeah. Yeah. It’s being, maybe being, . Being awake. Being awake for what is, what is, especially for you as a writer. What, what is, what is coming through you. Yeah. Yeah. And, and it’s interesting how you are quite quite clear in, in a way, in creating the environment for that.

[00:27:34] Ruth : Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s true.

[00:27:36] Ruth : I think that’s true and it’s a, , it’s a less a physical environment than a, , almost a, a mental environment. Yeah, yeah. And that’s where I think Zazen is, is a wonderful way of creating that environment. It’s, it’s, , creating a kind of receptive mind, , that, that can be aware and can.

[00:27:57] Ruth : Pay attention. Right. , And isn’t always distracted and [00:28:00] clouded by, all of the noise. Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:02] Marc: Well, great. We’ve, we’ve somehow managed to come full circle. We started with your Zen Orange origin story, and now we’re talking about zen.

[00:28:10] Ruth : That’s right, that’s right. That’s right. All roads, all roads to zazen, , sorry,

[00:28:14] Marc: Zen, Zen meditation.

[00:28:15] Marc: And

[00:28:16] Ruth : That’s right.

[00:28:16] Marc: And I love, I love the story of your walking in and kind of receiving this kind of silent. Transmission from your grandfather.

[00:28:26] Ruth : Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:28:28] Marc: It’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful image.

[00:28:30] Ruth : Yeah. Yeah. No, that was, I, the first memory I have as a human being, right. So that it meant something, I think.

[00:28:39] Ruth : Mm-hmm. It gave me sort of my marching orders. Yeah.

[00:28:42] Marc: Yeah. It’s really a delight to just to get to hang out, get to hang out with you. And I am I notice I’m feeling inspired to create the mind, mind, space and physical space for my [00:29:00] own writing and c creative, creative process. Yeah. So it’s a thank you for the inspiration.

[00:29:06] Ruth : Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, I guess that’s the last thing to say is that we all have this, right? I mean, this is not unique to me. , We all have this. It’s just, , are you going to give yourself, permission to really relax into that, that, that creativity and, and, and do it allow that to happen.

[00:29:27] Ruth : Allow that to emerge, right? Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, uh.

[00:29:32] Marc: Relax into your creativity. Yes. I think you’ve just, , named, named what we’ll call this conversation. And I, and I, and I always often I perhaps this will be part one and we’ll we’ll see where we, where we wanna go at some other time. But, but Ruth, thank you so much.

[00:29:48] Marc: I appreciate talking to you.

[00:29:49] Ruth : Thank you so much, Marc. It’s great to talk to you.

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[END OF AUDIO]

The post Relax Into Your Creativity with Ruth Ozeki appeared first on Marc Lesser.

The 7 Miracles of Mindfulness

This practice episode centers on ‘The Seven Miracles of Mindfulness’ by Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. The episode begins with a brief guided meditation focusing on mindfulness of the breath and body. Marc shares personal anecdotes from his time with Thich Nhat Hanh, and dives into the seven miracles of mindfulness, which include being present, making others present, nourishing others, relieving suffering, looking deeply, understanding, and transformation. 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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[00:00:00] Marc: Welcome to Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser, a biweekly podcast featuring conversations with leaders and teachers exploring the intersection of keeping our hearts open and effective action in these most uncertain and challenging times. Please support our work by making a donation at Marc lesser slash donate.

I am  pleased about today’s episode called The Seven Miracles of Mindfulness. We’ll start with a short guided meditation and then onto these seven beautiful practices that were introduced to me by Vietnamese Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. And they are. You’ll see they’re simple and they’re profound, and they are easily, uh, accessible and [00:01:00] integrateable into your daily life.

I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

Let’s begin with a few minutes of sitting practice together. I’m gonna ring my, ring my bell that has traveled the world with me.

Yeah, so an invitation to to pause, to stop and just, um, just noticing that you are here we are here

in bringing awareness to the body, mindfulness of the [00:02:00] body, right? Such a core core practice. Includes mindfulness of the breath

often thinking of one of the earliest teachings of the historical Buddha was, there’s only one way, only one way, one path to finding real freedom or kind of true. Happiness and, you know, so that, that that line, uh, got my attention. And then the next line in this teaching is when breathing a long breath, be aware that you’re breathing a long breath.

When breathing a short breath be aware that you’re breathing a short breath and. I think this teaching is both literal and, and a metaphor. [00:03:00] So literal, like anytime, like right now, right now, noticing that you’re breathing, noticing that breathing is happening and

as a metaphor, I think it’s, um. Bringing awareness to whatever we’re doing. Not only here while we’re stopping, but throughout, throughout the day. But this is, uh, this is this, mind training right now, mind training, to be able to notice not so simple and not so simple. So just stopping, noticing the body, noticing the breath.

Uh, nothing nothing to accomplish. That spirit, I think is also [00:04:00] useful. Nothing to accomplish. No need to change anything I.

Uh, simply being here

alive breathing.

And this, this sense, this, um,

realization that we bring our entire life. Behind is right here in this moment, this breath, right? This breath is new and fresh. And at the same time all of [00:05:00] our

Ancient twisted karma ancient. Precious life is all right here in this moment, this breath, this body,

uh, and keeping it simple breathing in and breathing out.

I am breathing in. I’m aware that I’m breathing in and breathing out. I’m aware that I’m breathing [00:06:00] out.

Maybe paying a particular attention to each exhale, you know, so with each exhale. A letting go. Letting go of the activities of the day, of any, anything that you might be holding onto that would be useful to let go. Yeah, regrets, worries, anxiety, let it go. Name it, if it helps, you know, regret this year.

Anxiety is here and with each exhale as much as possible letting it go[00:07:00] 

and just, uh, this practice of I. Appreciating whatever is here, appreciating without comparison or judgment, letting go of comparison and judgment.

And, uh, please, uh, feel free to continue sitting. I’m gonna ring the bell.

Pause for for now.

Marc: So I’ve been really pleased in studying some of Tik na Han’s writings. [00:08:00] I.

I’ve, I feel really lucky that when I lived at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center I got to spend, uh, two weeks with with Tik Han. He came, he came in and did a class every morning in the dining room for the. Or maybe 50 or 60 students there, Zen students there. And at the time that, that was the year I was director and one of my one of my jobs.

Somehow I, I don’t know exactly how or why, but it was my job to, uh, to go to where he was staying, his cabin at Tassajara, which was over on one end of the valley. I would knock on his door and he would come and we would bow to each other and he would come out and we would, we would walk from where he was staying across Tassajara [00:09:00] Valley, you know, along, along a gravel path.

And we would walk at his pace, which was very slowly. He had a way of doing. A kind of walking meditation even during this walk from his cabin over to where he was going to give a class. And so I knew that and so I, I would come early enough. So we had plenty of, there plenty of time. It was, uh, uh, extremely un rushed walking side by side with with Ty.

Ty was the name, you know, kind of a honorific for teacher. Yeah, as I’m saying this, I can kind of, hear this, hear and feel the sound of our, of our footsteps touching the, along the gravel, the gravel path that Sahara. And I don’t usually tell this, this part of the story, but I will here.

I’m not sure why, but I will, uh, but, uh, one day, [00:10:00] one day as we were walking he stopped turned. I turned and we stood there face to face and he looked at me, looked at me in the eye and said, we have known each other in a previous lifetime. And then you turned, I turned and we continued walking and nothing more was ever said about that.

Uh, but. I felt so it just moved me the the starkness and the intimacy of his, uh, comment. And, you know, whether, you know, I, you know, do I do, what do I think about previous lifetimes? I don’t know. I, I wouldn’t say I, oh yes, I’m sure, sure. Or no, no, I don’t, I don’t know. But in that moment. I felt his tick Han’s assuredness that he and I knew each other in a previous lifetime, and there was something very, I [00:11:00] felt so honored by that by that comment.

And, and interesting, I left Tasara the following, the following fall went to business school and uh, and a few years after business school I started a a company called Brush Dance, a greeting card company. And um, and we were. Creating journals and greeting cards and calendars and mostly licensing the names of, uh, you know, the Dalai Lama and poetry of Rumi were some of our lines.

And I had this idea of, oh, we should tick not Han, he was just, as he was becoming more and more known, I thought, oh, we should we should publish some cards and journals and calendars with his quotes. He had so many beautiful. Things that he had written. And I I called [00:12:00] his people and I received a response back that said uh, Han says that you can use anything he’s ever said, and we don’t want a contract.

And please make a donation of any amount that feels, um, appropriate and. The Han line that, um, brush dance produced for many, many years of greeting cards, calendars, journals, some other products as well. Uh, was one of our, one of our best selling lines. And so something very meaningful and potent to me about my connection and.

Relationship with with Han. And this morning I wanna share one of his one of his teachings that, um, I, I find he weaves in throughout much of his writing and talks are called The Seven Miracles of [00:13:00] Mindfulness. Seven Miracles of Mindfulness. And these miracles are uh, to be present, to make others present to nourish others.

To relieve other suffering, looking deeply, uh, understanding and and transformation. And you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot I could say about each of these, but mostly I want to this morning, uh, just. Unpack a little bit. You know the first one, right? The first miracle of mindfulness is to be present.

Uh, one of our one of our, uh, greeting cards that we published was, uh, the greatest gift you can give someone is your presence. The greatest gift that you can give someone is your presence. And the way the way Tek Hanh describes this. First miracle of [00:14:00] mindfulness is to be present, to be aware of a flower, the smile of a child, of your hand, your, I sometimes throughout the day, just take a moment to to look at my own, my own hand as you know, what a miracle are our bodies and minds.

So just to be, uh, present and of course this this practice of presence includes, impermanence, right? That, that as I look at my hand, I notice my hand right now is a very different hand than, uh, it was when I was a child. And really probably a different hand than it was, yesterday and.

And we have the ability, I can also kind see my hand when I am when I’m an old person. And I can also [00:15:00] feel the impermanence of, before this hand came into existence and after this hand will be, transformed into something else after. I’m no longer here. So this is, this is all part of this, simple practice to be present, to be present.

The first miracle of mindfulness. And, and I think it also includes, seeing the, the inner beingness of things is also included in this practice of to be present, right? That this hand isn’t just my hand, right? It’s connected to. My, my mother and father’s hands, and their mother and father’s hands and all, all every human hand, every all of life is included in the right, the cells and synapses, you know, in this, this thing [00:16:00] that we call hand, body to be present.

So this is part of the. Part of this practice of the miracle of mindfulness. I love, you know, there’s a kind of audacity that Tekon has by using the word miracle, right? It’s a reminder, it’s a reminder ’cause it’s so easy to, we humans so acclimate to things. Make things, or ordinary.

And they are ordinary, right? My hand, this hand, your hand, our hands are very ordinary and they are completely mysterious and unexplainable. So they are miracles, right? So this is the, the core practice is to be present. And from there. We have the ability to be aware of others, right? To make others present.

We have the ability to relieve, [00:17:00] you know, to nourish others, to relieve others suffering. And and in some way what I’ve been talking about as the impermanence and. The inner being is connected to the fifth practice of, look, this is looking deeply and through looking deeply, having some, some insight, some insight.

And under understanding is the, the sixth miracle of mindfulness. And the the seventh miracle is, transformation. You know that through, through these practices, through being present through these, we we are transformed. We are transformed, and we, and we transform.

And I was, as I’m, as I’m thinking of these, um, I’m remembering that I, I spent many, many hours, uh, teaching. Teaching at Google, [00:18:00] standing in front of, uh, Google Engineers teaching these, these practices or related practices, right under the, under the guise of mindful leadership or mindfulness based, um, emotional intelligence.

And all of these practices I think are so core to, uh, to leadership, right? To to emotional intelligence. And I think there’s. Tremendous overlap in what we label as mindfulness leadership and and emotional intelligence. And and one of the questions, one of the questions I was, you know, most asked by Google engineers is, uh, what is the least amount of time?

It can practice, you know, what is the least amount of time it can practice meditation or practice mindfulness and have it make a difference. And you know, and they, these were, these questions were coming from, I think [00:19:00] the mind, both, I think the mind of laziness, but also the mind of the scientist, right?

They wanted to know like what what studies have been done, what evidence is there that shows me about the relationship of. How much time I spend practicing meditation or mindfulness and some kind of measurable change. So I appreciated I got to really appreciate the mind of the scientists that wanted to know the data.

And there have been actually more and more, you know, scientists are also trying to answer that question. What is the least amount of time and that you can meditate and have it make a difference. And you know, but it’s interesting. One of the things that I learned about science is that there’s what you can measure and there is your experience and there’re both very useful and [00:20:00] important and one of the.

Important. Interesting. You know, pieces about science is it can teach us things beyond our experience, right? So much of science, what we’ve learned about vaccines and the body is how the brain works. And it can be really useful to have an understanding about how the brain works beyond what we can experience at the same time.

Our experience is really important. So like in, in any intervention or like in therapy, for instance, or in meditation, I would say it’s great that there is the science of doing, brain scans showing changes in the brain. But really it’s what really matters is how, is how do these practices.

Influence you? How do they change you? How do they change your [00:21:00] experience and how you are experienced? And my, my my answer to this question from Google Engineers of what’s the least amount of time I can practice and have it make a difference, became one breath, one aware, mindful breath each day. Can make a difference in your life.

Right. And again it’s a practice, right? It’s easy to, uh, you might make a commitment to do one mindful breath each day, but have some way of checking in at the end of the day. Oh, did I remember? And maybe then taking your one breath. So one, uh, one mindful breath. Each day is perhaps a, uh. Practice for me, one of my practices, I’m, I’m committed to sitting meditation every day for a minimum of three minutes.

I generally like to sit for 20 or 30 minutes, but there are some [00:22:00] days it does happen that for, you know, things happen. But I can always find three minutes. And I think anyone can always find one mindful breath, one mindful breath. This maybe is the core practice of Right, the seven miracles of mindfulness to be present starting with one breath, starting with three minutes a day, starting with the aspiration to be present for as many moments in your life as you, as you can, coming back again and again.

Breathing a short breath. I am aware that I’m breathing a short breath being, agitated. I’m aware, feeling joy. I’m aware whatever it is. Awareness. Awareness. Um, again and again, so [00:23:00] please do explore practicing. These are miracles. The simple ordinary, uh, miracles of to be present, to make others present, to nourish others, to relieve others suffering, to look deeply cultivating, understanding, and, uh, transformation.

Thank you very much.

I hope you’ve appreciated today’s episode. To learn more about my work, you can visit Marc lesser.net, and if you’re interested in enrolling in a self-directed course, called Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, please visit www.Marclesser.courses.thinkific.com. This podcast is offered freely and relies on the financial support from listeners like you.

You can donate@marclesser.net slash donate. Thank you very much.

[END OF AUDIO]

The post The 7 Miracles of Mindfulness appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Mindfulness Practice May Destroy Your Common Sense

In A Good Way

In this issue:

Mindfulness and Common SenseZen of Coaching: An Online Course For Executive CoachesWhat I’m Reading – Why Buddhism Is TrueMindful Leadership PodcastWhat I’m Watching – NPR Tiny Desk

A famous scientist (often said to be Bertrand Russell or William James) is giving a public lecture on astronomy, explaining how the Earth orbits the sun and is part of a solar system in a vast universe. A skeptical elderly woman in the audience interrupts and says:

“That’s nonsense. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant turtle.”

The scientist asks, “What is the turtle standing on?”
She replies, “You’re very clever, young man, but it’s turtles all the way down.”

This story reminds me of a statement from Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki: “Buddhism wants to destroy your common sense.”

Well, of course we need our common sense. We could probably use a lot more common sense!

I think Shunryu Suzuki is suggesting that there is more, much more to this human life, and that perhaps the world is not what it seems. He is opening the door to not be limited by our common sense; to not be limited and driven by fear, scarcity, to-do lists, survival, and the immediate concerns of the day.

I love his expression: “Don’t be a “board-carrying fellow” — where the board on our shoulder prevents us from seeing the poetic, the sacred; seeing ourselves, our world, birth, life, and death from a variety of wondrous perspectives; a place where we find some hope and inspiration in “turtles all the way down.”

I have a strong belief that common sense and going beyond common sense is a powerful and important combination.

Here is a poem that beautifully captures the practical and the poetic; held by love, pleasure, and an invitation to live beyond our common sense.

The Word

~ Tony Hoagland, from Sweet Ruin (1992)

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between “green thread”
and “broccoli” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning — to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

–to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

Share

Practices:

Explore looking at your hand, with a sense of curiosity and wonder. How did this thing I call a part of “my” body come to be? How does this influence how you see yourself, others, and the world?

Put “sunlight” and “pleasure” and reading poetry on your to-do list.

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Zen of Coaching: For Executive Coaches: Transforming Others, Becoming Your Best Self, Changing The World

I’m excited to introduce this online course, beginning October 24th:

Zen of Coaching is a transformational program for executive coaches and leaders who want to deepen their presence, expand their impact, and build a coaching practice rooted in wisdom, not just performance. Blending Zen principles, mindfulness, and real-world leadership experience, this course—created by Marc Lesser, the Zen teacher and CEO who helped bring mindful leadership to Google—supports you in cultivating stillness, navigating complexity, and coaching with greater authenticity, clarity, and purpose.

To register and for more information.

What I’m Reading

Why Buddhism Is True, by Robert Wright – explores how core Buddhist teachings—like mindfulness, non-self, and meditation—align with evolutionary psychology and neuroscience to reduce suffering and enhance well-being in modern life.

Mindful Leadership Podcast

Recent interviews with David Whyte, Oliver Burkeman, and Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, and practice sessions.

What I”m Watching

NPR Tiny Desk. Andrea Gibson performs MAGA Hat In The Chemo Room – Powerful and Moving

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Warmest regards,

Marc

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Navigating Leadership Through Presence

In our latest episode, Marc hosts a thought-provoking conversation with Abbott Jiryu Byler, exploring the profound intersection of open-heartedness and effective action in the face of uncertainty. This discussion delves deep into the zen teachings of Suzuki Roshi and presents invaluable insights into the journey of mindful leadership.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Marc: [00:00:00] Welcome to Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser, a biweekly podcast featuring conversations with leaders and teachers exploring the intersection of keeping our hearts open and effective action in these most uncertain and challenging times. Please support our work by making a donation at Marc Lesser slash donate.

Today’s guest is Abbott  Jiryu Rutschman Byler actually goes by the name his dharma name, his Buddhist name is Jiryu. Jiryu is the co-habit of the San Francisco Zen Center and abiding Abbott at Green Gulch Farm. He is a transmitted Zen teacher in the lineage of Shira Suzuki. He [00:01:00] received his Dharma transmission from Soja, Mel Weitzman I’ve known Jiryu for many years.

And I’ve always been impressed with his his both his scholarly ability and that he has done work at San Quentin. He’s currently co-editing a new collection of teachings by a Suzuki Roshi a book called Becoming Yourself. And I am looking forward to the book and I am really looking forward to my, this conversation with Jiryu.

Jiryu. Good morning. It’s really a pleasure to get to spend this time with you.

Jiryu: Good morning, Marc. Thanks so much for the invitation.

Marc: So I can’t help myself. I think I, I need to start with a dream that I woke up with yesterday morning, which was I was I was waiting. I. Waiting for some people to go somewhere and they were late and I was feeling stressed and anxious.

And then in the next scene I was in a [00:02:00] courtyard where I was supposed to teach a college class and I didn’t know where the room, what room was in. And I was looking through the pamphlet and I couldn’t find out. I was getting more and more anxious and stressed. And finally I found the phone number for some people to call.

I pulled out my phone and my phone was frozen. It didn’t work. And in that moment I had this enormous, simple insight that none of this was real. And it was partly, I think I knew a little bit was, I knew I was dreaming, but also I just knew that none of this was real. And I walked over to to my wife, Lee.

I looked at her with a big smile on my face. I said, none of this is real. And I leapt in the air about 10 feet in the air and did a back flip and landed next to her. [00:03:00] And and then I took the hand of a woman next to me and started flying. And so I, I think this is, I think I’m curious your thoughts about a way into, Suzuki Roche’s teaching and this book that you’ve just recently edited.

A becoming, it’s funny I go back and forth with becoming yourself, becoming ourselves, becoming yourself. And and so much of his teaching, I think is what we think of as I. Real, maybe not so real, and what we think of as ourselves. Maybe there’s another perspective. Yeah.

And even the type what does it mean? Becoming yourself. Becoming yourself. Why? And in terms of I of course found my dream to really help me in my leadership conversations yesterday [00:04:00] and all of my conversations. Just a sense of not it all is real and it’s not what are your thoughts on what is what is, what do you have to say and what does Suzuki ROI have to say about this?

Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah. Suzuki Roshi, I don’t know. I guess the, I remember the story that goes wash your face. Now that, you had your dream wash, your face, is a classic zen response to a dream. I thi this isn’t in the Suzuki Roshi book. It was, I came across a story in Norman Fisher’s book.

It’s something like this, the practitioner says, I had the most amazing dream but can I tell it to you? And the teacher says something like, yes, hold on. And then comes with a basin and a towel and says, wash your face. So there’s, which again is the, so now, in the kind of like ongoing turning presence, beginner’s [00:05:00] mind letting go.

Now there’s an idea which is serving you today, right? And yesterday for a few days you get this okay, things aren’t real, but what’s the teaching today? So wash your face and what’s the teaching today and what’s the so that’s, it was just my reaction. And remembering I don’t exactly remember the characters of that story, but touched me when I read it in Norman’s book.

But that’s a beautiful expression of kind of the lightness of reality. The freedom of reality, not the sort of that it’s not what we think, that there’s all this kind of space in it is generates this sort of creativity and possibility and engagement aliveness. It’s not I think if we think like intellectually about.

It’s not real and hold onto that in some kind of way, then that could be a kind of nihilistic or deadening or something. Who cares? It’s not real. But what you’re describing is just oh, it’s not exactly that, it’s not real, but it’s not, it doesn’t have this kind of fixed, stuck quality. It’s not [00:06:00] what I think it is.

And so here I go with a back flip. Here I go flying off here I go, smiling at the person I love. That’s yeah, that loosening, softening of the self as actually allowing a kind of authenticity or intimacy. Which I think for like for Suzuki Roshi, when he’s talking about becoming yourself, it’s not hardened the self in this kind of hardened, like you are real and what you are is real.

And be that it’s this what you are yourself is this changing and intimate, he says, uses this term in one of the chapters. So beautiful. It’s sharing the feeling, I don’t know if you saw that chapter, sharing in the feeling of what’s around you, and that when we really are ourself, everything’s included.

So this kind of intimacy and freedom from the self by just being what it is. It’s a subtle point, but I think it’s, I think it’s important and that’s a beautiful dream. What I think of as I, I think it’s an early case from the Blue Cliff record, right? Where the student [00:07:00] enters the monastery and says, to the teacher, give me your teaching.

Oh no, this is the wash your bowl, not wash your face. I’m thinking of the wash your bowl. So in that story, give me your teaching. And the teacher says, have you eaten breakfast? And yes, then wash your bowl. Which I, again, much could be said about that, but it’s. I think a story about learning from experience, right?

Learning. And again, which is maybe similar to what you’re saying about the wash your face. That that don’t, maybe I hear you saying, don’t be so don’t be too caught on whatever lesson I learned yesterday. There might be a new one. Be open to the new one to today.

Jiryu: This connects for me to this question about habit energy and this kind of intimacy with life that you’re describing.

Sort of having this light, light inspired lightness in your life. The feeling of not fix, not stuck reality, and then [00:08:00] you can really receive, your grandson’s leap and and these conversations that you’re having in the way that, in this chapter, in the, in becoming yourself, Suzuki Roshi.

Using this expression, sharing your feeling. And it’s about he says, when you’re in the woods to really feel the feeling of being in the woods is what we mean by meditation. And he says the purpose of zen is to just share the feeling, this share in this feeling of being alive with everything that’s here alive with us.

And he says that’s the purpose. But the problem is our mind is always full of all of this rubbish. And so you say, but it’s beautiful. It’s not just like you needed the bulls, you say wash your bulls. They needed it to be dirty. You needed the food. They it. So he says it’s not rubbish while you’re using it.

It has a purpose while you’re using it. The thinking and all of that’s in our mind. That’s creating a little bit of a kind of filter [00:09:00] layer between us and this kind of intimate, more alive, not known and wondrous reality. There. It’s not like bad that we have those thoughts. They were important while we were using them, but we don’t need them anymore.

So he says, clear the table. After you’ve eaten, you have a pile of like papers and cans and stuff. You just have to clear the table and keep clearing the table, not so that you can be, so that your mind is empty. That your mind isn’t so stuck with this kind of layers of sludge that are blocking you from intimacy.

And I just find that framing so helpful. ’cause we hear clear the mind, get some idea that it’s ’cause the thoughts are bad or we’re supposed to squeeze to stop the thoughts or something. And he is just saying, can you hear the call of the woods? Hear the call of the room that you’re in. Hear the call of the person you’re in front of, and let your mind be quiet so that you can actually be intimate, and receive them.

And then he says that’s what the Buddha did when the Buddha was awakened and saw the morning star, the Buddha. Was [00:10:00] just had an this empty open mind and so could be totally intimate, share the feeling of the morning star. Then he has that great line where maybe it was the morning star sharing the Morningstar’s feeling with the Buddha.

We can’t really say. So that kind of intimacy as what our meditation practice is and then where our ethical practice, our precept practice are skillful practice harmonizing with others in the world also comes from that same like intimacy.

Marc: Yeah. And I I’m aware that, you current, you were, you’ve recently been not so recently, it’s been what, a couple years now thrust into this role of leadership and I think I imagine it is many descriptive words, but one would be fascinating how you practice with, having to lead and, work, lead an organization, work, work with people who have many different needs and ideas while at [00:11:00] the root, this practice of intimacy in lead leadership. And I, there’s a line I pulled out from the book that says to find true joy under some limitation is the way to realize the whole universe.

There’s no other way. The whole universe makes sense to you before you think about it. It’s important to give up your foolish discrimination or foolish ideas of freedom. This is the way of practice which I thought was again beauti. Beautiful. And both you have this blend of pra practical and yet very deep sense of right as you’re describing this feeling of practice.

And I wonder how it’s going in terms of bringing this feeling into practice in terms of your leadership role.

Jiryu: Thank you. Yeah. That’s a beautiful chapter in the book about finding yourself in the limitation. And it’s such an important teaching for [00:12:00] Suzuki Roshi and for Zen practice generally, that because we’re trying to get out of the current, we’re trying to get slip out of the current limitation that we’re in for some freedom that’s outside of that, then we’re actually missing the kind of bottomless boundless.

Alive intimacy with what’s here. So no matter how big or small the room is, if, when you’re totally just in it without trying to get out of it, then that’s how you find the freedom. And if you’re trying to get the big thing he says, you don’t, there’s no way to get the whole universe.

You just get your small room. And that’s how you get the whole universe. So I do think that all of us, it’s like the very, very daily kind of feeling of being in some limitation that we’re chafing against and feeling like wanting, there’s some freedom. There’s gonna be some freedom if we can manage to like, slip out of this list space, and of course, like a demanding job is one of those, I just look at my calendar and feel totally trapped. Like confined in a space is like impossible, jam packed. [00:13:00] And then I have this feeling like, how do I get out of this? I get outta this. But then as this is just what our life is of of saying yes to what’s here.

Then it’s like you just step into that moment, into that activity. There’s no limitation. That was the idea I had, this morning when I was anxious, looking at my calendar, it felt limited. But now that I’m in it, this is not eight o’clock Jiryu lesser, ah, how’s that gonna be in my day?

This is like the whole universe. We’re just here intimate. It’s free, there’s nothing blocking anything. ’cause we’re right here in the small room together. And for me, I’m always trying to, yeah. To wiggle out. So that finding yourself under some limitation has been a really important teaching for me.

There is a, there’s a, a couple things maybe to respond to that question of how it’s going for me. I do feel so part of the,the teaching on this becoming yourself, is also that [00:14:00] I. So for the meditation to just be the authentic kind of experience of this being alive together.

And this, he calls it yourself, but really he means this presence that we have right now that kind of includes everything. Not in some fancy way, but it just does. Like we’re here with everything. Everything is included. So just to be more trust that presence, then that presence can there’s an intuitive wisdom there.

And so the meditation part is just sharing in that feeling. And then the ethical part, or the kind of right action part is not so much trusting our mind and our stories and our fixed ideas, or even our moral codes if they’re like rigid, fixed moral codes that we have in our mind. But being who we are fully includes that we have this kind of innate loving heart, and that we’re intimate with what’s here and it’s trusting that our action, that kinda I can’t say like the best thing or the right thing, but.

A better approach is gonna be to [00:15:00] trust that I can settle down, try to empty and clear my mind a little bit, try to become intimate with how it feels right now in me, which includes my tension and my resistance, but also includes my innate tenderness and loving heart, and then be present with the person that I’m with.

So I’m often in these situations where I think, the worst, right? As a like leader is somebody tells you to tell somebody, person Y tells you to tell person X, thing B, and you’re just like or I have a feeling, oh, that thing needs to be fixed, or something needs to happen, or somebody is doing something wrong.

And then I have the story that starts to build and I’m gonna, get me a meeting with so and we’re gonna do this thing. And then I. I’m in my head with my idea about what’s supposed to happen to solve this problem that I’m gonna solve, so that I can be out of the limitation, so I can be free.

So then the practice is okay, I have all this idea, now I’m with this person. Can I actually just find this presence and this intimacy? And then o often it’s oh [00:16:00] yes, my story’s true. My thing that I had worked out in my mind about what the situation needs. Might still have some wisdom in it might still need to be expressed, but there’s something here also that’s alive and intimate and I can feel the tenderness and really be human with.

So that and then I feel the stakes of the practice, the stakes of the practice of intimacy, rather than coming in with my ideas, which I have compassion for, because that’s me trying to take responsibility. I’m trying to be responsible for the thing, but then my head is trying to do it by making these fixed ideas about how things should go.

If I really understood how important my responsibility was, I would be wanting to entrust that to the intuitive wisdom that this intimacy, which includes the mind, but, so that’s a kind of everyday, ’cause I get these stories about people, and then when I’m actually with them and allow myself to just be with them, it’s oh, I don’t know you and I don’t know what you need.

And part of what’s been fascinating for me in unpacking and [00:17:00] exploring this idea of becoming yourself for Suzuki Roshi, it does have this feeling of your becoming yourself in a real way, in a deep way. Your authentic self, which is this, as I said, intimate and this kind of tender loving heart. And that doesn’t mean like to push away.

The part, you might say I don’t really have a tender loving heart, or My tender loving heart is not accessible. I’m just aware of like my constriction and anxiety and resentment and all that and that, that’s all welcome. That’s all part of it. But there’s a kind of confidence, in c Kiros teaching that if you just keep opening, if you just really welcome what’s here at the core of our being is this intimacy and love, you don’t have to go somewhere else to find that.

You don’t have to manufacture that. You don’t have to slap that on top of something even on top of your hatred. You just make room for that, include that, and just keep, including, include [00:18:00] everything. And if you keep including how it is to be you’re gonna get to this natural. Tenderness there.

So I think when we say find your loving heart, somebody might scramble somewhere else to like, get that, where do I find that? And the direction is always no, you have it and you don’t have to you just keep including whatever’s here. You can just keep including it and then trust that that is our nature and that we can, it’s worth trying to settle into that and then to try to live from that, that, that might be even more beneficial than living from the kind of moral codes and ideas that we have.

I’m not saying that I’m doing like a particularly good job of that. You can ask around in the community here, but as a direction of the effort, it’s I wanna be here with each o with people,

Marc: no,  that’s, beautiful as a, in terms, whether it’s leadership or just life, right?

That [00:19:00] the yeah, not, yeah, again, it just I feel like the title of this book, becoming yourself kinda like a mantra, become like what is and yet there’s the always the underlying contradiction. It’s but you already are yourself.

Jiryu: You already are yourself. And also it doesn’t Buddhism say there’s no self anyway, there’s all kinds of problems with it.

But I find when I, and then, I bring up this topic and people say, but what about, I thought there was no self. And, but what about the fact for me, as I, one of my favorite expressions from the book is. He’s saying versions of this all the time, our way of sitting is for you to just become yourself.

Our moment by moment is just you, simply as yourself. Or this one of the point is to learn to be yourself as completely as a stone. As a stone. And I don’t know exactly what that means, but I just feel like this sort of permission to be exactly what’s here in a way that creates some freedom from what’s here.

[00:20:00] This not needing to be any other than any way other than I am. And that doesn’t mean like justification for me being petty because actually that’s not really how I am at the bottom of my heart. I don’t wanna justify being petty. I wanna find something deeper. And that’s my authentic being too.

But just that I have what I need to rely on and it’s here in this shared being alive kind of presence together. And that I don’t need to reach for anything. I don’t need to change anything. Exactly. But I do wanna deeply share the feeling of be intimate with what’s here. There is a piece that I I wonder if I could get your thoughts on that, is about leadership really in I don’t know if you came across this section or had come across it before in the unedited talks of sushi in this in this version it’s on 1 24.

He has this he’s talking about how we practice [00:21:00] ethics, and he uses this image of a couple images. One he uses the image of, so in our formal and practice of chanting, we have this drum called the GIO that keeps the time. And so he says, and so the person leading is kinda like the person.

Playing the drum is, thinks that they’re setting the pace of the chant. And I could I read you what he says about that? Because I think it’s beautiful. And I think it will, it’ll make sense to anyone who thinks that they can lead anybody. So he says first, oh my gosh. This is what you said.

You said like every line is like a lifetime, of study. So before the part that I wanted to read, he says, when we think about how to cope with the problems we have in our everyday life, we realize how important it is to practice azen, to practice meditation. I love that [00:22:00] when we think about how it’s wow, it’s hard to cope with these everyday problems.

That’s where the wish to meditate. It’s beautiful. The power of practice will help us in a true sense. But then he says, okay, for instance, while chanting with a group, when you strike the GIO or wooden drum, if you try to control the chanting thinking, this is too fast. I must make the chanting slower, or This is too slow, I must make it a little faster.

And you try to do so by the way, by way of your hand or your thinking, it doesn’t work. Only when you do it from your horror, your vital center, can you do it When you do it just by your thinking or your hand, it doesn’t work. The group will not follow your rhythm. Only when you do it with your zazen power can you control it.

When you can control yourself very well without having any idea of [00:23:00] controlling anything, you can set the right pace when you can control yourself. In the same way that you sit in Zazen posture, you can control the chanting perfectly. This is also true with your everyday practice. And then he says, this line that I’ve been carrying around now for years as I’ve been working on editing this book.

When you do something just through your skill or your thought, you will not be supported by people. And so it will not help others. Only when you do it with Zaza in mind can you help others and be naturally supported by people. So like when you’re separating, you separate from others and then think that you can do something with your skill or your hand in the case of the drummer, that you can be separate from it and control it isn’t gonna work because you’re not letting people support you.

That line of course, you’re not gonna be able to support the people if you’re not letting them [00:24:00] support you. And that’s what Zazen is receiving that support.

Marc: Yeah, no, thank you for, thank you so much for bringing this back to leadership J no. And I, in, in, in my day job where I’m teaching, working with leaders, I often come back to y yeah, there’s a lot of skills and strategies and things, so not that you shouldn’t learn how to hit the drum, and I like teaching people how to hit the drum or how to chant or in, out in the world.

Here are some skills and strategies for how to have difficult conversations but none of them will work. They’re pointless without the, what you’re calling zazen mind, which I might just call presence, pre presence, or. Open heart open like beginners something, a kind of leadership presence.

’cause I can remember a leader who I was [00:25:00] working with who didn’t understand why no one seemed to trust him or follow him, but his body just exuded defensiveness. And and that was, that was the work of the body, the work of or one’s full presence and yeah.

And meditation or zazen as the practice for actually accessing at that deeper level of, again, I get it again, coming back to our own leadership presence. Vital presence. Heartfelt presence is beautiful. That passage.

Jiryu: Share. Yeah. The sharing and the feeling.

The being intimate, the being present. That’s all. Also by zen, by meditation and that kind of settling the body and mind a little bit so that you can see what’s here and be with it. And this thing for me that I don’t know for you, but I get trapped thinking that to be generous with myself it’s not necessarily that I want to control for control’s sake.

It’s, I wanna support [00:26:00] people. I wanna support people, and I feel like it’s my responsibility to support people. But then I put my, I separate myself from that, from them, and I feel like I’m over here supporting them. And then Suzuki rashi’s reminding me Judy, that’s not gonna work. If you’re not be, if you’re not noticing that you’re supported by them, you’re not gonna, the things you do to try to support them are because there’s not the intimacy.

It’s not it can’t go one way like that you. You have to join the chanting, and then from joining the chanting, you can lead the chanting. He talks about this other image in Zen. I forget if it made it into this final version, but in the same kind of conversation, he uses this zen image, which he uses, I think, in his other books too, or it’s around in the zen tradition of driving the wave and following the wave.

I don’t know if you’ve studied that one, but it’s like you’re pushing the wave, but also you’re pushed by the wave and it’s a little bit like you’re leading the chanting, but also you’re following the chanting.

Marc: I recently was with [00:27:00] a, a new group of people who had very little chanting experience and just, my instructions were.

Just notice, notice, notice the chanting, and of course, notice your own voice. Your voice, this pace, the, the sound that you’re making and notice the sound that others are making. And it’s not exactly like you can experiment with harmonizing. You can experiment with not harmonizing and seeing how that goes.

And really I think, our leadership and life and relationships is a lot like that. Like part of it, it’s like just being curious about other people’s experience, being curious about, I often like I’ll walk into where there’s about to be a meeting and I’m like, oh what’s the energy here?

What’s hap are pe are people happy to be here? Are they nervous about being here? What’s the energy and what energy am I? And then what energy am I bringing? And what’s the dance that we’re doing, that we’re doing together? And where would I like this to [00:28:00] go and where do they, where would they like this to go?

And all of that. But then again, coming back to I think as much as I can, I, bringing in my, just opening my heart. Okay what’s happening here?

Jiryu: And trusting that a little bit more than your idea. And that’s the, for me, the basic thing about meditation practices and is like trusting presence a little more.

And trusting our ideas a little less.

Marc: Yes. I wanna read one section of the book that really I thought was just beautiful. It’s from the chapter, don’t try to figure out who you are. It says, after seeing his reflection in the water, toan wrote. This enlightenment verse, don’t try to seek yourself.

Don’t try to figure out who you are. The you found in that way is far from the real you. It is not you anymore. But when I go on my [00:29:00] way, wherever I turn, I meet myself. This verse means that you must find yourself in each zaza, in each meditation period. When you take your own step. Then wherever you go, you will meet with yourself.

I love that chapter.

Jiryu: Yeah, that’s so helpful for understanding what this is really pointing to. When we say becoming yourself it’s not become your idea, it’s become this aliveness. That it’s in everything you encounter and if you try to like step outside of it to get a hold of it, that’s not.

That’s not what we mean. I often think of we don’t need to imagine ourselves from the outside, like objects, in the world. It’s connecting with actually what does this feel like? And nobody can say anything about that really this being alive is ungraspable and boundless and deeply mysterious.

And that we can really [00:30:00] allow that feel that appreciate that and that’s what he means. Everything is ourself. Everything is our life.

Marc: Yeah. And yeah, I’ve been I’ve been studying some of Han’s teachings and I love, his talks a lot about, what seeds are you watering?

Jiryu: Yes.

Marc: And I feel like the language, I think, I love that you just used the word Ali aliveness, and it made me think about, as a practice watering the seeds of aliveness. And you’ve used the word intimacy a lot here. So water watering the seeds of intimacy and aliveness as a practice.

So if there’s if there is just by chance any takeaway from this conversation, I, maybe that’s it. That’s part of it. But anything else you would like to say today? Thanks so much, Jiryu. This has been wonderful and feels complete. Thank you very much, Jerry.

I hope you’ve appreciated today’s [00:31:00] episode. To learn more about my work, you can visit Jiryu lesser.net. And if you’re interested in enrolling in a self-directed course. Called Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, please visit Jiryu lesser courses.thinkific.com. This podcast is offered freely and relies on the financial support from listeners like you.

You can donate@Jiryulesser.net slash donate. Thank you very much.

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Aiming For Aimlessness

“Your purpose is to be yourself.”

“The Third Door of Liberation is aimlessness. There is nothing to do, nothing to realize, no program, no agenda…Your purpose is to be yourself.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

In this issue:

Aiming For AimlessnessPodcast: Mindful Leadership with Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler (Abiding Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center)A Favorite Quote, Thich Nhat Hanh was asked, “Aren’t you worried about the state of the world?”Half Day Retreat, July 13thAnother Favorite Quote, from Dogen, about how we limit ourselves

We are taught, trained, and measured to aim. From an early age, we are strongly encouraged to set goals, chase ambitions, and measure our worth by what we achieve. It is one of the insidious diseases of our time. Striving toward a successful future becomes a way of life, a kind of internal engine—always pushing forward, rarely pausing. This constant striving breeds not satisfaction, but anxiety, exhaustion, and a subtle sense of insufficiency.

The idea of aimlessness might seem radical, lazy, or irresponsible. But what if, paradoxically, aimlessness held the key to a more sustainable, joyful, and authentic kind of success? What if the practice of aimlessness might lead to both greater satisfaction, creativity and effectiveness?

To be aimless doesn’t mean to lack direction. It means to see and appreciate what is right in front of you. It means to work and create and grow, not from fear or a sense of lacking, but from presence, curiosity, and trust. In Zen practice, the concept of “non-attainment” or “no gaining idea” invites us to release our grip on outcomes. The point isn’t to have no goals or aspirations—it’s to relate to them differently.

Aimlessness is not easy in a culture obsessed with optimization. We’re praised for being busy, admired for burning out in the name of success. What if we learned to live from a deeper place—not trying to bolster an identity pushed on us by our parents and our culture, but instead what if we look inward to uncover our true nature and look outward for what we might offer others.

Letting go doesn’t mean giving up. It means allowing space for your life to unfold in surprising ways. In doing so, we just might find ourselves arriving at places we hadn’t even known to dream of.

Aimlessness invites us to tune into a different rhythm—one where goals and aspirations can act as a guide, but are not the measure of our worth. Here, we do the work not just to get somewhere or to prove something, but because the work itself is meaningful, purposeful, and can be sacred. We act with clarity, and with a sense of wonder. We can discover real rest without feeling guilty. We listen to our lives and to life, and allow our path to be shaped by both surrender and by strategy.

Integrating aimlessness into daily work and relationships is a practice. It asks us to shift our internal compass—from the rigid “what should I be achieving?” to the more interesting and honest “what is emerging here?” It isn’t about rejecting ambition—it refines it. You can still want to write the book, start the business, make the change, even create various kinds of wealth. But those aspirations are rooted in alignment and generosity rather than anxiety. These wholesome ambitions create healthy soil and support surprising bloom.

Aiming for aimlessness isn’t a contradiction. It’s a deeper aim, a different way of being in the world—one that honors both movement and stillness, both aspiration and acceptance, with confidence and humility. It teaches us that success is not just about reaching goals, but about the quality of attention we bring to each step along the way.

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(Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center)

Aiming for aimlessness isn’t the end of ambition—it’s the beginning of finding real, durable freedom. And in that freedom, we may find a new and lasting kind of success we didn’t know we were looking for.

Practices:

Let go of identifying with what you have accomplished or might accomplish.

There is no need to wait in order to be satisfied and happy.

Explore being satisfied and happy right now, regardless of your circumstance or the circumstances of the world.

Try on integrating being highly ambitious when it comes to solving real problems and highly aimless/satisfied at the same time.

Mindful Leadership Podcast: Navigating Wise Leadership with Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler

San Francisco Zen Center Abiding Abbott Jiryu Rutschman-Byler unfolds Suzuki Roshi’s teachings around the idea of “becoming yourself.” It’s not about solidifying a fixed identity but rather embracing a fluidity that allows for authenticity and intimacy.

We discuss a new book coming out in July, Becoming Yourself, a collection of talks by Shunryu Suzuki, edited by Jiryu and Mel Weitsman.

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We talk about the challenges and rewards of stepping into leadership roles and how the practice of intimacy is essential. Mark shares that to effectively lead, one must first trust in being present and supported by those they lead. This mutual support is where true influence and effectiveness as a leader lie.

A Favorite Quote

Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh was asked: “Aren’t you worried about the state of the world?”

He takes a breath and says: “What is most important is to not allow the anxiety you feel about what happens in the world to fill your heart. There is tremendous suffering in the world, but it need not paralyze us. If we don’t know how to breath, smile, and live every moment of our lives deeply, we will never help anyone.”

Half Day Retreat, Sunday, July 13th, In Person and Online

In our world of busyness, of more/faster/better, this half-day retreat offers time to stop, reflect, and renew. We will explore the practices of effort and effortless as a path to well-being and “stepping into your life.” Together we’ll follow a gentle schedule of sitting and walking meditation, a talk, and some discussion. Anyone looking to begin or deepen a meditation and mindfulness practice is invited to attend.

Another Favorite Quote (From Genjo Koan, Koan of Everyday Life, by Dogen)

“When you sail out in a boat to the midst of ·an ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.”

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Warmest regards,

Marc

The post Aiming For Aimlessness appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Where Is There A Place Where There Is No Heat And No Cold?

Resistance and Letting Go of Resistance

A student asks the teacher, “How do you avoid the discomfort of hot and cold?”

The teacher said, “Go to that place where there is no hot and cold.”

The student asked, “Where is that place?”

The teacher responds, “When you are hot be thoroughly hot, and when you are cold, be thoroughly cold.”

This classic Zen story can be read literally, but mostly it is intended as metaphor, and as a teaching story to notice how much energy we put into resisting what is, to seeking comfort, and a path to living with greater freedom in a world that is highly imperfect (or perfectly imperfect…)

The real, or underlying question is – How can I avoid difficult, uncomfortable, or painful situations? Or, more to the point – how can I find peace, or how can I find freedom in a world that is uncertain, unpredictable and at times unpleasant or at times horrible? The initial response is — find a place where there is no difficulty. Yes, this is a “trick” answer.

The teacher says – explore being completely where and who you are, without wavering, without judgment, without wanting to be anything or anywhere other than exactly as you are – hot, cold, happy, angry, impatient, lonely, loving… If you want to find peace, let go of wanting your situation to be different than it is. Be completely as you are. In fact, hot and cold are quite subjective.

Most of us spend a tremendous amount of time and energy seeking comfort, and resisting or complaining about the world as it is and our lives as they are. We like comfort and predictability (I do!) and dislike being uncomfortable and uncertain.

Leadership and Discomfort

I still have my original copy of The Fifth Discipline, a best-selling leadership and business book by Peter Senge. Senge asserts that staying with the discomfort of the gaps between “what is” and “what we aspire to” may be the most important quality of a leader. As leaders we are nearly always experiencing gaps – aspiring to meet financial goals, creating products and services, building teams, and on and on. There is no avoiding those gaps. Avoiding these gaps, through busyness or lowering our goals, comes at a large cost to accomplishing what matters.

There is something refreshing and important about staying with the discomfort of feeling and living with these gaps – in business, relationships, and all parts of our lives.

Practices

Notice how much energy you expend in seeking comfort and certainty and resisting the difficulties of your life and the world.

Explore being thoroughly hot and thoroughly cold – thoroughly appreciative, disappointed, angry, loving… Letting go of wanting things to be other than they are. And, at the same time, working for positive change.

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What I’m Reading

I don’t read many novels and right now find myself in the middle of two.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood – a quiet, reflective novel about a woman who retreats to a former convent seeking solitude and connection with her spiritual life. Beautifully written.

Convenience Store Woman, by Sayaka Murata – Very quirky novel that explores purpose, identity, and the pressure to conform.

Podcast: Mindful Leadership

New Episode! Ep. 50: How to Catch Sparks & Lead with Heart

In our newest episode of Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser, we explore the invisible threads of connection, inspiration, and presence — what I call catching sparks. This episode is an invitation to show up fully — with breath, heart, and attention.

At the core of the conversation is a simple yet profound truth: We bring our entire life to each moment we experience.

Listen Now → https://marclesser.net/zen-bones-podcast/

What You’ll Hear in This Episode:
– Mindful breathing and centering as the foundation of leadership
– How “catching sparks” can fuel personal growth and deeper relationships
– The energy we exchange in every interaction — and how to become more intentional
– Why love, presence, and connection are at the heart of true leadership
– How nature, people, and even music can ignite transformation

Half Day Retreat, Sunday, July 13th, In Person and Online

In our world of busyness, of more/faster/better, this half-day retreat offers time to stop, reflect, and renew. We will explore the practices of effort and effortless as a path to well-being and “stepping into your life.” Together we’ll follow a gentle schedule of sitting and walking meditation, a talk, and some discussion. Anyone looking to begin or deepen a meditation and mindfulness practice is invited to attend.

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Warmest regards,

Marc

The post Where Is There A Place Where There Is No Heat And No Cold? appeared first on Marc Lesser.

The Practice of Catching Sparks

In this milestone 50th episode of Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser, we explore the art of catching sparks—those subtle, powerful moments of connection, inspiration, and presence that can transform how we live and lead.

Marc draws from his experiences as a CEO, Zen teacher, and leadership coach to reflect on how mindfulness, breath awareness, and love help us tune into the energy exchanged between people. With references to Thich Nhat Hanh, Bob Dylan, and the power of nature, this episode invites listeners to become more awake to life’s offerings — and to practice offering their own sparks in return.

Whether you’re a leader, a seeker, or someone navigating a life transition, this episode offers practical and poetic insights for deeper connection, personal growth, and purposeful leadership.

In this milestone 50th episode of Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser, we explore the art of catching sparks—those subtle, powerful moments of connection, inspiration, and presence that can transform how we live and lead.

Marc draws from his experiences as a CEO, Zen teacher, and leadership coach to reflect on how mindfulness, breath awareness, and love help us tune into the energy exchanged between people. With references to Thich Nhat Hanh, Bob Dylan, and the power of nature, this episode invites listeners to become more awake to life’s offerings — and to practice offering their own sparks in return.

Whether you’re a leader, a seeker, or someone navigating a life transition, this episode offers practical and poetic insights for deeper connection, personal growth, and purposeful leadership.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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[00:00:00] Marc: Welcome to Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser, a biweekly podcast featuring conversations with leaders and teachers exploring the intersection of keeping our hearts open and effective action in these most uncertain and challenging times. Please support our work by making a donation at Marc lesser slash donate.

Welcome to today’s practice session. We’ll start with a short sitting, uh, do a little practice together. I’ll say a few words about the topic and then maybe we’ll, we’ll end with a few minutes of sitting together.[00:01:00]

Marc (00:05)
Let’s begin by doing some sitting practice together. And I am going to ring my trusty bell.

the Bell’s invitation.

to pause.

I’m just noticing.

What is it like to be here? What is it like to be alive?

For me, taking a few deep breaths.

grounding, know, grounding the body.

I read recently ⁓ centeredness as the number one quality of a leader. I would probably say the number one quality of a human centeredness.

Again, with each breath, returning to your center. What is the center?

in allowing the breath to be smooth and fluid.

and trying on the mindset of nothing lacking, nothing lacking. What if everything, everything you need is right here.

Breathing in, I’m aware that I’m breathing in and breathing out. I’m aware that I’m breathing out.

I think of the ⁓ Thich Nhat Hanh meditation poem, he says, calm, ease, smile, release.

present moment.

Wonderful moment.

And again, whether it’s wonderful or not, know, whatever you’re feeling, it’s all.

Practice, practicing being, appreciating, appreciating each breath, each unique, unique breath.

that bell. It’s another ⁓ invitation to come on back, come on back and join me. Lovely to be here with you. I hope you are doing well.

I’ve been thinking about and talking about and practicing with the practice of what I’m calling catching sparks, catching sparks. And I ⁓ I was inspired by watching the ⁓ the film about the life of Bob Dylan called A Complete Unknown.

And it’s a biopic about the early days of Bob Dylan’s emergence as a music icon. And he seeks out and finds his hero, one of his heroes, Woody Guthrie, who’s hospitalized in New Jersey. And he finds him, you know, and he sees Woody lying in bed, ⁓ unable to speak. And Pete Seeger happens to be there singing a song to

⁓ to Woody Guthrie as Dylan walks in and Pete turns to a young Bob Dylan and says, you know, who are you? And he says, my name’s Bob, Bobby. And he says, why are you here? And ⁓ Dylan walks up and looks at, ⁓ makes eye contact with Woody Guthrie and he says, I’m here to catch some sparks. I’m here to catch some sparks.

And it made me realize how much of my own life and my own growth has been catching sparks from others. I’ve had so many wonderful mentors and teachers and people in my life who just being around them has been a great joy and great learning and…

The other day I found myself doing a training with a group of hospice workers. And I was sitting in a circle of hospice volunteers and staff members of a hospice. And I could feel the energy in the room of something about people who spend a good deal of their waking hours.

supporting people who are dying. I could feel the energy of the room and ⁓ I said as I looked around that I was here both ⁓ to catch some sparks from them, that I could feel the depth of their energy, feel what they had, how they had learned and were growing by being around, you know, life and death. And at the same time I said my hope in this time we had together that

that ⁓ I was there.

to hopefully maybe they could catch a spark, catch some sparks from me and all of my life energy and what I had, ⁓ the ways that I had grown. And that as we started this meditation together, my instructions were, can you feel that you are bringing your entire life

right now. And I would say that’s true now, you know, to anyone. As you are listening to me, you are bringing your entire life, your entire being to this moment. This, you don’t have to pretend or make it up. It’s true. I feel it. I feel it right now as I’m, as I’m speaking, as I’m

speaking and listening and feeling the weight, the gravity and the lightness and the joy of all that I’ve been given and my aspiration to give it away, to give it away to you. I hope you can feel it. And I think this ⁓ catching sparks can be a valuable and healthy way to

approach our work, our relationships and all parts of our lives. What a simple and vital approach, right? Wherever you go, being open, what sparks might you catch? You know, of course, from the people, but also from the clouds, the mountains, the stones, the rivers, the ladybugs, they all

They all have sparks to offer. And at the same time, you know, bringing awareness, what sparks might you have to offer? What sparks might you have to offer?

And this simple, profound practice reminds me a little bit of a line of poetry from David White that I carry around where he says, anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. It’s all about the sparks.

that we catch and that we give that bring us alive.

Yeah, so in some way, my, you know, my ongoing aspiration is to, to make myself into someone who has sparks to offer. And I put this out there as a, as a practice, you know, of making yourself into someone who has sparks to offer.

And this also reminds me of, I’ve been studying some of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, his practice, when he talks about the practice of right view. And in some way, I think this.

Forging ourself into someone who has sparks to offer and is always open to receiving sparks is a kind of view. You know, so he says on this practice of right view Thich Nhat Hanh says, you know, when one person comes up to us, the very sight of him makes us uncomfortable. But when someone else walks by, we like him or her right away. Something in us.

Something in each of those people touches a seed in us. If we love our mother deeply, but feel tense every time we think of our father, it’s natural that when we see a young person who looks like our mother, we appreciate her. And when we see a person who evokes the memory of our father, we feel uncomfortable. So in this way, we can see, we can feel the seeds that are in us.

when we become aware of the seeds in our storehouse, we’ll not be surprised by our own behavior or the behavior of others. So this is our storehouse. And in some way, this practice of feeling sparks, catching sparks, and giving sparks can be a way to notice.

notice our habit energy and transform our habit energy. And, know, Thich Nhat Hanh suggests the practices of

when it comes to right view of asking ourselves, you know, am I sure? Am I sure? What am I sure about? And his other suggested practice is.

Hello habit energy, right? To notice our habit energy.

And one other practice that he suggests about right view is ⁓ opening up to feeling love, the energy of love. And I think that’s what this, you know, using language, our language is quite ⁓ dual and limited.

But when I talk about the practice of catching sparks, I think it’s feeling the love and the meeting, the meeting of.

the love that comes from us and the love that’s coming toward us, meeting it, that meeting, that meeting of sparks. I’ve been, I’ve been playing a game lately with my, two year old grandson. We actually, this game, this game is with my six year old grandson, this particular game of, it’s a game that we call

catching sparks and we jump together on the trampoline. We jump and we jump and we’re doing it with great ⁓ enthusiasm and then we stop and we gently, gently put our index fingers almost touching and there’s a spark of static electricity and it hurts a little bit and it’s

joyful and and we both we both kind of laugh and feel the amazing energy of this electricity and this literally this spark of static electricity so ⁓ I feel that often when I’m especially when I’m teaching you know when I’m with people who

you know, who are dropping, dropping into our own ⁓ love, our own energy of love and feeling, feeling the sparks.

Yeah, so maybe, maybe experimenting with the practice of ⁓ catching sparks and offering sparks, ⁓ feeling, feeling the love, feeling the love again and again.

Yeah, so let’s keep practicing together. Let’s keep practicing catching sparks, offering sparks, and catching sparks with great open minds and open hearts. Thank you.

I hope you’ve appreciated today’s episode. To learn more about my work, you can visit Marc lesser.net, and if you’re interested in enrolling in a self-directed course, called Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader, please visit www.Marclesser.courses.thinkific.com. This podcast is offered freely and relies on the financial support from listeners like you.

You can donate@marclesser.net slash donate. Thank you very much.

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The post The Practice of Catching Sparks appeared first on Marc Lesser.

What The Hell Is Time?

An Approach To Living More Wholeheartedly With Impermanence

“The fundamental problem is that this attitude towards time sets up a rigged game in which it’s impossible ever to feel as though you’re doing well enough. Instead of simply living our lives as they unfold in time – instead of just being time, you might say – it becomes difficult not to value each moment primarily according to its usefulness for some future goal, or for some future oasis of relaxation you hope to reach once your tasks are finally ‘out of the way’”…

– Oliver Burkeman, 4,000 Weeks, Time Management For Mortals

Insights Into Practice – TimePodcast Conversation With Oliver BurkemanHalf Day Retreat, July 13thWhat I’m Watching – Richard Baker, Living In Relationship

There is a story, that may be about time, from David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech:

There are two young fish swimming along.
They happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says:

“Morning, boys. How’s the water?”

The two young fish swim on for a bit.
Eventually, one of them looks over at the other and says:

“What the hell is water?”

We humans are often like fish swimming in the sea of time. What we call time is invisible, ungraspable, and yet is so intertwined with our being, it can be easy to forget its essentialness. We struggle with, or forget about, or are just confused or terrified by time.

In the introduction to Oliver Burkeman’s best-selling book he says:

“The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. Here’s one way of putting things in perspective: the first modern humans appeared on the plains of Africa at least 200,000 years ago, and scientists estimate that life, in some form, will persist for another 1.5 billion years or more, until the intensifying heat of the sun condemns the last organism to death. But you? Assuming you live to be eighty, you’ll have had about four thousand weeks.”

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He goes on to say:

“Our troubled relationship with time arises largely from this same effort to avoid the painful constraints of reality. And most of our strategies for becoming more productive make things worse, because they’re really just ways of furthering the avoidance. After all, it’s painful to confront how limited your time is, because it means that tough choices are inevitable and that you won’t have time for all you once dreamed you might do. … And so, rather than face our limitations, we engage in avoidance strategies, in an effort to carry on feeling limitless. We push ourselves harder, chasing fantasies of the perfect work–life balance…”

What to do? Practice.

As Ram Dass so eloquently says in the title of his book from the 1970’s — Be Here Now!

Or as Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh teaches – explore practicing the Seven Miracles of Mindfulness. These could be called the Seven Miracles of Not Avoiding Impermanence:

1) Be present – Notice you are here, alive, breathing. Just appreciate being alive. This requires stopping, stepping out of the stream of busyness, doing, worrying, and achieving. It starts with noticing when you are not present. Meditation is the most effective way I know to be able to do this…

2) Notice others – Be aware that you are not alone. Be curious about other’s experience.

3) Nourish others – Practice kindness. How can you support others?

4) Aspire to relieve other’s suffering – Allow the intention of healing to arise.

5) Look deeply – Go beneath the surface of your awareness. What are you feeling?

6) Cultivate Understanding – explore the deeper questions of what brings you here? What really brings you here? How are you swimming in time? What matters most?

7) Transformation – As the next moment arises, now what? What’s possible? Practice with warmhearted wonder and curiosity.

“Practicing the Seven Miracles of Mindfulness helps us lead a happy and healthy life, transforming suffering and bringing forth the peace, joy, and freedom.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

Podcast Conversation With Oliver Burkeman

Oliver Burkeman is an acclaimed journalist, author and thinker whose work offers a refreshing perspective on productivity, time management, and the pursuit of a meaningful life. He is the author of 4,000 Weeks, Time Management For Mortals.

Why Listen:

1. Discover how rethinking your approach to time can lead to a more fulfilling and productive life. Oliver Burkeman shares insights from his book “4,000 Weeks” on the unrealistic standards we set around time and how embracing our finiteness can liberate us.

2. We discuss how Zen philosophy can help you move beyond mere intellectual understanding and foster a deeper, more intuitive approach to life’s challenges.

3. Explore the delicate balance between maintaining control and encouraging creativity within your team or organization. Marc and Oliver discuss how letting go of excessive control can actually enhance innovation and productivity.

Tune into the full episode of “Mindful Leadership” to dive deeper into these topics and the exploration of a more present and impactful way of living.

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Half Day Retreat, Sunday, July 13th, In Person and Online

In our world of busyness, of more/faster/better, this half-day retreat offers time to stop, reflect, and renew. We will explore the practices of effort and effortless as a path to well-being and “stepping into your life.” Together we’ll follow a gentle schedule of sitting and walking meditation, a talk, and some discussion. Anyone looking to begin or deepen a meditation and mindfulness practice is invited to attend.

What I’m Watching: Dharma Talk, Video

Richard Baker, Living In Relationship

Richard, Baker-Roshi was my Zen teacher for the 10 years I was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center. He recently gave this talk at the City Center. He addresses how our primary objective in Zen is to prevent war and that we do this by living in relationship.

Warmest regards,

Marc

The post What The Hell Is Time? appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Four Thousand Weeks, One Precious Moment

Marc speaks with Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, about how leaders can enhance effectiveness through mindfulness, time management, and Zen philosophy. This episode challenges conventional leadership models and offers practical insights to spark creativity and resilience. A must-listen for anyone looking to lead authentically and build thriving teams.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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[00:00:00] Marc: Welcome Oliver Burkeman. I’m really pleased to get the chance to have a conversation with you.
Oliver: Likewise. Thanks very much for inviting me.
Marc: I’ve been enjoying your books a lot and, and I was just, um, teasing, teasing you a little bit by saying that I’ve never seen so many Zen teachers quoted in one book. And in, in truth, you know, a lot of my life I feel like is, I know interpreting or recontextualizing Zen practices, Zen philosophy in a way that is highly accessible. And I know that’s not, I don’t, I guess, I don’t think that’s your, uh, your motivation, but you are taking, I think, some really, you know, profoundly interesting ideas and making that, turning them into things that are highly accessible.

[00:00:53] Oliver: Um, I’m, I’m very flattered to hear it. You know, I think the thing that Zen [00:01:00] I don’t know if this is a widely recognized thing or if it’s just my personal idiosyncrasy, but what I find in zen writing especially is that it sort of, it very much kind of meets, uh, overly left brained people like me where, where we are.

It takes, it takes this sort of, uh, tendency intellectualize and understand life through the intellect. And instead of saying like, no, that’s, that’s bad, you should be meditating on the image of a flower instead or something. It sort of pushes it as far as it’ll go and says, well, okay, let’s pursue this.

Let’s pursue this until the whole edifice kind of shudders and collapses. So I really appreciate the sort of, this kind of, I don’t know if this makes any sense, but the sort of willingness to be met at the point, the kind of nerdy place that I’m, I am in terms of wanting to figure life out and then be introduced to the thought that maybe life is not figureoutable in that,

[00:01:58] Marc: in that sense.[00:02:00]

Yes. Yes. And yeah, that. I think one of the reasons your, your books have resonated with people so widely is that there’s, there’s like a, they pull the rug out from under your regular way of thinking about things, especially time, but in a way that. You feel slightly off balance, but in a way that feels good for you.

[00:02:27] Oliver: Right. And that’s a feeling I have from Zen writing. So there’s an overlap. Yeah.

[00:02:30] Marc: That’s great to hear. Yeah. What popped into my mind as you were speaking was, um, and I don’t know if this is parallel or not actually, but. people will say to me, my meditation practice, my Zazen practice really sucks.

And my response to that, I say, you know, in, in Zen, we call that bragging.

And so it’s a little bit like, maybe the parallel [00:03:00] would be. If someone were to say to you, Oh, I’m, , my time management really sucks or I’m really bad, I’m really bad at, at managing my time in the world that you’ve created, that would be a kind of bragging, you know?

[00:03:13] Oliver: Right. Yeah. No, I, I take that. I take that point. And not only the substance of it, but it’s like, there’s something important about the humor of it too, right? Which is that there’s something, there’s a lot of humor in the, in the Zen. that I’ve encountered. It’s a bit like, the sort of depth, this idea of sort of deep humor is very prevalent in Zen, and it’s, it’s like it is a lot of Jewish humor as well.

And, um, obviously, quite a few Americans Zen masters come from a Jewish background, so there’s a sort of a, there’s a big overlap in that sort of idea of some sort of deep appreciation of the absurdity of the human situation is important here too, I think.

[00:03:52] Marc: Yes. I’m curious, do you get contacted by people in the business world and leaders?

Because in a way, [00:04:00] this topic of, how we live and view, how we live and swim in the world of time is such a core leadership and business issue.

[00:04:11] Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. I do. And I’ve had some really, um, interesting and fruitful engagements there. And I’ve done a bit of sort of speaking and workshop kind of work in that world.

It’s interesting because it isn’t where I. naturally come from. Uh, I worked as a journalist for many years and of course, on some level, this is a organizational role involving collaboration, teamwork, some leadership, but it’s still something very, there’s something very sort of. Solo about even journalists in a, in a big, uh, news organization.

And then what I do now is, is, is a significant part sort of solitary and solo. So I’m always very, really interested in the interface between these sorts of [00:05:00] ideas and like how you get along in a team, how you steer, uh, uh, an organization or a department, things like this. But it’s some, it’s been a bit of an intellectual workout for me.

Cause it’s not where my. It’s not where my mind goes immediately, I suppose.

[00:05:16] Marc: I pulled out some, quotes and words from, I think mostly from, meditations for mortals and, you know, and one, well, I, I love the story that you tell about, you know, staying sane in a, in a world that’s a mess

yeah, it’s, it’s very easy to, um, be caught by, by what’s happening in our world. But I was also thinking how important I, I think humor as a practice for that and there’s a lot of suffering in the world of organizations. , working with other people can, tends to be really hard.

Right. And part of that is. , part of it is humans working together, but a lot of it is actually, I think, expectations about [00:06:00] time and expectations about what’s the aligning around what’s going to get done when. It’s interesting.

[00:06:08] Oliver: It’s almost, it’s almost easier maybe to accept in the two other sort of, you know, the, the, the two other kind of, um, relational contexts in which I’m most embedded, right?

Marriage and parenthood. In both of these, you kind of know that it comes with the territory to have your, your desires to control how time unfolds, relentlessly challenged. And if you’re just a little bit, sensitive to the situation, you know that it’s good for you as well. That this is all very much sort of gross oriented, but it’s something about the, the work world that is where that’s a little harder to accept, right?

Because. Instrumental goals are so predominant. , most people don’t have a goal for their marriage other than to have a really good marriage, but people have goals for their organizational [00:07:00] teams that go beyond, like, we all love belonging to this team. So there’s kind of difficult clashing, intentions at play and things like that, I guess.

[00:07:10] Marc: Yeah, I think people are often surprised in the world of work that it does have goals. A lot of the same challenges of the marriage in, in the human element of, of needing to figure things out with another, another person, I think it’s, it might be the, the last line you, you might know this, you, you’re, you’re like a walking encyclopedia.

I think, um, I do have a lot of quotes in my head. Yeah. So there’s a, the reference I’m thinking of, I think it’s the end, ah, it might be a roomy poem, but I’m not sure. But it’s something like, you know. Uh, one of the hardest things about a marriage is, you know, two, two imperfect birds sharing the same nest.

[00:07:55] Oliver: Hmm. I don’t know that. I love it.

[00:07:57] Marc: Yeah. And, and, and that’s, [00:08:00] I think people are surprised often. I know I was in the work world to realize that, having to align with another imperfect person and how challenging that can be.

[00:08:14] Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. I mean completely and they’re not layered on top of that.

You have the fact that so many people are kind of replaying family roles in the workplace. I realized quite early on in my life as a journalist that I was sort of slotting myself into a sort of child role relative to an editor who would who was in a parental role and and then you see that kind of I you know, I think I hope I’ve got over that at this point, but you you sort of um You see these kind of things replicating themselves and family dynamics causing all sorts of trouble and people looking for approval, but not the kind of approval you can ever really get from a manager, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. A deep [00:09:00] cauldron of stuff. I

[00:09:02] Marc: think, yeah, those, those old, um, the roles that we fall into and. I think it’s interesting. It’s true in in our marriage. It’s true in as parents, you know, how we use our own power and, um, the good use, the good use of power Yeah. But I do want to come back.

I want to come back to this, one of the things that, uh, that jumped out at me from, I think it’s early on in your book, 4, 000 weeks where you say the fundamental problem is the attitude toward that we have toward time that sets up a rigged game in which it’s impossible to feel as though you’re doing well enough.

And, and that was so like. Yeah. Like that’s, um,

you know, be, and I think it’s con it’s, it’s so much embedded in our culture that we’re, that, that we’re, it’s in our, in our language.

[00:09:58] Oliver: Yeah, no, [00:10:00] absolutely. And I think, um, you know, there are a couple of ways of looking at it, but one is simply that we are finite creatures in a, what you could call an infinite.

environment, you know, we, we can, we have so many hours in the day. We have so much energy, certain amount of attention, certain amount of intellect to get our heads around things. And yet we are bombarded by, especially today by sort of effectively infinite number of demands, things that feel like tempting possibilities, choices.

Um, and you know, I guess maybe it just, there’s this sort of problem that all sorts of psychotherapies and spiritual traditions are all trying to address in their own way, which is that we’re kind of, Um, seemingly kind of infinite minds trapped in very, very material finite bodies. Um, or it seems that way anyway, depending on your, your tradition.

Um, and so, [00:11:00] you know, we can, I can think about vastly more things that I can do. I can feel that I ought to do vastly more things than I will ever have the time to do. Or I can feel like I ought to have a degree of control or a degree of understanding of people close to me that actually is just not my gift, right?

So there’s this constant feeling of mismatch between what we can sort of envisage and what we can actually do. And I guess one of my arguments in 4, 000 weeks is that a lot of the ways in which we sort of, the pathologies of time management, you know, the ways we get distracted or procrastinate or bury ourselves in busy work, all these other things, you can kind of understand them as.

ways to avoid feeling the truth of, of our situation. I think that’s something that I really appreciate in a lot of Zen teaching as well, that sense of like, yeah, gently but firmly not [00:12:00] allowing you to carry on avoiding the reality of the situation.

[00:12:03] Marc: Well, you were, um, you were right there just starting to, you know, sound more and more like a, like a Zen teacher.

Um, and, and this. You know, in what you were saying about that we, on the one hand, right, we, um, you know, we, we, we do live in what appears to be a limited body and a limited time, you know, in the Zen world, they, they, they would maybe one of the language they might use is that we live in the relative world.

We do it where everything is relative, but we also live in this, you know, you forget exactly the, the word you used, but the. You know, the Zen world might say that we also live in this non relative world or the world of the imagination or the world even outside of consciousness or, or the, [00:13:00] the world where, um, as soon as you, as soon as you name, as soon as you reify, like non, non reification of, of things, um, and, and.

Yeah. And, and that, that idea is kind of foreign to most of our, you know, Western, especially Western culture and, and how, and, and again, I think in your writing you make, you keep bringing in that idea of the nonrelative world and making it practical and making it accessible.

[00:13:36] Oliver: This is very interesting to me cause I, I’m sort of really glad if that’s true, but it’s, you know, I, but I guess I, I’m.

Uh, it remains a bit of a mystery to me because I think that what I’m, definitely what I’m doing is in some kind of tradition of, you know, negative theology and the [00:14:00] via negativa and all these things about like there’s something really powerful in lots of traditions, I think Zen, but Christianity certainly has, certainly has its, its strand of this as well of kind of, you know, uh, repeatedly showing The, the dead ends of certain ways of thinking or of reasoning in order to sort of, yeah, to pull the rug out because what matters is where you are and what you’re in when the rug is Has, has gone, but, um, yeah, I’m, I feel like I, I don’t quite know or understand what it is that I’m gesturing to there.

I don’t know what, you know, I think there’s so much benefit just in under, in facing how things are in the, in the relative world and not indulging in quite so much compulsive avoidance of how things are in the relative world. Now the process of doing that is on some level to connect [00:15:00] to or to participate in the absolute, but I’m, I’m on much thinner ice there.

I’m fascinated, but I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

[00:15:09] Marc: Yeah. Well, again, I think, you know, yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, yeah. It’s, it’s pretty thin ice there or no, no ice there, you know, it’s

[00:15:19] Oliver: right. Okay. Yes. Maybe no one, maybe no one can talk about it. Okay. Yeah. I’ll accept that.

[00:15:24] Marc: No, I, um, I, I forget if this quote, I don’t, I haven’t memorized all of the quotes in your book.

[00:15:32] Oliver: I forgive you.

[00:15:33] Marc: You use the word control and I’m, I’m curious if you’re, you may, you probably, it’s probably in your book. There’s a very, what I think of as a. Wonderful, beautiful quote that’s in, um, it’s actually from Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind by Shinra Suzuki where he says, the best way to control your sheep or cow is to give them a wide pasture.

[00:15:55] Oliver: Yeah. No, I don’t use that quote. I think I have [00:16:00] encountered it or certainly versions of it. That idea of becoming a, uh, of, of working on sort of becoming a bigger space for things rather than bearing down on them. Well, that’s what that quote says to me anyway. I think there is a really fascinating strand of thinking that is in Zen, but it’s in all sorts of other traditions and, and in sort of sociology and social theory as well about right, this kind of ironic or seemingly upside down relationship between control and the results that we, that we really value.

in, in life. And in the new book in Meditations for Mortals, I do draw quite a bit on the work of this German social theorist, Hartmut Roser, who wrote a huge book, very well, very readable, very worth reading called Resonant, um, where he sort of makes this argument that [00:17:00] as societies, as well as as individuals, our efforts to really sort of control more and more don’t only Fail, uh, and that it would be better to ease up on that as, as the quote you, you just shared, uh, suggest, but also they kind of squeeze out or stamp out the thing, the resonance, the vibrancy that, that, that we actually appreciate.

in, in life. And that’s a sort of strange upside down thing that I feel like owes a lot to, to Zen, among others, that, that notion that the thing you thought you wanted is not the thing you want. And if, when you can sort of unclench from that sufficiently, you find that the thing you wanted was what you had all along.

Yeah.

[00:17:50] Marc: Yeah. Well, that’s, um, that’s beautiful. I, I, um, I don’t, I don’t know that book, but I, I will, um, check it out and, [00:18:00] uh, yeah, I. Uh, I use the language and I, and I find, you know, uh, my, my, my day job is, um, these days is, uh, coaching business leaders and, um, and that one of the main topics that feels like a, um, you know, parallel with as using the word resonance is the word alignment.

Right. Um, right. So instead of controlling other people, this. aspiration to align, align with other people, which, which starts with like understanding what, what these other people actually are saying and want. And, and it also, also means becoming clear about what, you know, what we, what, you know, are becoming as clear as we can about our own preferences and, you know, likes and dislikes and proclivities.

And so both, both of those, but

[00:18:58] Oliver: yeah, and of course that is part of the [00:19:00] reason that’s a useful thing for you to discuss with your clients is because, presumably, because even as you kind of let go of control here, there is a form of influence or agency or some kind of power that I still don’t really know how to talk about that, um, that arises to whatever extent you can surrender the desire to sort of dominate and, and control.

So one of the things that I’m always at pains to emphasize when I give talks and things, and I think it’s something that is. To some extent present in Zen as well is, as far as I know, is that like, we’re not talking here about letting go of control and letting go of impossible levels of goal setting or optimization or efficiency.

We’re not talking about doing all that in order to just sort of float passively through the world and You know, [00:20:00] sit, sit around. There is obviously this stereotype. And I think it is no more than that really about a lot of Eastern spiritual traditions that like, that’s the ideal state, right? The ideal state is like non engagement and just sort of doing nothing.

And I very passionately believe that, certainly based on my own experience as a human in the world, all these things we’re talking about here are the way to, um, get things done. The way to bring really cool things into reality. That these, these are not opposed. I think that’s an emphasis that isn’t always Certainly it isn’t always emphasized by sort of modern mindfulness culture as a whole,

[00:20:44] Marc: I would say.

No, definitely. And even, you know, uh, you know, the, the word, the word Zen is creeping into our language as meaning, you know, laid back, whatever. And I, I, you know, when I hear [00:21:00] that, or if someone says that to me, I say, no, I, I, I think it’s the opposite of that. It’s. It’s not avoiding painful things. It’s not, it’s not avoiding difficulty or in response to what you were just saying, you know, again, going back to, right, people think of mindfulness practice or Zen practice as the, you know, as coursing in, you know, the non doing part or maybe the absolute world.

And, and, and, but the, The practice. And again, I think what you’re writing is, is what you keep coming back to is the integration. How do you do, how do you do both at the same time? Right. Or, right. How do you achieve, you know, achieve goals, get stuff done, advocate for things, but with a, but with a spirit of maybe spaciousness or [00:22:00] acceptance, that’s the.

Too, too, too much acceptance, not, don’t get much done, too much drive, you know, without, without the spaciousness, it can feel very kind of tight and not very creative.

[00:22:18] Oliver: I think that’s completely right. And um, you know, I think when I think about it, why I’m interested in this pairing of Of, of course, all this, these opposites or whatever on some level, it’s just a completely personal therapeutic quest, right?

I have, there are two things that I, that are fairly significant in my personality. One is historically anyway, sort of being prone to anxiety and I would like that to go away, please. And then on the other hand, being kind of ambitious and I would like to salvage that if possible. Right? So it’s that sort of, it’s, it’s that sort of question, can I, am I [00:23:00] allowed to be someone who wants to sort of.

build and create and communicate in the world in a sort of active and hopefully kind of successful and remunerative way and all the rest of it. But not because I think I’m doing it to forestall a terrible calamity or not because I think I’ve got terrible self worth issues and until I’ve done a certain amount of stuff I don’t deserve to live or something.

Can you, can you sort of start from a position of really deeply accepting who you are and how the world is and all the rest of it and then just because it’s a fun way to live can you sort of?

[00:23:36] Marc: Yeah. I mean, I think for, um, for right, for writers or creatives, or maybe for anyone actually to start with what, what, what is it I have to offer and, and, and how is there, how can I do some, something positive in, in the world and that [00:24:00] world can be the world of your family or your children or your wife or.

Or the, or the world of the people who are reading your newsletter or your, your books or, or in the business world, it’s whatever, whatever, but it’s to start like, it, it, it opens the gates toward a kind of, I think, a positive ambition. I like, I’m, people are often surprised to hear me say, no, I, I, I’m very ambitious and I support this.

I know I want people who are ambitiously trying to. You know, reduce poverty, reduce violence, work with climate change like that. You have to be, you have to really be ambitious to go after this.

[00:24:46] Oliver: Right. There’s nothing intrinsically bad about ambition and then, and applied to certain ends or something very, very, very, very, uh, good about it.

Yeah. No, I think that’s, I think that’s right. But I really, you said something at the [00:25:00] beginning of that, which was to do with. Well, I’ve, I’ve completely forgotten exactly what the words were, but the suggestion that what we can be doing when we’re acting ambitiously and being creative in the world, however you define that, is, is sort of an expression of who we are and an expression of being at ease in the world rather than something you do in order to patch up or fill an inner, an inner void.

I think we have a lot of, um, very high profile people at the moment motivated by trying to fill inner voids and, um, it doesn’t, it doesn’t end prettily, but, you know, And it was, it was a fairly big realization for me and not that long ago, actually, really, in the scheme of things, when it sort of dawned on me that the reason I was being asked to, you know, write something for a particular venue or talk to a particular group of people, something like that, was not because the person making the booking wanted to test me to see if I was [00:26:00] actually good enough and to be ready to condemn me to the fiery gates of hell if I fail.

But because they already liked the thing that I was doing and would like me to do a bit more of it. I think many, many people have this kind of the same issue, right? The same sense that like the moment you’re, you have an opportunity, it actually becomes a kind of test of an unpleasant kind when in fact it can just be an opportunity to like, Do your thing, do the thing that you’re,

[00:26:27] Marc: that you’re already

[00:26:27] Oliver: good at.

[00:26:28] Marc: It’s, I think, quite, uh, profound, actually, that, you know, again, those, the various, um, erroneous assumptions that we, that we have that, and part of it, part of it, I think, is the human, you know, negativity bias, you know, that we’re, that we’re wired, we’re wired to scan for threats. We’re wired to do whatever it takes to be, right.

So from, from a, you know, uh,

you know,

[00:26:58] Marc: from a survival [00:27:00] mechanism, right? That those, there’s some positive to that. But from a, enjoying our lives and, uh, and from creativity, it’s, uh, it’s, it can really squelch, squelch that.

[00:27:12] Oliver: Yes, yes, absolutely. And also as, uh, various people, I think James Clear has written about this and several others have argued that, you know, there’s a lot of work on how.

The environment in which these things evolved has, has changed. And if I sort of, you know, if I hear a rustling in the bushes and I’m struck with an anxious thought that my survival depends on getting this one, right. That’s kind of true. And then I figure out what the rustling in the bushes is. And if it turns out to be a harmless bird, then the anxiety dissipate.

But if the thing you’re worried about is like, yeah, whether the. whether the grants committee will approve your application when they meet next month. Firstly, you’re wrong to think that your life depends on that in the same way, uh, although to some extent it might. And then [00:28:00] secondly, That’s a month of curdling in and a kind of anxiety that was designed to, um, pass through you and be dissipated in, in seconds.

[00:28:12] Marc: A, a, I think a close relative to what we’re talking about here is something that I encounter a lot with business people is the, the underlying almost unconscious assumption that I have to be hard on myself in order to get things done. And, uh, and, um, Again, I’ll often suggest, you know, well, maybe it’s interesting, try on, see what happens for, if for the next week or two weeks, try being kind to yourself, just try it and see if your productivity goes down.

[00:28:53] Oliver: Right. Yeah, no, it’s great to be able to put like, and obviously the coaching rhythm can help with this, I’m sure, but like, it’s great to be able to put [00:29:00] boundaries on these kinds of things. I do this myself. You sort of say, well, like conceivably it will, if you sort of reduce the vigilance that you apply to yourself.

You will do nothing. I mean, okay, conceivably, let’s entertain that possibility that you’ll just end up on the couch watching Netflix and eating potato chips all day. But so, let’s just see over the next two weeks if that really happens and then you don’t need to worry that you might forget completely and wake up three decades later and still be, uh, eating potato chips on the couch because we’re going to revisit it.

And of course, yes. It is never the case that making more room for what you want to do or what you feel like doing or the possibility that things might be easier than you thought. It’s never the case that these lead to bad outcomes, really.

[00:29:47] Marc: So Oliver, just, I want to read you just a few of the notes that I took that I haven’t gotten to yet and, uh, but I’ll just read them and then you can maybe whatever comes up for you.

Uh, [00:30:00] the future will cross that bridge. The art of taking imperfect action, finishing things. Uh, life tasks, befriending the rats, uh, daily ish. And um, and, and lastly, and maybe this would be a, maybe a good place to maybe if we, if we want to wrap up this or doc, uh, what if it were easy, what if it were easy?

And that’s always, I think, I think any of these are like, you know, um, these are all like little mini reminders or mini pull out. Each one of these, I feel like is like. Pulling the rug out from our usual way of looking at, at things.

[00:30:43] Oliver: Yeah. Yeah. See, I think I, I think if I, I think I could do the Dharma talks if I was a Zen, but what I couldn’t do is hours of Zazen.

That’s my problem. But anyway, um, a separate conversation.

[00:30:57] Marc: We can work on that. I think, again, [00:31:00] erroneous assumptions. You know, I’ll just, uh, I’ll say one thing and then I’ll, I’ll hand it over back to you. The trick is to sit with other people. It is. It is amazing. People so often say, Oh, I can’t, I don’t have a practice.

Like, are you doing it alone? Yes. Well, that’s, it is not, it was never meant to be an individual sport. It’s a group sport. I can sit still facing a wall for a week with if I’m, if I’m in a room of other people who are doing it, but if I’m by myself, no, no way. Like I’m going to get up in 10 minutes and go, go just, it’s

[00:31:38] Oliver: a way out.

Good. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m relieved to hear that. Yeah. And to the limited extent that I have done, uh, sort of organized meditation, that has been my, that has been my, uh, my discovery as well. Um, just thinking which one of that great menu of things is, um, is worth talking a little bit about for some reason, the one about the very first one, I think about [00:32:00] crossing bridges when you come to them is, um, is, uh, uh, maybe an interesting one.

I mean, I think that, um, what I guess in that little chapter, I’m just trying to point out the, um, surprising profundity of this very time worn cliche, right? That you can about crossing bridges when you come to them. I think a, a vivid way of describing the experience of sort of worry or anxiety, at least from my perspective, my experience is that you’re sort of, it’s basically the mind trying to work out.

Every possible thing that could go wrong in the near future and just checking that you’d have all the resources you’d need to, uh, deal with it if, if that happened, or you’d know what, how to do it. And of course you can never satisfy this because there’s always another thing that could go wrong that you can imagine.

And in [00:33:00] any case, you don’t really get the, the solace of having successfully crossed the bridge until you’ve actually crossed it. Right. Like just doing it in your mind isn’t. Isn’t enough. And I, there’s a quote in there from Marcus Aurelius, who wrote the original meditations in some way, uh, that I’m sort of, uh, arrogantly taking on the mantle of here where he, um, he says, you know, don’t worry about the future because you’ll meet it if you have to with the same, in the translation I talk about, he says something like the same weapons of reason that, that arm you against the present.

The basic gist that I take from this being. Um, you know, the best evidence that you’re going to be able to handle things that happen to you in the future is that you’re doing a pretty good job of handling the things that are happening to you in the present. And we have this weird inconsistency or asymmetry or something where we, we play so much trust in our present selves to kind of figure out [00:34:00] everything that could go wrong that we spend all our time worrying and fretting and compulsively sort of anxiously planning.

But we don’t have any faith in ourselves a week from now when the thing happens to just respond. In the moment, spontaneously, drawing on our, the skills and the resources that have got us to, to this point in life. And there’s something really deep there for me about how like, you need to kind of, there’s an act of faith involved in just sort of launching yourself into the stream of life.

Instead of pretending that where you are now is a kind of control tower. from where you can sort it all out and then it will be safe going forwards. Anyway, that’s what that makes me think of.

[00:34:47] Marc: Yeah, no, it’s interesting. I think, um, we, I think we all, you know, we, I, I think most of us, maybe we all do that kind of, right, that, [00:35:00] that preparing, there’s the preparing for the future, there’s preparing for what’s next.

Yeah. And then it’s, what’s that, what’s the attitude that we have about it? And it’s easy to write to, to be stressed, to look for all the things that can go wrong. And, and sometimes that can be a pro that even that can be appropriate. Right. But, but it’s then like, okay, but what’s your state of mind?

[00:35:24] Oliver: Right.

Yeah. You can use the present moment to do scenario planning. Absolutely. Yes. Right. It’s not, it’s not that that’s terrible and wrong. It’s just that if the, if the spirit in which you’re doing it is. Eventually, I’ll have planned the scenarios to the point where I can guarantee that life will be on autopilot from here on out.

That’s the, that’s the mistake, I think. Um, yes, this is a thing that, more broadly, I think is misunderstood or is a, maybe a unfortunate nuance of a lot of, kind of, be here now, present in the moment, kind [00:36:00] of, Rhetoric in spiritual worlds in general, which is, of course, one of the things you might choose to do with a very present moment is planning, uh, for the future.

It’s just that you’ll be doing it in the spirit of doing something with your moment instead of trying to sort of white knuckle control, uh, what’s going to be happening in the future. Well, Oliver,

[00:36:23] Marc: I think I want to, um, as a way of, as a way of wrapping here, I want to offer you one of my current favorite, uh, quotes from the Zen world.

Please do. Which, and it’s interesting, it’s, it’s from, uh, Shunryu Suzuki, um, who said, um, our, our practice is less like putting things, collecting things and putting them in your basket and more like discovering things or finding things in your sleeve. I thought of that as, um, you know, kind of [00:37:00] parallel with what you are teaching about time.

But a little bit more in the realm of space and, and how we treat, how we treat things or how we treat, uh, events. Right. That, right. You know, I love, I love the feeling, the feeling of that. Um, Um,

[00:37:20] Oliver: me too. It’s a bit mysterious to me. I’ll have to think about it more to sort of unpack it, but I, there’s something very, um, delightful about it even before I’ve,

[00:37:29] Marc: I’ve got there.

Well, maybe the Western, maybe instead of in your, maybe more like the fact the other day. Uh, Uh, I was, um, it’s so funny time, you know, I can’t, I can’t believe that, that I’m, I’m actually older than you, you know, which is so weird. I’m so used to being younger than everyone because I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was a little, I was the little brother of my whole life the other day.

And this [00:38:00] will give you a clue as to why I’ve said that I was, uh, uh, walking. I was at my two year old grandson was in a stroller. And, um, and I reached into my pocket and I was very surprised to find that it was filled with pieces of dried mango. Uh, which, which my, my, my wife had apparently, uh, inserted them in there without telling me.

And cause it’s, it’s one of his favorite things in the world. And, and I was just so, I was just so surprised to put my hand and that was like, just like that. You were about to

[00:38:40] Oliver: say that finding something in your pocket is the. It’s the Western version of finding something in your sleeve. Yeah. That’s

[00:38:46] Marc: right.

Cause we don’t wear, you know, you can, Matt, he’s wearing these in, in, uh, these Japanese Zen guys, they wear big sleeves and the sleeves all have pockets in them where you can put things. That’s where they keep stuff and where stuff collects.

[00:38:59] Oliver: Yeah. [00:39:00] Yeah. For

[00:39:00] Marc: us, it’s maybe more, uh, accessible to say, you know, that, you know, that a, uh, a healthy, vibrant, joyous life, satisfying life.

It’s less about collecting things in your basket and more about discovering, discovering new experiences or things in your pocket, in your, in your being surprised.

[00:39:26] Oliver: Right. Well, there’s, there’s a lovely double nuance there, right? It’s about discovery rather than, rather than going out to collect, but it’s also in some sense about things you already, you already had.

[00:39:39] Marc: That’s right. That’s right. Yes. Which that, that, that’s a, that’s a. A theme that, uh, of your, your work. And it’s a, it’s a key theme of, you know, mindfulness practice or Zen practice, right? That, uh, you already have, what if you already have everything that you need? Everything you need is right there. [00:40:00] Oliver, thank you.

It’s, uh, it’s really been a delight to get to spend a good, a good use of a good use of time. If there’s such a thing. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Thanks, Mark. Thank you.]

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