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Strive Less, Find More. Give Thanks

This week’s episode begins with a short guided meditation with an emphasis on appreciation followed by a talk about striving less, finding more, and giving thanks. This is the practice and power of more finding and less searching as a way of expressing and living with more gratitude and appreciation. And today’s Zen puzzler comes from a classic Zen story or Zen koan called Wash your bowl; a classic lesson is less striving and more appreciation.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[music]

Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones. Ancient wisdom for modern times. This is Mark Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. In this week’s episode, we begin with a short guided meditation with an emphasis on appreciation. Then I do a talk about striving less, finding more, and giving thanks. The practice and power of more finding and less searching as a way of expressing and living with more gratitude and appreciation.

Today’s Zen puzzler comes from a classic Zen story or Zen koan called Wash Your Bowl. Very much in this theme of greater finding and less striving. I hope you appreciate and enjoy this episode.

[music]

Marc: Let’s do some sitting practice together.

[bell ringing]

Just stopping this simple ordinary and extraordinary practice of bringing our awareness to our body, our breath, feelings and thoughts, our experience.

[pause 00:02:13]

Shunryū Suzuki likes to say, the Zen teacher, Shunryū Suzuki, Suzuki Roshi, for human beings, there’s no other practice. [silence] Just bringing awareness to our awareness, our consciousness, to what it’s like to be here alive with nothing lacking right now. [silence] At the same time, keeping it simple, bringing awareness to the breath, using the breath as an anchor. Breathing in, breathing out. [silence] What a relief to not need to change anything or do anything differently.

[pause 00:03:58]

Letting go of to-do lists, letting go of the activity of the day. It will all be available whenever we need it. I think this deep knowing that [silence] creating space, allowing space will support our activities, our conversations, relationships, presence. We’re doing this [silence] for some benefit, and at the same time letting it go. It’s a great paradox of meditation practice. I think of being human.

[pause 00:05:19]

Cultivating and allowing this state of mind of nothing lacking, no need right now to be judgemental or comparative. Just this radical sense of acceptance, warmhearted curiosity with whatever we’re feeling, whether we’re grieving or celebrating, calm or not so calm, it doesn’t matter. We’re just here cultivating curiosity mixed with this sense of warm-heartedness. Building inner resources there. Allowing our inner resources to grow and develop. [silence]

Breathing in and breathing out. Just appreciating each breath. [silence] Appreciating our full ordinary and extraordinary experience. Please feel free to pause and continue sitting. I’m going to ring the bell and do a short talk.

[bell rings]

[music]

Strive less, find more, give thanks. This feels like a prescription for how I want to live my life with less striving, more finding, and giving thanks. More a sense of acknowledging the beauty and sacredness of being human. I’m reminded of a book, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I think I first read this when I was a freshman at Rutgers University, and it made quite an impression on me.

I’ve been rereading it. In fact, I like to every few years reread it. It’s a work of fiction that parallels the story of the Buddha with that of a young person’s search for meaning and authenticity. In the book, Siddhartha becomes a follower of the Buddha. Then for a short time decides that he needs to– in the last chapter toward the end of the book, Siddhartha has now grown older and content after a lifetime of exploration. He’s become a ferry person, a person taking people from one side of the river to the other, which of course is a metaphor for helping others to find their way.

He’s finally after a lifetime of striving and ups and downs, he settles on this way of life of ferrying people across the river, helping people find their way. He meets his long-lost dear friend, Govinda. After so much time, Govinda doesn’t recognize someone he had been close friends with, he doesn’t recognize Siddhartha. Govinda shares with him that he continues to be a longtime follower of the Buddha. For a while, they were together following the Buddha, and Siddhartha left and went off exploring. He felt like he needed to have many more life experiences but all these years, Govinda’s still following the Buddha, experiencing a lifetime of striving and searching.

Siddhartha draws his attention to his friend’s striving nature and he says, “When someone seeks, then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he’s able to find nothing. He takes in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking but finding means being free, being open, having no goal. In striving toward your goal, you fail to see certain things that are right under your nose.” I thought this was beautiful lines that have stayed with me all these years and that I keep coming back to.

Of course, there’s some searching involved in our lives, or even using this as bringing this down to meditation practice. There’s something that brings us to practice meditation or mindfulness or whatever we might be doing. We might be searching for less stress or more equanimity, or more appreciation. In our work lives, we might be searching for more focus, better results, or however we’ve defined success but there’s something about this practice. Like in meditation, you know, these various intentions or goals bring us to the practice.

Once we sit, the practice is to let it go, to train ourselves to cultivate a state of mind of acceptance, of curiosity, of warmheartedness, and appreciation. This practice is about being able to do that, to shift into a greater sense of appreciation, to let go of striving. This was, I think, one of the great lessons and paradoxes of the book, Siddhartha. I think Siddhartha is advocating less stress, more acknowledging the sacredness of being alive and giving thanks, appreciating everything.

It’s easy to think that we need to be searching and striving. Even I’ve noticed many, many people get into the habit of assuming that we need to be hard on ourselves in order to be successful, in order to solve real problems. We do need to be clear about what we’re doing. We do need to be skillful about how we speak and act, and our presence and our way of being matters a lot.

To me, it’s a lot like, when you go on a job interview, the more you want it and need it, the less attractive a candidate you are. There’s something about just showing up without needing anything, with a kind of inner strength and confidence and attitude that you’re just here to offer. Again, a little bit like Siddhartha, his life had become just helping others from one shore to the next. Whether we’re on a job interview or in all our relationships and how we show up in our lives, there’s something about less striving and more finding. Cultivating the sense of confidence, a way of letting go of searching, and increasing our sense of finding.

When there’s nothing lacking, you can be more yourself. You can live actually with greater freedom, more full-functioning, and your real power. Less striving, more finding, more giving thanks. I want to share a poem by Diane Di Prima. This poem is called Radio.

[music]

I think I forgot to turn
off the radio when
I left my mother’s
womb

In Hasidic Judaism
it is said that before we
are born an angel
enters the womb,
strikes us on the
mouth
and we forget all
that we knew of
previous lives—
all that we know
of heaven

I think that I forgot
to forget.
I was born into two
places at once—

In one, it was chilly
lonely physical &
uncomfortable

in the other, I stayed
in the dimension of
Spirit. What I knew,
I knew.
I did not forget
Voices
The world of spirit
held me in its arms.

I think this is a lot like the world of striving is the world where it’s chilly, lonely, physical, and uncomfortable. We need that world. We need that world of loneliness, physicality, discomfort but we also need the world of finding, the dimension of sacredness, of spirit, of being held, not needing anything. Please, I hope you can play with, cultivate less striving, more finding, and more giving thanks, more appreciation.

[music]

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

[music]

Today’s Zen Bones puzzler comes from a very traditional Zen koan and it’s one of the more popular koans at least in my world. I’ve talked about this particular koan many times over these years and every time it’s different for me. I think it fits really beautifully in today’s episode about less striving, more finding, more appreciation. This koan is called Wash Your Bowl, where a student arrives at the monastery and says to the teacher, “Please teach me.” Very common. “I’ve arrived, please teach me.” The teacher looks at the student and asks, “Have you eaten breakfast?”

The student responds, “Yes, I have.” The teacher says, “Wash your bowl,” and walks away. Again, I think first of all, these Zen koans, these Zen puzzlers, they don’t have answers. They’re meant to be inspirational. They’re meant to free us from our habit energy. One way to work with this is just to stay with the words of the teacher, wash your bowl. You might write about it, you might write it down on a piece of paper. I think it’s a simple but profound lesson on the sense that we’re all striving. We are all striving for something. The purpose of our lives I think is to find freedom, find our true nature, find our real selves.

There’s a beautiful line where Zen teacher, Shunryū Suzuki says this is the purpose of our lives. The secret is that we find it in every step that we take or here in this Zen puzzler, the secret is that we find it not from the words of the teacher so much but we find it from realizing that we already have it. Just go wash your bowl. Just go eat your dinner. Just go. Whatever we’re doing, that’s where the teaching is. Let go of striving and shift into a sense of finding, a sense of no difference in searching and finding, no difference in ordinary and sacred.

Just completely be yourself. Find freedom in everything that we do. This is a story of finding instead of searching. The real teaching is in our awareness, our experience, learning, growing, building, strength, and character from everything that we do. Letting go of any sense that something is missing or lacking. The student says, “I’m here, please teach me.” The teacher says, “Have you eaten your breakfast?” “Yes.” “Wash your bowl.” Please enjoy immensely washing your bowl. Thank you.

[music]

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

[music]

[00:23:28] [END OF AUDIO]

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The Surprising Power of Self-compassion with Kristin Neff

This enlightening episode delves into the practical applications of self-compassion. Renowned researcher Kristen Neff shares her expertise on the power of “fierce self-compassion” and how it can benefit individuals, leaders, athletes, and healthcare workers alike. Contrary to misconceptions that self-compassion is a sign of weakness, she highlights how it can build inner strength and resilience, leading to improved well-being and exceptional performance.

She cites a study on NCAA athletes who embraced self-compassion and achieved exceptional results. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the transformative impact of self-care and inner kindness, and how it can help us overcome challenges and achieve our goals. Don’t miss this episode that offers practical tools to enhance your performance and well-being through the power of self-compassion.

 

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ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Kristin Neff received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

During Kristin’s last year of graduate school she became interested in Buddhism and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. Kristin is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, creating a scale to measure the construct almost 20 years ago. She has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential research psychologists. In addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, and her latest Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive.

In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide. They co-authored The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook as well as Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals. She is also co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones. Ancient wisdom for modern times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. Kristin Neff has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential psychologists, with her research and writing on self-compassion.

She holds a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley and was recently an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas in Austin. In today’s episode, we talk about the practical applications of self-compassion for individuals, leaders, athletes, and healthcare workers.

Kristin uses the word “fierce self-compassion” to dispel any sense of compassion being soft or a way of avoiding difficulties. In fact, just the opposite compassion, or what she, at times, calls resilience or building inner strength is a path of both well-being and exceptional performance. I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

[00:01:24] Marc:  Kristin Neff, it’s a pleasure to get to see you again.

[00:01:28] Kristin Neff: Nice to see you again, Marc. Absolutely.

[00:01:32] Marc: I still picture our– we met when I brought you in to teach a search inside yourself, you were a guest teacher where we brought you in virtually into a class in Australia.

[00:01:47] Kristin: Oh, that’s right. Yes.

[00:01:50] Marc: I immediately felt this sense of alignment and just appreciation of you and your teaching. It was great you brought a real vulnerability that I thought has touched me.

[00:02:05] Kristin: Thank you. The business world is still a little slower to catch on the self-compassion, but they’re getting there.

[00:02:13] Marc: I still quote you, one of the things I remember you saying is that the business world still, I think it’s not just self-compassion, it’s compassion in general, that the business world, and I get it. One of the things that I believe you said is, you sometimes will substitute the language of building inner strength, which I thought was brilliant, and it’s one of the things that I find myself doing a lot in the work that I do. I don’t generally use the word Zen, for example. I replace Zen with being a full human being, for example.

[00:02:54] Kristin: Good. It works. Not being a full human being.

[00:03:03] Marc: Not being a full human being.

[00:03:05] Kristin: Both. Yes.

[00:03:07] Marc: I think this is a good segue into compassion and self-compassion, and I’ve always appreciated the way you unpack what you mean by self-compassion, which is the combination of mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness, which now I think we need to start with mindfulness. I want this to be as useful to anyone listening, but I think this topic is so– again, it’s one of those things that, it’s easy to say self-compassion, but it’s hard to practice.

[00:03:48] Kristin: It is. One of the reasons why mindfulness is so necessary, and this actually, you might say temporarily, the first step of self-compassion, just in terms of the word passion, the Latin means suffering communes with how are we with the tough stuff, the difficult emotions. It could be physical pain. It could be something happening in one’s life or thought of inadequacy. The reason we need mindfulness is because we usually don’t want to go there.

We’re doing one or two things. Either we’re ignoring it and just pretending it’s not there. It’s just like soldering on, or we’re lost in it. We’re identified with it, and there’s no perspective from which to say, “Well, maybe I could use some self-compassion right now.” That’s why I think it doesn’t really come naturally because what is more natural is either to avoid pain or get lost in it.

That’s why that really is the first step, to notice. It’s like if a friend called you and either you ignored your friend’s call, “I’m not going to listen to my friend. “Your friend’s compassion, or if your friend calls you and you just immediately just start talking over them and not listening. You also can’t keep your friend’s compassion. I often use a metaphor of self-compassion as being a good friend to yourself, and the first step is to listen, which is mindfulness.

[00:05:04] Marc: I noticed that metaphor, which is the opening of your latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion, is that metaphor about why would you talk to yourself any differently than you would to your trusted friend, to your good friend? It’s like, man, it’s amazing how when people start paying attention to how we talk to ourselves and– fascinating.

[00:05:29] Kristin: What would happen to your friend if you talk to them the way you talk to yourself, wouldn’t go so well, wouldn’t be very helpful. Yet, somehow we think magically it’s better for us. It’s not a logical process. I think there are reasons for it why people lack self-compassion, both cultural and probably even evolutionary, probably the way our brain works as well.

[00:05:48] Marc: There’s a lot of parallel, obviously, parallel overlap and similarity in the work that we do. I have a new book that’s about to come out, about compassionate accountability. The title of my book is Finding Clarity, but it’s about accountability and compassionate accountability. The essence of accountability is noticing, not avoiding difficulty, not avoiding difficult conversations.

[00:06:20] Kristin: That’s right.

[00:06:21] Marc: I often go back to the evolutionary that we’ve evolved, that we are descendants of the nervous apes, that we scan for threats, but not only externally. My theory about this is that this scanning for threats is internal as well, and this is why we need self-compassion because we’ve evolved as part of our evolution to be checking ourselves, talking to ourselves, this negative self. The inner critic is something that comes easily to us.

[00:06:55] Kristin: It’s very natural. Luckily, compassion also comes easily. Of course, that mainly evolved for others, for our infants, so we pass the jeans down or our group members. Whereas what happens for us is more the threat system, but that’s why it’s nice. It’s actually not very difficult to do. It doesn’t come naturally. We’re doing a hack. We’re using the system that evolved, the care for others, compassion, and we’re treating it inward, and we’re treating ourselves like we would treat someone else.

Again, we don’t want to beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up because it’s natural, but it’s just not very effective that we know, just like with others, compassion is more effective than harsh criticism. Compassion, not meaning letting things slide. Compassion can hold people very accountable. I love that idea in your new book because that’s the biggest block to compassion, is people thinking they won’t be holding themselves accountable. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m so glad you’re doing that.

[00:07:54] Marc: It’s interesting that, as I say in the book, accountability has a bad rap. When the phrase that comes to mind when you say accountable generally is lack of, or people think of it as that dreaded performance review. You’re going to be held accountable. To me, accountability is really about, a sense of alignment, and not only aligning with others, but aligning with yourself, bringing how you want to be showing up with yourself. How can you become loving not only a friend but how can you love yourself?

[00:08:35] Kristin: Yes, absolutely. We aren’t accountable if we don’t have compassion because we either want to blame others, or if we’re feeling shame, shuts down our ability to understand what’s going on, we just want to hide in our hole. It doesn’t help to take responsibility at all. Quite the opposite. We want to hide.

[00:08:54] Marc: I’m jumping in now too. I’m thinking, I’m listening to this, and I’m someone who is very self-critical. I’m very hard on myself. My inner critic is thriving. What do you recommend? What’s the practice? What’s the advice? What do you do to work with that?

[00:09:14] Kristin: I think the first thing to do is we want to honor the role of the inner critic. Again, we don’t want to think I’m a bad person. I’m broken because I’m critical, as opposed to self-compassionate. Understand that your inner critic is there for a reason, is trying to help you, is trying to motivate you. It’s trying to help you grow. It’s trying to keep you accountable, trying to help you from making the same mistakes again. It’s just not very effective.

That’s the main problem with the inner critic. We want to move from harsh blaming, shaming, criticism to constructive criticism. Constructive criticism helpful feedback comes from a place of friendliness, and differentiating my behavior from my worth as a person. Just because I made a mistake doesn’t mean I am a mistake. It doesn’t mean I’m worthless. My worth is unconditional. From that sense of unconditional worth, then we’re actually more able to work on our behavior, so it’s more effective and less harmful to others and to the extent that we can.

I talk a lot about myself in my books. I’m reactive. I’m just wired that way. After 56 years, after a lot of mindfulness practice, it still comes up. I just work with it. Actually, I’m starting to tell people ahead of time that I know this may come up. Don’t take it personally, which is a way of being accountable. If they know ahead of time, I don’t take it personally if I’m reactive, and I apologize immediately.

I’m working with it as opposed to– because I tried it and I tried to change it. Whatever reason it’s just the way my neurons function. When you acknowledge it and you tell people and try to reduce the harm of it, it’s a B plus. It’s good enough. That’s one of the things that my self-compassion practice has given me. It is somewhat better. Compassion does help you change, but with those things that we can’t change, we can’t change everything. It just helps us make the best of the situation and reduce harm.

[00:11:09] Marc: I tend to think that we’re all amazingly reactive or vulnerable tender. I think we all have incredibly tender hearts. It shows up in all kinds of ways. I was even thinking how if I reach out to a client of mine, and if I don’t hear back immediately, it doesn’t take long before I’m thinking, “Oh, what did I do wrong? They’re going to stop working with me.” For me, as that thought comes up, part of my practice is that how interesting that I’m thinking that I’m feeling that it could be that, it’s very– No, I have a good relationship with this person, and the fact that they’re taking a day or two to get back to be like, “Let it go. Let’s try and be more forgiving and friendly with myself around this and not this my inner worrywart that can come up.”

[00:12:13] Kristin: Which, of course, is just trying to keep you safe. You would ask how to approach it, first with compassion for your inner critic, which is just trying to keep you safe. Then the recognition that it’s actually not an effective way to use it. If you want to shut down and get rid of the inner critic, it’s just going to rebel. Thank you for trying to help me. What would be more effective? You might think, what would be the most effective way to motivate your child or good friend? Constructive criticism, knowing that, Hey, I’m here for you. What help do you need? This is really the key thing people don’t understand about self-compassion, is it gives you the sense of safety needed to learn from your mistakes.

It’s a truism, failure is our best teacher, and yet somehow we think we aren’t supposed to fail. We think that because we feel shame when we fail. When you take shame out of the equation, it’s not shameful to fail. It’s part of the learning process, then you can learn and grow. I just had a study just accepted a few days ago with one of my– who was my dissertation student. Now she’s Dr. Kuchar, but we trained, or she trained NCAA athletes and self-compassion. She didn’t call it self-compassion. She called it inner resilience. It was all the same practices from the Mindful Self Compassion Program.

When athletes, and by the way, their standards, they have to be the best. They might lose their scholarship if they are not. Their standards are super high. Self-compassion doesn’t mean lowering your standards. It means, okay, if I blew a game or something wrong in my training program, that’s okay. It’s only human. What can I learn from this? It’s like we use the metaphor of a really supportive, encouraging coach. What a really supportive, encouraging coach say to you? What we found is it improved their performance, both self-rated and coach-rated performance. It actually helps you improve. It does not undermine your performance at all, which is such a big fear.

[00:14:09] Marc: Yes. No, that’s great. What a great place to be working with NCAA athletes, which I think there’s a lot of commonality there. I would hope that business leaders reading that study could identify with that. Again, this drive, this need to succeed. You have to succeed. You have to show up as competent. These days it’s interesting. Not only do you have to have good financial results and project management, you have to be a good listener and a good coach, and a good mentor. I get to work with people who feel like they’re failing there. They’re getting feedback that they don’t.

It’s great if you could bring in the evidence of this study. If you can have more of a learning mindset, it actually improves your performance, which is like, Wow, how great.

[00:15:05] Kristin: It’s also intuitive if you think about it. Well, of course, that’s true. Because of the way we’re wired, you don’t think that way.

[00:15:13] Marc: Well, it’s interesting too, as I was relating this to the example that I brought in about my fear of losing a client, that the way to lose clients is to be afraid. I always think if you’re interviewing for a job, you’re strongest if you get in with this sense that you don’t need anything. It’s all a learning. What can I learn from this interview? It’s not about success and failure.

[00:15:44] Kristin: That’s right. It’s about learning and growing. Absolutely. That’s going to help you succeed. It’s like the hidden gift.

[00:15:54] Marc: Yes. Well, [laughs] there’s so many places where my mind just went to three different places. One is it went to that you mentioned you’re about to go do a retreat around nonduality. I was also coming back to this word mindfulness, which you call one of the core pillars of self-compassion. My mind also went to, it’s a little bit like when you’re doing meditation, there’s some motivation. You might not call it success necessarily, but you might call it, I want to grow, I want to develop, I want to be better at, I want to let go of my duality about fear of failure, wanting to succeed. When I then sit down on the cushion, I need to let go of all that.

It’s this cultivating a more pure learning environment outside of the realm of success and failure. Am I doing it right or wrong? It’s interesting these different points that all are. In a way, there are different kinds of, I think, approaches to mindfulness or approaches to embodying a nondual way of being in the world.

[00:17:13] Kristin: Yes. That’s the common humanity component you were talking about the three components is mindfulness. The kindness is self-evident, that’s being a good friend to yourself. The reason I have common humanity is my model. I didn’t come up with self-compassion. I was learning mindfulness meditation at a Thich Nhat Hanh sangha. Thich Nhat Hanh was one of the teachers who always talked very explicitly about self-compassion. Thank God, if I had gone to a mindfulness-based stress reduction place to learn mindfulness, I probably wouldn’t have been on this path.

This group talked a lot about self-compassion and also about interbeing. In fact, I actually wanted to call the third component interbeing, but I knew most people wouldn’t understand it outside of a Buddhist context, so I called it common humanity. It really serves two functions. One, it actually reduces focus on the separate self. I know a lot of Buddhists, like we coil from the term self-compassion because they think it strengthens the self, the ego, and therefore it’s counterproductive.

We could have called it no self-compassion, because when you give yourself compassion, what you’re doing is, first of all, you’re seeing yourself as part of this larger hole, all the causes and the conditions that lead to our what happens moment by moment, which is, if you think about having compassion for someone else, part of that means recognizing, yes, there are a lot of situational factors, maybe genetic factors, family factors, a lot of things that lead people to do what they do. You don’t have to blame someone as bad just because bad behavior arose out of their experience. It’s less of an ego focus. The research supports that.

The more self-compassionate you are, the less self-defensive you are, the less ego focused you are. Also, the feeling that we’re alone. This related part of the ego, when we have this false sense of ego, is we think it’s just us. That’s attractive in a way because we have the illusion of control. It’s also incredibly painful because we feel cut off from the larger whole. When you remember, hey, we are part of a larger whole. It’s not just us. That is wrong with us. We’re experiencing suffering. It’s not just me. That’s really what differentiates self-compassion from self-pity. It grows in a sense of connectedness. It’s not the opposite.

[00:19:37] Marc: I imagine you’re familiar with this. These are instructions from Dogen, who is the 13th-century founder of Zen in Japan, who I think very brilliantly said, “To study the way is to study the self, and to study the self is to go beyond the self.” Or it’s sometimes translated as to forget the self.

Coming back to self-compassion could almost translate to study self-compassion is to study the self and to study the self is to go beyond the self. I like to substitute, says to study the Way, and it’s the way with a capital W. To me, it’s like to become a full thriving human being is to study the self. To study the self is to go beyond the self. This is so much aligned with what you’re just saying about this, your criticism about calling it self-compassion, but it’s the same.

[00:20:37] Kristin: More appropriately, I would’ve called it inner compassion, directing compassion inward as well as outward. I wanted this to be in a mainstream psychological context. I also wanted to compare it to self-esteem, which is a way of reifying and valuing or judging the self positively. When I talk to my Buddhist friends, they often say, “Just call it inner compassion if you don’t like the word self” because that’s really what it is. The more you direct compassion inward, the less of a self is there.

My goal was always to reach the person who wasn’t Buddhist, who wasn’t into contemplative practice, who totally just is out there suffering and judging themselves. I think the language is more effective for all people, even though it’s a little bit of an oxymoron if you think about it.

[00:21:25] Marc: It’s interesting that the NCAA study is around resilience. Was it resilience, or was it inner resilience? How did you–?

[00:21:32] Kristin: Called it inner resilience training. Resilience enhancement and sports education and sports– I forget the name, but RESET was the acronym because when you have a failure or a struggle, you do a reset. It’s like you give yourself some kindness. You remember you aren’t alone. You pay attention, you turn toward, you learn, you get constructive criticism, and then you’re more able to learn and grow and improve, which is so important if you’re an athlete.

[00:22:01] Marc: Before we started recording, I was remembering you use the expression building inner strength, especially in the business world where there’s still some– compassion doesn’t quite ring true in a lot of business settings. I get that, although I have to say more and more, I’m bringing in the L word, love. What about [unintelligible 00:22:22]? It’s not a romantic love, but it’s a deep respect for the people that we work with. That has to start with us, has to start with this kind of deep love, respect for ourselves, so building inner strength, building resilience.

[00:22:42] Kristin: I think one of the reasons the word compassion, people don’t like it is because it seems soft. Then when you realize that compassion, being an ally to yourself as opposed to an enemy, that’s actually going to make you stronger. My latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion I talk a lot about gender role socialization. Part of the issue with business is it’s even though more and more women are in the workplace, of course, the culture is still aligned with traditional male stereotypes.

When I talk about fierce and tender self-compassion, tender self-compassion is about acceptance. Acceptance of ourselves, of our difficult emotions, of our pain. Fierceness is about taking action to alleviate suffering power, motivating change, meeting our needs. Traditionally males have been socialized to be fierce but not tender, that really works against males. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about biological sex or even gender identity but just socialization.

This socialization says men can’t be tender and women traditionally can’t be fierce. People don’t like angry women. They think they’re crazy or they’re too competent or too powerful. They like the soft nurturing woman but it’s like yin and yang. Everyone needs both. Of course, we need both [unintelligible 00:24:04] socialization. I think that’s really playing a role in the workplace. It’s like a female thing, doesn’t belong in the workplace that belongs in the home. That’s such wrongheaded thinking but so entrenched in our culture, even at the subconscious level or unconscious level that it really stands in the way I think.

[00:24:23] Marc: I recently co-facilitated a retreat for wildland firefighters and a lot like– these were hotshot high-level athletes and there were half men and half women. It was really fascinating. It was interesting to see that I felt like the women tended to be very tender and very fierce at the same time. I think their image was that they somehow needed to be more fierce and less tender men. Of course, the men that would come to such a retreat tended to be tender men. However, they often said that when in their work roles, they turned into flaming assholes.

They didn’t like that about themselves but they felt like they had to be, again, I think the socialization of men in those kinds of roles, they felt like they needed to be. It was a huge, I think, surprising really try-on– What if you don’t have to show up in a macho barking out orders way. Sometimes that might be appropriate because these are people working in crazy difficult emergencies. The challenge of how to bring your whole self, your full loving self, and at the same time respond effectively in these very high-pressured situations. Not so different. Again, not so different than NCAA athletes and not so different than people in the corporate world, leaders in the work world.

[00:26:08] Kristin: Also, in environments of relationships as you might think of more traditionally about tender acceptance, that could lead to problems if the fierce aspects like drawing boundaries. One of the reasons I was inspired to write this book, and the same at people who are socialized or raised as women because it was just too difficult to talk about because for what– people raised as men, they aren’t allowed to be tender. People raised as women they aren’t allowed to be fierce. I wrote it for women, fierce self-compassion for women.

It also came out of the #MeToo Movement. If you think about why was it for so long that it was so hard for women to speak up, there’s a lot of reasons. Some is just the consequences, or they wouldn’t be believed. Part of it is because we are socialized not to speak up, just to be tender and accepted. That’s just the way the system is. That’s the way men are. People aren’t going to like us. We aren’t supposed to get angry. We’re just supposed to be so forgiving. That really worked against women.

If we want equality in human rights for everyone, we need both tender acceptance of our humanness and fierce action to try to change unfair, unjust situations so that they aren’t harming people. Both are true simultaneously. Again, the yin and yang metaphor works so well. It’s like yin is the tenderness, yang is the fierceness. Of course, we need both. It’s crazy that we say that one gender and then maybe the only way we can have harmony is in a heterosexual relationship. What’s that about? What happens when that doesn’t work out so well?

[00:27:50] Marc: This word fierce and the socialization aspects of it. In a way, the paradox. It’s the paradox of– I’m often saying that want people to be highly ambitious when it comes to solving real problems or it’s like athletes. You need that drive to succeed, to win, to want to win. It’s interesting, I’ve been leaning recently on my– I was captain of my high school wrestling team. A big aha that I had as a teenager was that the best wrestlers, the ones who were the state champions, were not caught by winning and were not fearful about losing in the same way that I noticed I was. I got tight.

I got tight by what that my fear of losing or my desire to– There were even times when I would be winning and I would hold on to win and run out the clock. It was like, “Something’s wrong here. I need to work. I need to learn. I need to train myself to just enjoy what I’m doing and to see it as a dance and not so much being caught by success and failure.”

[00:29:15] Kristin: That all comes from ego identification. I separated out get acceptance is acceptance of ourself and the action is more about behaviors and situations. Once we start defining ourself by behaviors and situations, are we winning? Are we losing, or other people? Then that’s where the problem occurs. You can be as fierce as you want and try to win as much as you want but you don’t identify with that. Your worth isn’t contingent on it. That’s one of the biggest differences between self-esteem and self-compassion is your worth is unconditional. Doesn’t mean your behaviors are unconditional. Of course, if you’re harming people, you want to change behaviors in situations, but your worth as a human being is independent of that. That’s when you let go of ego identification and your value comes from simply being.

[00:30:09] Marc: Yes. Kristin, just so that I make sure I’m understanding you, you’re saying that self-esteem is more ego-driven, that it’s–

[00:30:17] Kristin: Yes. Depends how you define it. This word esteeming the self, judging the self, am I worthy or not worthy? That’s about the ego. Some people talk about unconditional self-esteem, but I think once you’re unconditional, it’s really no longer esteem. The word is inappropriate. That might be unconditional self-worth. Self-esteem is you have to be special and above average or you have to be successful or you’ve got to be attractive or people have to like you.

One of the things the research shows pretty clearly is the more self-compassion you have, the less your self-worth is contingent on comparison or success. It doesn’t mean you’re less successful. That contingency actually stands in the way because again, you get performance anxiety because if I win or lose, it’s going to say something about me. If it’s not, then it’s like, “Okay, I’ll just win or lose. Doesn’t say anything about me. If I lose, I’ll just learn from it.” No, anxiety, no pressure.

[00:31:19] Marc: I’m wondering in terms of those NCAA athletes, any big prizes in terms of how it was that they learned or got this or saw making this– it’s a big shift. It’s a big transformation from the usual conventional way. Of course, it’s all about me to that it’s somehow not like, how do you make– how do I often think it takes many years of practice, of mindfulness practice, but sounds like fairly quickly these athletes made a shift that you saw real results.

[00:31:56] Kristin: Yes, so Ashley Kuchar, who was the dissertation student, she did this as her dissertation. She used to be a college-level basketball player, so she knew the culture. Again, really just framing it as how to learn better. Athletes, they like to win. If they want to be better, what they really like is useful information that will help them improve their game. That’s really the bottom line.

Everything was framed as what’s going to help you improve your game? Talking about judging yourself, criticizing yourself, it actually works against you. Letting go, you know what? Letting go of what it says about you. How can I learn and grow from this? They really got that message. They liked that message. Again, so it wasn’t really, not using the word self-compassion, talking about resilience, learning, sports enhancement, enhancing your game, then they were all in. There was very little resistance.

The other big thing she did was she taught them as a team, including the coaches who were there. There was a cultural shift. There was cultural buy-in to it. Which is really important because otherwise, I think the larger culture says it’s all about me. That seemed to also really make a difference.

[00:33:08] Marc: That’s fascinating too. It’s both individuals, but it’s also as a team creating what’s the culture, what are the cultural forces? If you can shift the playing field to become a learning organization as opposed to– this was from, I think of the work of Peter Senge that he did the book from 30 years ago. The Learning Organization. That language was a break breakthrough. This sounds like–

[00:33:38] Kristin: That’s right. Interestingly, we had similar results with healthcare. We have a healthcare training for healthcare professionals. In healthcare, the culture is self-sacrificed. How many shifts did you work straight? It’s all about focusing on others. Training healthcare organizations to be more self-compassionate or reduce burnout, for instance.

[00:33:59] Marc: That’s great.

[00:34:00] Kristin: Increases turnover. It’s the same thing because the lack of self-compassion is partly determined by the cultural environment. The best way to help people be more self-compassionate is also to help change the culture. It also helps you support the practice.

[00:34:16] Marc: Well, Kristen, and I feel like maybe this is part one, there’s so many things we could do.

[00:34:23] Kristin: Yes, we could go on forever.

[00:34:25] Marc: Is there anything you’d like to do or say as a way of closing?

[00:34:29] Kristin: Well, maybe just to say that there’s a lot of technology out there now to learn how to be more self-compassionate. I teamed up with Chris Germer, my close colleague over a decade ago to figure out ways to help people be more self-compassionate. We have workbooks, we’ve got trainings, and so it’s not just like wishful thinking, “Oh, I wish I could be more self-compassionate.” There are concrete, empirically supported tools to help you be so.

If anyone’s listening and this strikes a chord, just probably the easiest thing is to Google self-compassion and go to my website as a starting place. There are concrete, again, empirically supported practices you can do to help make a change. It’s not just a good idea. It is a practice.

[00:35:13] Marc: Yes. Well, thank you for your courageous, groundbreaking work that you’ve done about self-compassion. It’s really important. I think it’s really personal, cultural, and societal, much, much-needed work. Thank you for your time today.

[00:35:31] Kristin: Thanks, Marc. It’s been lovely.

[00:35:32] Marc: Okay. Take care.

[music]

[00:35:39] Marc: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:36:03] [END OF AUDIO]

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If You Learn to Enjoy Waiting, You Don’t Have to Wait

In this practice episode, Marc guides us through a series of exercises that encourage us to be more present in the moment. He leads a brief meditation focused on releasing our expectations, then shares some insights on the expression: “If you learn to enjoy waiting, you don’t have to wait to enjoy.” This lighthearted and practical approach can help us let go of frustrations and anxieties, allowing us to appreciate each moment of our lives.

Marc also presents a Zen puzzler that delves into the meaning behind a short saying from Shunryu Suzuki: “no gaining ideas.” Through this riddle, he invites us to contemplate what it would be like to live with a sense of everything we need. Ultimately, the answer lies in embracing a radical acceptance of our lives. By doing so, we can cultivate a deeper appreciation for the present moment and all that it has to offer.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

In today’s episode, we begin with a short-guided meditation, with an emphasis on letting go of expectations. Then I do a short talk on the expression, “If you learn to enjoy waiting, you don’t have to wait to enjoy.” This is a lighthearted and practical way to shift from frustration and anxiety, to letting go of expectations, and enjoying and appreciating each moment of our lives, even when things are not going our way.

Today’s Zen puzzler is a short expression from Suzuki Roshi that he uses quite a bit. No gaining idea. What would it be like to live our lives without a sense of something missing, with no gain, with a radical acceptance of our lives? Radical acceptance of each moment. I hope you enjoy this episode.

[music]

Now, let’s begin with some sitting practice. This simple practice of stopping and arriving. Perhaps noticing the transition from activity or whatever you may have been doing to pausing, bringing attention to being here, noticing the body, noticing the breath, and with approach of warmhearted curiosity as much as possible, but checking in with whatever you are feeling, sensations in the body, whatever mood, feelings, approach. No need to change anything, but just tuning in and noticing.

I’m particularly noticing the breath. This breath is new and fresh. This breath that has never happened before, and won’t again. Simple every day and sacred at the same time. This experience; what is it like to be here right now? What is it like to be alive and with this sense of nothing? No need to change anything and nothing to accomplish of what relief, needing to get anything done.

[pause 00:04:43]

Appreciating and enjoying this moment, this life, and this breath, and keeping it simple. Breathing in, breathing out.

[pause 00:05:19]

Maybe checking in with what is in your heart right now. Deepest feelings, intentions, you being curious about what’s underneath the surface, the surface of your awareness and letting it bubble up. Being curious in warmhearted curiosity.

[pause 00:06:10]

Bringing what I think of as our best self, best biggest minds, biggest hearts to this practice of just stopping, just pausing. [silence] I’m going to transition. I’m going to ring a bell. Feel free to stop, or feel free to pause and continue sitting, if you like, at your own pace.

[pause 00:07:06]

[music]

If you learn to enjoy waiting, you don’t have to wait to enjoy. I’ve always loved this expression. Actually, first heard it from my good friend, Kaz Tanahashi, who is a Zen teacher, calligrapher, translator, one of the premier Zen translators, especially of Dogan, the 13th century mystic. If you learn to enjoy waiting, you don’t have to wait to enjoy. I find I use this often when I’m stuck in traffic, or in a line at the grocery store, or I’m in a meeting room and waiting for other people to arrive. It’s a great expression if you are maybe at a restaurant and you’ve placed an order, and you’re waiting, or meeting a partner or a friend who is running late.

Many, many situations, and most of us, I’ve noticed generally, we don’t like to wait. It can be frustrating, annoying. We experience waiting as a waste of time keeping us from getting to the real stuff. We generally don’t plan on waiting. It’s not part of the plan. It’s rarely or maybe never expected or scheduled, and because of that, there’s some gap and there’s some frustration or anxiety, or anger. At times it can even get mixed with a hearty dose of blame. Maybe blaming ourselves. We weren’t clear enough, or blaming others for this interruption or loss of momentum.

I find that, in some way, it’s a route entering whatever’s happening. This is where I think, in some way, our meditation practice can be a great training ground for shifting our relationship with time, shifting our relationship with expectations. There’s an expression that Shunryu Suzuki, the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, throughout his talks and throughout the book, he says “No gaining idea. No gaining idea.” I think underneath this expression is this sense that we often have that there’s something missing.

No gaining idea presents the possibility that there’s nothing missing. That there are no gaps. That everything is just as it should be, letting go of our expectations. This, I think, is a core, a meditation practice with every breath, noticing expectation, wanting to be somewhere else or wanting to be someone else. This radical sense of acceptance of ourselves, acceptance of our situation, acceptance of what is. You have this simple, somewhat lighthearted phrase, turns waiting on its head.

It suggests quite simply and directly that we have the ability to see, feel, and respond differently when faced with a situation where things don’t move at the pace where we might want. Instead, we see that frustration or anxiety are somewhat of a choice. That this is our habit energy coming into play. This phrase, “If you learn to enjoy waiting, you don’t have to wait to enjoy,” highlights the obvious and yet profound insight that there are events and there are interpretation of these events, that our responses don’t have to be automatic.

We actually have the power to interpret and respond to waiting in whatever way we wish. Instead of feeling irritated, we can see it as a time to enjoy the spaciousness that a timeout can provide. What a radical and liberating idea. Again, trying it on when stuck in traffic or waiting on the grocery line, waiting at a meeting, whatever it is, using this as a practice. Stepping into this space of transforming frustration to enjoyment or maybe even not getting frustrated in the first place.

This takes some practice, but we get lots of practice, I think with many, many occasions in daily life for waiting. What is it we’re waiting for? The more we practice this, I think the better we get at enjoying the little things, enjoying the moments, enjoying the spaces in between. Again, meditation, I think, is the ultimate radical practice of waiting. Waiting, just sitting, enjoying each moment, letting go of expecting anything. Yes. Remember, if you can learn to enjoy waiting, you don’t have to wait to enjoy.

[music]

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

[music]

For today’s Zen Puzzler or Zen koan, I want to use this expression that I’ve mentioned from Shunryu Suzuki, no gaining idea. No gaining idea. Let’s stay with this and work on this phrase. The idea for these– the idea for Zen koans, the idea for this, what I’m calling lightheartedly Zen Puzzler are phrases or ideas that we can practice with that can support us and help us in our daily lives. Yes, no gaining idea.

I think we are ordinary. Our everyday lives are filled with watching the clock and trying to be on time, and getting things done, and constantly noticing what’s missing, living in the ordinary world. However, we are not just ordinary human beings we are also, mysterious, poetic spiritual beings. It’s in this realm that there’s nothing missing, nothing lacking, nothing to gain, no gaining idea. I think this is the world that Shunryu Suzuki is pointing to with this expression.

He’s often uses the expression, “Don’t be a board-carrying person,” this image of a carpenter or anyone carrying a large, wide board on their shoulder and missing out on the world, on the other side of the board. I think what he’s saying is that don’t forget about the sacred poetic world, the world outside of the gain. To me, what’s fascinating is how these two worlds can actually support each other. Of course, they’re not actually two worlds. It helps, I think, if we are only living in the ordinary world, to get a glimpse of this more sacred world, this world of no gaining idea.

More and more to see how by letting go of gaining ideas, letting go of the ordinary world, and seeing the world as a sacred and poetic, and mysterious, it can shift and support how we show up in the ordinary world. It allows us to have a sense of more spaciousness, acceptance, and to see the mystery in everything, whether it’s in doing the laundry or writing an email, or having a conversation with our friend or loved one. Everything is both ordinary and extraordinary. Everything is both everyday ordinary and poetic, and mysterious at the same time. Yes, that’s how I think of this expression, “No gaining idea.”

I also think of Shunryu Suzuki’s words where he says the purpose of our lives is to cross the shore from confusion to clarity, from the sense of something lacking, to seeing that everything is perfect just as it is, just as we are. Then he goes on to say, “But the secret is that we cross the shore with every step, with every breath we take.” He’s playing, I think, with this idea of the ordinary world, and the mysterious and spiritual world, extraordinary world.

You might experiment with this koan, this Zen Puzzler. Maybe write it down, maybe do some journal writing. What does it mean, “No gaining idea”? How does it show up? How doesn’t it show up? No gaining idea. Try it on. Thank you.

[music]

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

[music]

[00:19:59] [END OF AUDIO]

The post If You Learn to Enjoy Waiting, You Don’t Have to Wait appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Cultivating Healthy Relationships with Rick Hanson

Psychologist and New York Times best-selling author Rick Hanson joins Marc for a thought-provoking conversation about fostering radically healthy relationships as leaders. Whether it’s in the workplace or in our personal lives, developing relationships that balance well-being, compassion, and accountability can be a challenge. Marc and Rick share insights on acceptance and discernment, and discuss the significance of being transparent about wants, needs, and expectations. They look at the efficacy and limitations of the famous statement by Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, “the best way to control your sheep or cow (a metaphor for oneself and others) is to give them a wide pasture” and share practical ways to improve your relationships, both inside and outside of work.

 

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ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His seven books have been published in 31 languages and include Making Great Relationships, Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Just One Thing, Buddha’s Brain, and Mother Nurture – with over a million copies in English alone. He’s the founder of the Global Compassion Coalition and the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as the co-host of the Being Well podcast – which has been downloaded over 10 million times. His free newsletters have 250,000 subscribers, and his online programs have scholarships available for those with financial needs. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on CBS, NPR, the BBC, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in northern California and have two adult children. He loves the wilderness and taking a break from emails.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[music]

[00:00:02] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership.

My guest today is my good friend and colleague Rick Hanson, PhD. Rick is a psychologist and a senior fellow at the Greater Good Center at UC Berkeley. He’s also a New York Times bestselling author who’s written Buddha’s Brain and more recently, a book that’s quite wonderful called Making Great Relationships.

Today’s conversation is about how to have radically healthy relationships at work, in leadership, and outside of work. We talk about the challenge of fostering relationships that are both high in well-being and compassion, as well as in performance, meeting expectations, and accountability. We talk about acceptance and discernment and the importance of being clear about wants, needs, and expectations. We discuss the workability as well as the limitations of the statement by Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, who says, “The best way to control your sheep or cow is to give it a wide pasture.” I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

I am very pleased, thrilled, actually, to be welcoming my friend and colleague Rick Hanson, and Rick, I’ve got your book right here Making Great Relationships. I also have my new book here, Finding Clarity, but I don’t know, we might talk a little bit about that, but we have so much to talk about. We were just– Welcome.

[00:01:56] Rick Hanson: Oh, it’s great to be here, Marc. You’re my dear friend. As people know, I respect you immensely and I’m looking forward to a good, vigorous meeting of the minds.

[00:02:07] Marc: [laughs] Vigorous. Vigor is a great word. I was saying that I’ve been reading, I don’t know how many times I’ve read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, countless times and I’m surprised how fresh it seems every time I read it. I’ve been delving into his words about control, this idea of control in which he famously says, “The best way to control your sheep or cow is to give it a wide pasture.”

I think that this is so pertinent to the work that we’re both doing, the work that I’ve been doing in my world of compassionate accountability and your work in making of great relationships. As I was thinking about this conversation, I thought, I want it to be about, how do you create radically healthy relationships?

[00:03:04] Rick: Yes, what a great question.

[00:03:06] Marc: What comes top of mind to you when I ask you that question?

[00:03:10] Rick: Well, as a bit of background, before we started, there was some back and forth, and so you already went way into the deep end of the pool, and so I’m going to join you there and set it up. I think there is maybe, I would say, three levels to it.

At the deepest level that you’re very familiar with, Marc, and you teach and experience, there’s simply ongoing beingness at one with the ground of all in the present, always, to the extent we can go there. You read a passage from Suzuki Roshi that really spoke to that resting in that continual meeting of unconditioned and conditioned, not yet and now, absence and presence in Taoism and Chan and early Zen.

To the extent that people can rest there, to the extent that there can be that sense of spacious awareness infused with a benevolence there, continuously letting go, that’s great. That’s really foundational, and I’m still working on it. One level up is basic well-being and basic goodwill, the combination of the two.

That’s a practice, especially if a person is starting with, as I did, a lack of well-being and mixed motivations with other people, including resentments of different kinds or grievances of different kinds. You cultivate a quality of a certain resting in the combination of the intersection of strength and heart.

You’re resting in a certain calm and all rightness in your body and a sense of healthy entitlement, you matter. While also seeing the best in others, having a fundamental radiation rippling outward of compassion and kindness that’s increasingly unconditional. People move through it. It’s not about them. It’s your orientation to life.

Then on top of that, you negotiate. You negotiate and to be deliberately provocative here, you meet performance expectations, and then you find ways to get people to meet yours, not in the sense of weirdness, but in the sense of exchanges of value and giving people what they want and asking for and getting what you want yourself. Those three levels. I hope that’s okay. That parfait there.

[00:05:30] Marc: Two things that it makes me think of one is a woman colleague recently, in a very heartfelt way said, “How do you want to be? Who do you want to be as a human being? How do you want to show up as a human being?” Then the third piece that you named in some way, I think you were mostly talking about the realm of– in the realm of relationships, like with our families, our partners, but where it really, I think, gets interesting is in the realm of leadership and where we have these particular– then we’re we move into the realm of performance and expectation.

Those performance and expectations are both in the realm of emotional intelligence and well-being. Well-being is important. Emotions, communication, all that, but there’s this other piece in the workplace about results and certain performance, evaluating and aligning around, what does success look like? I just got off a call today in which the CEO of a company was telling me about a difficult conversation he had with someone who reports to him, and then my next call was with that person.

It was staggering the gap in what the CEO thought they had communicated about the lack of performance, and this particular person said, “Everything’s fine. No, we’re totally aligned.” I’m like, “Are you sure?” It gets really interesting in this realm of alignment around what you were just talking about, performance and results, whether it’s in leadership or in all our relationships. Yes, I did mow the lawn, I did wash the dishes. Then you go and you see, “Wait a minute. You only mowed half the lawn, you only washed half the dishes.”

[00:07:28] Rick: Yes, to make bring it in the real– My book, it’s really about these 50 fundamental skills for all relationships, and you apply them depending on the relationship, whether it’s at work, whether it’s with your partner, your kids, your parents, your neighbor, your in laws, the cranky guy at the end of the bar rattling on about COVID or something, whatever.

How do we move through life, given the fact that most of our joys and sorrows come in relationships? How do we be skillful there? How do we be effective and [unintelligible 00:08:00] benevolent, moral there too, while also getting our own needs met. It’s really interesting. For example, I think that, what do we want from people? What do you want, Marc, from people?

I can answer that a little bit in terms of giving and getting, we give and we get from other people, and I think there’s a certain reluctance sometimes to just name that simple fact, we give and we get. Other than the profound duty of a parent to a child or maybe in other situations, there’s a reciprocity of various kinds in that flow that needs to be good for both.

Fundamentally, what I want to receive, I would describe it as a fundamental dowing of me.

If you think of the structure of Martin Buber I and thou, there can be I and thou, I and it or it and it. We don’t want to be it by others. We want to feel that they see us for who we are. They see the goodness in us, they see the being behind our eyes. They bring respect in a fundamental stance of non-harming and good wishes. You bring that to me. I try to bring it to you.

We also often want quite specific things that are fairly concrete. We want people to show up on time. You want me to come into this recording with appropriate earbuds and a decent mic, normal, no big deal. In a long marriage, I celebrated my 41st anniversary yesterday with my wife, wedding anniversary, and we want stuff from each other and it goes well when basically we give them most of what they want and they give us most of what we want, and so let’s just be explicit about that, and most conflicts are about some breakdown in that flow of wanting.

Now, you summarize that as alignment, which for me is more about agreement about the vision, which is great, and then there’s the actual delivery, both of them together. For me, it boils down to these two fundamental things, in a frame of giving and getting. Giving and getting a certain humanizing, a certain humanity, a certain– call it a wholeheartedness, a large-heartedness, receiving and giving.

Then, frankly, [laughs], they’re not delivering the goods really, and a lot of problems are solved. I’ve been a couple’s counselor in various ways for over 30 years, and a lot of problems are solved to quote two chapter titles in my book, Admit Fault and Move On. The other one is Give them what they want and the third title is Clean Up Your Own Side of the Street, which all sets you up for tough conversations when you’ve got to ask them for certain things.

[00:10:44] Marc: I love that we’re both thinking about unpacking, writing about very similar things. There’s a section in Finding Clarity called the four most important words. How are we doing?

[00:10:55] Rick: Beautiful.

[00:10:56] Marc: It’s interesting, I have to say, even in my own marriage, or even in my own business where I’m managing people, how difficult it can be to just to ask those, how are we doing? That it means being vulnerable in a way and being able to ask it– It means that there needs to be a certain amount of trust and connection even to really ask, to open up with that question.

I think especially in a marriage and especially in a working relationship where it’s someone who’s doing a– where you’re working together in a significant way where the stakes are high. Especially when you know that you’re struggling with something or you can see that this other person is struggling with something that, yes, there’s some gap in giving or receiving, and to be able to skillfully talk about that stuff.

[00:11:58] Rick: Oh, really. Right. It’s really funny, I find so often that we could actually, usually on our side of the street, give a little more of either or both of those two things I named. A little more warm heartedness, lovingness, supportiveness, just seeing the being and also a little more responsiveness to what they want from us. That would tend to make things better.

I’ve also, frankly, recently been in a situation where I’ve been working my way through the fact that I’m going to use a model that I’ve been really thinking about recently, bear with me up quick. If you think about a family or you think about friendship or especially you think about an organization, an organization that’s about accomplishing certain things. You could have high accomplishing, low accomplishing, and you could have high well-being, low well-being.

Think about the intersection of those, the fourth quadrant in which there’s a combination of high accomplishing and high well-being. That’s the sweet spot. Very often, the accomplishing promotes the well-being of the team that’s working to accomplish things together. If high accomplishing is at odds with a person’s well-being in a particular role, they should not be in that role for their sake and for the sake of the organization.

Sometimes as a leader, which is the case for me in a certain situation that I’m in now, you’re in a position where fundamentally, there are performance expectations around accomplishing in certain roles. Sometimes people inevitably, who are actually not accomplishing highly, run into the performance expectations of their supervisor, their board, their boss, who’s giving them feedback about not accomplishing highly, which can be challenging for that person.

Then sometimes they shoot the messenger, sometimes they shoot the boss who actually has reasonable high accomplishment expectations and is communicating feedback in a civil way, but they don’t like it. Suddenly, now, you’re shooting the messenger. “I didn’t like how you said that to me,” or, “There’s too much pressure here.” The truth is, on the ground, you’re actually not accomplishing.

I find that in family situations, my marriage, we had to deal with situations where the truth is I was not accomplishing certain things including relationship tasks. I was making the money, I was taking care of the kids, I was doing dishes, I was pulling my weight. I was not Fred Flintstone, but I was not delivering the goods on relationship tasks. I wasn’t accomplishing and my wife had to tell me. I’ll pause right there. What do you think about this whole chunk?

[00:14:47] Marc: Oh, no, I love the– again, it’s this very similar to the model that I’ve been just using slightly different language. I’ve been using the language of compassion for well-being and accountability for results. Where it gets particularly interesting, I think of some lawyers that I was counseling in which there was an attorney who was a rainmaker, brought in a huge amount of money for this firm.

He was highly accomplished, productive, but yelled at people and was– his emotional intelligence, his well-being, his compassion was really lacking. This was a big problem. Then the other box that I find actually more common is where very fine well-being, compassionate people who are just not producing, who are just not. Those maybe are the hardest ones. Actually, the first case, it’s like, “Man, you need to have a difficult conversation. This person needs to change their behavior or they need to go.”

[00:15:58] Rick: That’s correct.

[00:15:58] Marc: It’s pretty clear that one. The other one’s I find tends to be harder because we really need to be clear about the expectations about what delivering the goods means using your language or what performance means. To be able to say, “You’re perfectly fine human being, I like you, I love you, I care about you. However, we have a problem and we need to talk about this problem very specifically within the context of this isn’t personal about you, this is about your performance.”

[00:16:31] Rick: It makes me think immediately, Marc, of the difference between managing an organization and being a spouse [laughs] or just simply–

[00:16:40] Marc: They’re different.

[00:16:41] Rick: Yes. Being in a long-term relationship of one kind or another, romantic and or friendship. Friendship as well. If your role is that you are accountable, so you also– let’s say you’re a leader, you’re the manager of a department, you have a team, you’re team lead or you’re the CO of an organization, you’re the executive director of a nonprofit, whatever that happens to be in that context, you are expected to achieve highly in your role.

Just think about it, first of all, to normalize it, if we have a plumber, let’s say there’s a broken pipe in our home. We want to have a plumber who achieves highly with regard to that pipe. If we go into a restaurant, we want to have a restaurant that achieves highly when it comes to putting the tofu burger on the table, it’s normal. You get on an airplane, [laughs] you want a pilot who achieves highly. It’s interesting.

In other words, achieving highly is what we seek elsewhere. Sometimes there’s this weird double standard that, wait a second, I thought we were all supposed to be compassionate and have a well-being economy, which I’m all for as if that’s at odds with, hey, normal expectations of high achievement. If you’re a leader, you too are expected to achieve highly, which often means mobilizing your team to achieve highly.

Which means then it’s your duty to find people who can achieve highly and to manage people so that they do achieve highly. That’s the water you’re in. If you don’t want to be in that water, you shouldn’t be in that ocean, that pool. People need to understand that’s your role. It’s not personal. It’s part of your function.

In that context, yes, if you’ve got someone who’s a total sweetheart, I know people like this. There’s the old line, I think it’s from In Search of Excellence, “You want to get the right people on the bus and in the right seats.” There’s a wonderful person who’s just in the wrong seat because they’re okay in that seat, but they’re not really achieving highly in that seat. What do you do? It gets complicated. Sometimes what you do, I’ve done it in some organizations I’ve been in, you just gradually reduce the size of their seat to what they can really achieve highly in. Then you keep them on the bus.

Sometimes you move them to another seat, sometimes you just find a way to let them go on the bus so they can be in a situation where they can achieve highly. Because if they’re not achieving highly and it’s clear that they’re not, that’s not good for their well-being long-term. You respond then maybe we’ll talk about friendships and family.

[00:19:17] Marc: It’s interesting–

[00:19:18] Rick: Which is a very different framework.

[00:19:19] Marc: By the way, that line about the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus is from Good to Great by Jim Collins.

[00:19:25] Rick: Yes, that’s right. Good to Great. Not In Search of Excellence. Good to Great.

[00:19:29] Marc: In Search of Excellence is also an excellent book. On the two ends of this spectrum that you are talking about in terms of leadership and right people on the bus, on the one hand is the Netflix philosophy. Netflix, if you go on their website, they actually have a great– they have their philosophy about hiring, motivating, grooming people.

One of the things that they say in there, which I’ve always appreciated in a certain way, if someone were to say to you that they’re going to leave, would you fight for this person to stay? If you wouldn’t, why is that person on your team?

[00:20:11] Rick: That’s really hardcore.

[00:20:13] Marc: That’s hardcore, but the other end–

[00:20:15] Rick: I don’t mean hardcore like cruel, mean, Navy seals training hardcore. I just mean, wow, that’s very fundamental. Very penetrating.

[00:20:23] Marc: It definitely leans on the accountability side and it makes me a little nervous. I get a little bit like, what about the compassionate piece? On the other end of the spectrum, something that Simon Sinek has written about in some of his writing is that, once you hire a person, they’re yours for life. I don’t agree with this philosophy.

Oh, it tickles my compassionate part. Oh, yes. You’ve hired this person, you’re committed, you have to somehow find a role, I don’t agree with that. I actually think somewhere in the middle of these two. I’m more over on the, boy, if the person would leave side, I’m not fighting for them, it tells me that I’m not as aligned enough. I haven’t clearly stated what I’m wanting, what I’m expecting. We haven’t gotten to this clear sense of accountability and alignment. There’s work to do there.

[00:21:18] Rick: This is very deep and it also runs right into current major cutting edge, 21st century, human tribe policy decisions, but how do we live sustainably, and harmoniously, and well in the single planet, 8 billion of us and growing share together. What strikes me about this sometimes, Marc, is that there’s a out of realityness, frankly, for example, what Simon Sinek said, that doesn’t square with our direct personal experience.

I speak as someone who has a profound personal commitment to compassion, and kindness, and justice in my personal dealings at all levels. I’ve helped to found these are the Global Compassion Coalition, which are also a distinguished founding supporter that’s really about systemic change, and reestablishing the foundations of compassion and justice that were the basis for hunter-gatherer life for 97% of the time that human beings have walked this earth. That’s contextual for me.

Inside that, let’s look at it. You’re thinking about going to a restaurant, do you want to go to a restaurant in which the server who’s dealing with you is not accomplishing highly in the reasonable standards that are appropriate to that server? In other words, they’re attentive, they don’t spill the soup on your lap. They’re willing to interact with you. If for some reason the soup was cold when it came out of the kitchen, they’re friendly, they’re not mean.

That’s what we want. We have a dentist office, we want a dentist office and a hygienist, and the dentist themselves who are all accomplishing highly in the terms there of what their roles are. We would seek that in them, so then it’s ridiculous to think somehow that a different standard should apply to us in which we would be keeping someone in our own enterprise, whatever it might be, who would not be the person that we would want to encounter if we were going into that enterprise ourselves as a customer or client, a patient and so on.

Makes no sense. Now, that said, I think we ought to have a universal basic income worldwide. I think we need massive redistribution and reparations, including for the theft of trillions, best estimates trillions of dollars of property, and labor, and good stolen from people who’ve been enslaved over centuries.

Also, the people in the countries that were subject to colonial rule, mainly in the southern hemisphere extracted in– wealth extracted into the north. I’m, bam, all for that. I’m just trying to be real here. [laughs] I’ll pause there and then maybe we’ll get into family and friends.

[00:24:10] Marc: I appreciate what you were just saying about on a societal level, on how we take care of each other level. There’s the profound need for greater sense of whether it’s guaranteed income, reparations, that there’s a need for baseline compassion around humanity, and how different that is than– it’s funny that, it’s the contrast about I want a plumber who’s highly skilled and I want to you use, whether it’s surgeon, airline, pilot, waiter, all of those, and the people who work within our organizations, that there needs to be a clear, and compassionate way of expressing discernment, of expressing the gaps between what the job is. Again, where it really gets the descriptions that I was naming of, the people on our team who might be quite good, they’re a good plumber, but they’re terrible at communicating, or they come late, or they various more of the emotional skills. It’s super interesting territory.

[00:25:20] Rick: If I could add one little thing, I’m just realizing, speaking of people who are leading in different ways, teams are scaling up to whole organizations. There are ways in which, and I think again, we need an economy in America that is wildly divergent from every other developed democracy in the world. Every other one. Tanging from Canada to Japan, Finland, Norway, Australia, they all have things like paid parental leave, living minimum wage, a genuine social safety net, all kinds of things like that.

They are much more regulating of growing inequalities of wealth. They’re much more that way. That then enables people to function in their jobs without feeling freaked out that they can’t pay their bills. That’s all true. Second, inside organizations, there are systems that can help people to achieve highly, to accomplish highly. It’s a weird one to realize, and obviously there are implications around this, but if you think about the military like the US military, I don’t know how many people are in uniform, maybe a million plus. Think of the wide range of people who are functioning in an extremely high accomplishing system.

Now, the ends to which those accomplishments are aimed, or morally fraud, I’m a Buddhist, don’t kill, don’t harm, sometimes as Suzuki Roshi himself said, “I believe sometimes the way that to be truly virtuous is to violate all the precepts under certain conditions.” Anyway, I just think there’s a lot we can do as leaders to put people into situations they can succeed at, and create systems around people, causes and conditions that bring out the best in them and shore up some of their weak suits so that [unintelligible 00:27:18], the accomplishing highly is still coming from them, and they can feel really good about what they do.

[00:27:25] Marc: I think you’re getting a little bit into the why, Simon Sinek says, what he does is, I think he’s saying, “We need training systems. We need to create systems where it’s up to us as leaders to create systems and environments where people can succeed.” I appreciate that. Oh, yes, that makes a lot of sense. Saying that I can never let go of someone that maybe, again, it’s the other end of the bookend of the Netflix, why would you keep someone? It’s interesting territory.

[00:28:03] Rick: Totally true. Families now and friends, this is where it’s really different which is interesting, because instead of there being a fundamentally hierarchical relationship in an organization in which there’s a leader who’s accountable themselves for accomplishing highly and all the rest of that in a poker club where you just come together on a Friday night, bridge club, fishing group, political action group, you’re writing letters together is really different. It’s a completely different thing and then friends and family.

Often what happens over time, which is, relates to several of the chapters in the book, you end up resizing the relationship. You start to realize, oh, in terms of accomplishing or performance expectations or giving and getting, you realize that person, including someone I may be married to for 41 years, is never going to give me that. They just don’t do that. It’s like expecting, I don’t know what, a deer to swim or something. Maybe deer can swim. I don’t know. Or a cat to swim. A cat’s never going to want to swim.

What you do is you decide what to do about that. Sometimes what you do is you just say, “Oh, it’s a deal breaker. After you try to– again, multiple chapters in my book is about trying to talk about it, reading a foundation, which you can talk about it, trying to make agreements with each other, but let’s suppose you’ve done all that, and you start to get, I’m just never going to get that from you. If that is an employee of yours in your company, you can’t just resize the relationship and say, “Oh, okay, we’ll just let go of you doing an important 20% of your job. No worries.”

That’s problematic. Again, if you think about how you’d feel yourself if you walked into a restaurant, or a plumbing contractor’s office who had staff who just didn’t have to do the important 20% of their job, you wouldn’t want to use them next time. You wouldn’t want to go to that restaurant next time, so it’s real.

Back to family, friends, and more horizontal situations. A lot of times, what you end up with, is you just go, “I give up.” Not like, “I give up, screw you,” but just, “All right, I’m going to let that one go and I’m not going to ask for– I’m just not going to expect it. I’m going to love you dearly, meanwhile. I’m not going to get on your case anymore. It’s been a real bone of contention between us. I’m just not going to do that.”

Often you maintain harmony, especially in a friendship or with a neighbor. You realize, “I’m just never going to build a fence in which I expect you to pay off it because you won’t. We could joke about football. You’re a cool person and I’m at peace with you.” Resizing relationships is really useful in certain situations. What do you think about all that?

[00:30:54] Marc: Yes, I think it requires a good amount of self-awareness. It’s getting into the territory that we were talking about before we started recording, which is the topic of control. Again, Suzuki Roshi, “The best way to control your sheep or cow is to give it a wide pasture.” I think what you were just naming was a very particular and skillful example of giving your partner a wide pasture by not sticking to insisting that they do some– It’s a form of control, expecting that they’re going to do something that you want, that they’re not going to do and this desire to control them.

Instead, again, you did say, it’s different. If it’s a deal-breaker, it could be something that– no, this is something I profoundly want or need in my life and we’ve got a bigger problem here that we have to deal with or, “Oh, I can let this go. I can love this person without this particular piece.”

[00:32:00] Rick: I revere Suzuki Roshi and you served me immensely in multiple ways, including recommending his book, Not Always So. Just fantastic. On the other hand, I’m very dubious about the overapplying, overextending the metaphor of giving the sheep a big pasture. Because what do you expect from the sheep? What do you expect from them? What’s the accomplishing expectation, is that they eat their grass and they don’t wander off, okay, great.

On the other hand, I also think about influence. The truth is, you’re right, we have extremely limited control. There’s a fair amount we can do to influence others and there’s a lot we can do to influence ourselves. I think about the 80, 20 rule where loosely where you put 20% of your attention on how they could improve and clean up their act and you focus 80% of your attention on yourself, what you can do.

That said, it’s also true that we want things from other people. We don’t want much from the sheep. They don’t have to bring the dinner to our table in a timely way, hot, in the restaurant. I’m thinking of being with a good friend of mine, actually, who’s my rock climbing guide. I get to hang out with him occasionally and put a plug-in for him. His name is Roddy McCalley. He’s incredible. You can find him on the internet. I’ll leave her right there. Take you outdoors and keep you alive. Help you do whatever you want to do.

Anyway, man, we’re together. We’re roped in on a cliff. We’re a thousand feet off the deck. We have performance expectations of each other and we need to influence each other. He needs to influence me, as he did recently to speed up, Rick, or we are going to get rained on and lightning and fried.

I have also need to communicate with him, “Hey, your expectations for me in rate of climbing are just unrealistic, because I’m turning 70 soon and I can only go so fast at 10,000 feet.” We got to communicate. Anyway, I think there’s a place for communicating around, and where people run into trouble is they often suck at exercising influence.

They either come in guns blazing. I can go there, especially, I have a long fuse, but when we get to the end, I can get the condom exasperated. I got to watch that. That’s my deal. That’s on me. Or they’re inert, they’re passive. They may fuss a little bit about it. They sputter, but they’re not effective.

There’s an intermediate place where we are effective and appropriate and kind in how we exercise influence. To imagine that we can stay out of a frame of exercising influence in many important relationships, I think is naïve and ludicrous. I think there are certain relationships that transcend the mutual exercise of influence, but most don’t.

[00:34:55] Marc: Yes. I’m chewing on– the words of Suzuki Roshi I think are meant to help us reset or almost like hit our inner reset button, to start with a blank slate so that we’re not biased and responding, reacting, and enabling us to have a clear and clean heart and state of mind.

There’s another side that he’s not expressing in that particular statement is that, of course, we have to influence, be influenced, make decisions direct–in a relationship. It’s not just about– again, it’s a little bit like that the Simon Sinek, oh, once you hire, you have to keep this person on, like, no.

There needs to be a sense of influence, discernment, difficult conversations, whether it’s with your employee or your spouse about some gaps. There’s some gaps here that we need to talk about. There’s gaps here in that I’m struggling with these. Let’s talk about this with compassion and accountability.

[00:36:13] Rick: Yes. Well, that’s your sweet spot and you’re great at it. Everybody needs to read your book. Anyway, that said, shoot me here, I’ve come up through in Buddhism more of the [unintelligible 00:36:25] early Buddhism style. That said, the little I know, wow, of all the Buddhist traditions, Zen looks like the one with the highest performance expectations in terms of certain behavioral strict standards that are really quite something.

I find that kind of a crackup that let him wander around. I don’t think Suzuki Roshi would’ve been very comfortable with people rolling into the zendo for one of his talks, or a [unintelligible 00:36:56] or something wandering around milling like sheep, big pasture, bumping into the walls. That would’ve not flown. Let’s be clear there.

[00:37:04] Marc: Yes, you’re entering the territory and this beautiful paradox of Zen, which is around the emphasis on forms with the motivation–

[00:37:16] Rick: Of freedom.

[00:37:16] Marc: Yes. In precise forms for a flexible mind.

[00:37:21] Rick: Yes, exactly right. I get that, but I want to rant briefly if I could. Which is, how can I put it? Lately, I’ve been just thinking about the double standard I think in the minds of many people in which they want to, I’ll use this word, consume. They want to receive the benefits of others who are achieving highly at a restaurant as a lover, as a co-parent, a friend, as a colleague at work. While on the other hand, often being very uncomfortable with expectations that they achieve highly themselves or they accomplish highly themselves in a particular way.

I wonder in part if that’s generational, and I don’t want to sound like a cranky old guy, but when I think about my dad grew up in a ranch in North Dakota in 1918, there was just an ethic in that culture that you rolled in and you did a full day’s work. You earned your way. There was just that expectation. They weren’t mean about it. It was just normative but I find people today sometimes who are shocked that they’re in a framework in which there’s a focus on accomplishing highly in their particular role as if that’s somehow an affront or an expression of patriarchy or lacking in compassion or bullying.

It’s weird. It’s really weird. There’s the socialization that almost has to happen that curt of explains to people that just like you want to receive the benefits of others who are accomplishing highly in this role and you don’t have to be in this role if you don’t want to be, but in this role, there’s an expectation of you accomplishing highly yourself.

[00:39:06] Marc: Rick, this is one of the things that I really appreciate about my Zen training in that, a lot of it was having to do what seemed like impossibly difficult things, again and again. This I think you were alluding earlier to the military. The military trains people that there are clear– there’s clear rules and expectations. I recently did a retreat for a group of wildland firefighters.

[00:39:33] Rick: Ah. Great example. Talk about it.

[00:39:36] Marc: I’ve noticed, I’ve military people. It’s not unusual that I have Marines at my dinner table and now I have firefighters at my dinner table. The nice thing is that they would never not clean up. They won’t leave my house without making sure that– whereas I have other groups, I won’t name, other groups–

[00:39:59] Rick: Some of whom we know.

[00:40:00] Marc: Some of whom we know and I’m surprised. I’m hosting an event and they just leave and I’m left. Man, there’s a different-

[00:40:11] Rick: It’s so interesting.

[00:40:12] Marc: -mindset of and I think– [crosstalk]

[00:40:15] Rick: Well, next time I come to your house, I’m never going to leave a dirty dish. I’m going to–

[00:40:19] Marc: No, don’t. Unless, of course, it’s different. It’s very different to say, “Oh, can I help?” Like, “No, I’ve got this.” Than just you’re gone. It’s interesting. You’re pointing to, which is general, I think shows initiative, work ethic, expectations, willing to do difficult things. Is there anything you’d like to offer or do or say before we wrap today?

[00:40:46] Rick: As always, Marc, just at a friend level, it’s great talking with you and I think we covered a lot of great ground. I guess, I would just want to underline a point that I made, but I think I can underline it more, which is alongside my own really quite recent clarifications and reflections about this intersection of high accomplishing and high well-being and all that, that as we conduct ourselves personally, unilaterally, we’re called to unilateral virtue.

We’re called to, as Ajahn Chah, in my tradition, said, to tend to the causes while letting go of the results. Finding a way to be at peace with the results. It doesn’t mean we’re not anguished by sometimes the results. Let’s suppose you’re grappling with a difficult illness, or you’ve got a friend, you do what you can and you care about what happens. Ultimately, can you be at peace with it while doing your part with a whole heart? For me, I just want to emphasize that bit.

[00:41:56] Marc: Yes. Well, may you and everyone around you be at peace, radical well-being, and great accomplishment, highly accomplished as well.

[00:42:06] Rick: As in different ways. Yes. Thank you very much, Marc.

[00:42:11] Marc: Thank you very much, Rick. Really appreciate it.

[music]

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

[music]

[00:42:43] [END OF AUDIO]

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Are You a Victim or a Player?

In today’s episode Marc leads a short guided meditation with an emphasis on cultivating warmhearted curiosity. He then gives a short talk on shifting your approach from being a victim to being a player, or as Shunryu Suzuki says, being “the boss of everything.” This is the practice of taking radical responsibility for your feelings, thoughts, and actions.

Today’s Zen puzzler is a simple yet profound expression: Whatever You Meet is The Path.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[music]

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

[music]

Marc Lesser: In today’s episode, we begin with a short guided meditation with an emphasis on cultivating warm-hearted curiosity. I then give a short talk on shifting your approach from being a victim to being more of a player, or as Shunryu Suzuki says, to being a boss of everything. It’s a way of taking radical responsibility for your feelings, your thoughts, and your actions. Today’s Zen puzzler is a simple yet profound expression, “Whatever you meet is the path. Whatever you meet is the path.” I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

[music]

Marc Lesser: Let’s do some sitting practice together.

[bell ringing]

Marc Lesser: It feels like such a privilege and an opportunity to pause, a sacred, sacred pause entering as much as possible this space where we don’t need to measure, judge, or accomplish anything. Letting go of all of that and just being here with the body, bringing awareness to the body, bringing awareness to the breath, letting thinking mind do its thing. Our minds will generate thoughts but we can train ourselves to not be caught or follow them and to gently and firmly come back, come back to the breath, back to the body with as much curiosity. I like to think of it as warm-hearted curiosity as we can cultivate or bring forth.

There’s no need to try and change anything. Whatever you are bringing in terms of your feelings, your mood, attitude. We’re dropping it as much as possible, but at the same time, being aware, being aware of what is. This is a simple profound practice of pausing. Keeping it simple. Breathing in and breathing out. A Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki says, “Our breath is just like a swinging door.” I appreciate that model.

Simply being breathed and noticing how, as we follow the breath, settling, opening, being curious about our experience. What is it like right now to be here, breathing, alive? No need to wait. No need to wait for some better time, better thoughts. Right now, right now bringing our full awareness and experience to this moment, this breath. Everyday mind or ordinary mind is a famous Zen dialogue. What is the way? What is the way to waking up? An ordinary mind is the way. An everyday mind is the way.

[pause 00:06:19]

Marc Lesser: Seeing if it’s possible to approach our experience with curiosity and warmheartedness. Please feel free to continue with this sitting practice. I’m going to ring a bell. Whatever works for you, to continue or not.

[bell ringing]

[music]

Marc Lesser: I want to talk about a way to work with our underlying attitude. I’ve noticed there’s many, many models, many ways to talk about this, but for now, I want to start with the question, are you a victim or are you a player? Are you a victim? Are you not responsible for how you respond or are you more engaged? In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, there’s a part of a chapter called You Are the Boss of Everything. This is, I think, a particular way of saying encouragement to be responsible, to be a player, to see quite viscerally how we create our worlds. This is the approach and understanding and way of being of a player, a very different than the blame game.

I was thinking, though, of– it was just the other day that I was making some apple juice using a very old juicer and afterwards I was trying to assemble it, and I couldn’t quite figure it out. Whatever I did was not quite working. I noticed I was getting more and more frustrated, and my inner Homer Simpson began to shine. I could hear myself complaining, why must everything be so hard? One of Homer Simpson’s famous lines. I think of it now these days as my inner Homer Simpson. Why must everything be so hard?

This is, I think, the mind of a victim. I found by labeling it this way and by making some lightheartedness about it and noticing that I could see that what I think more of my inner player began to emerge, that I noticed some tightness and that I was able to shift from tightness by adding just a little bit of humor. As I was putting this juicer back together, I began trying things. I began to be more curious, and I had a series of small ahas, of small insights and how the machine works, what was I doing wrong? How does it fit? Little by little, voila, I got it back together.

It’s interesting, I think there’s actually some science that says that when we get tight, it literally makes us dumber. It literally gives us less options, makes us less creative. This I think is the beauty, the possibility, the importance of the shift from being a victim, being tight, blaming to opening, being much more– becoming the boss of everything. This victim mentality is the sense of being powerless to solve things, being powerless to affect change, feeling as though we lack influence with other people, with circumstances, with systems.

When this happens regularly, what I’ve noticed, it can lead to a state of cynicism. In the work that I do, with CEOs and with leaders, I’ve noticed that cynicism often can be the default mode in how we are at work and in organizations. I think this is true in many of our important relationships. A lesson that I’ve learned is that if we are not actively cultivating trust and understanding, then without realizing it, we may be actively cultivating a cynical attitude. Again, I think there’s a great deal of similarity between the mindset of the cynic and the mindset of the victim.

The antidote to feeling powerless and to seeing yourself as a victim is to own and act, cultivate the perspective of a player. A player is someone who recognizes difficulties, challenges, and failures, and seeing everything may be hard as our friend Homer Simpson says, but it doesn’t mean that it is stuck or immovable or permanent. A key insight of a player is that there are events and there is how we interpret and respond to these events.

This, I think, is so simple and obvious. Of course, we are influenced by events, and it would be not accurate to say that events don’t matter, but our state of mind and our approach matters and often matters even more. There are events and there is how we interpret and respond to events. A player lives, breathes, and acts from this distinction. A player is someone who sees every situation as an opportunity to learn.

Feeling like a victim is a way that we get stuck. We narrow ourselves, we’re cut off from our vision of what’s possible, our vision of successes, of possibilities for ourselves and from those around us. A player is someone who sees and faces difficulties and challenges, and is looking for and working toward solutions. For small wins, as well as for larger, for systemic change.

A player notices when they themselves or others have slipped into this victim mentality and uses this opportunity as a time to shift your approach, a way to become and cultivate an attitude that is more positive, more optimistic right in the midst of a situation that might feel impossibly difficult or entrenched. How do we embody this? How do we practice this? I think the key practice is to notice the mindset of a victim and notice the mindset of a player. Just noticing. That language in that model can be helpful.

Noticing especially when we are tight or judging or frustrated to explore, trying on different stories, different perspectives. Bringing some humor in, try laughing at yourself. In one of Shunryu Suzuki’s teachings, he says that laughing at ourselves is perhaps a kind of enlightenment. The other practice is to play with, “What does it feel like? What does it feel like in the body to be in the mode of a player? What supports you for this? What support do you need to feel like a player in this attitude?”

Again, this attitude of, “What can you learn from every situation? How can you play more with cultivating the mindset of a player, or cultivating the mindset where there is becoming a student of frustration, becoming a student of cynicism, but most of all becoming a student of waking up, bringing awareness to your own approach, your awareness to your own attitude.” I think one of my, again, favorite expressions or quotes from Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki is that he says, “The purpose of our lives is to shift from being tight, from being closed to becoming more awake.”

I think you could almost say the purpose of our lives, the purpose of our lives at work and in all parts of our worlds is this shift from being reactive, from being a victim to becoming the boss of everything, to becoming a player.

[music]

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

[music]

Marc Lesser: Today’s Zen puzzler comes actually from a Tibetan Buddhist tradition called lojong teachings. These are teachings that use various slogans or lists as a way of contemplating those or integrating some slogans into our daily lives as a way to become more aware, more clear about our motivations. In some way, these are practices for shifting from being a victim to becoming a player.

The slogan for today, very simple, the slogan is, “Whatever you meet is the path. Whatever you meet is the path.” Again, in Soto Zen practice, I’m presenting this as a puzzler or a Zen koan. Clearly, it’s not like this has any solution, it’s meant to deepen us, to inform us, to shift us. Imagine anytime you are feeling your inner Homer Simpson, anytime you’re feeling a challenge, you come back to this expression, “Whatever you meet is the path. Our challenges are the path. Our grumpiness is the path. Our love, our passions, our desires, things that push us away, whatever it is we’re feeling, it’s all the path. Whatever you meet is the path.”

One very practical way to work with this is to do some journal writing about it. What does this mean? Whatever you meet is the path, or to write it down on a card and keep it somewhere on your desk or maybe on the dashboard of your car. Driving can be a great– imagine seeing driving, whether you’re in traffic or being cut off by another driver, “Whatever you meet is the path.” I hope you will enjoy and practice and learn from today’s Zen puzzler, “Whatever you meet is the path.” Thank you.

[music]

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

[music]

[00:20:11] [END OF AUDIO]

The post Are You a Victim or a Player? appeared first on Marc Lesser.

Awareness is Your SuperPower with Jon Kabat Zinn

Jon Kabat-Zinn is the father of modern mindfulness practice. As a professor of medicine, he founded the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts – which both popularized and added an important experiential and scientific element to the practice of mindfulness.

In this episode Jon and Marc explore what Jon calls awareness as a super power. This is the practice of going beyond our thinking minds and view of self and accessing the depth of who we actually are and the power of love. Jon describes practices for turning suffering into wisdom. Jon is an amazing person and presence and this conversation is practical, aspirational, and transformative.

 

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ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he founded its world-renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic in 1979, and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM), in 1995. Both the MBSR Clinic and the CFM are now part of UMassMemorial Health.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:03] Marc: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times, this is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. My guest today is Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is considered the father of modern mindfulness practice. As a professor of medicine, he founded the mindfulness-based stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts. This both popularized and added an important experiential and scientific elements to the practice of mindfulness.

His aim has always been about greater health and wellbeing on every level from the individual medical patient or person trying to optimize their health to society more broadly as well as to the health of the planet as a whole. In today’s episode, we explore what he calls the superpower of awareness, going beyond thinking minds and view of self, and accessing the depth of who we actually are and of the power of love. He describes practices for turning suffering into wisdom. Jon is an amazing person in presence, and our conversation is practical, aspirational, and I hope transformative. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Welcome, Jon. It’s really great to see you.

[00:01:44] Jon: Nice to be here.

[00:01:46] Marc: One of the stories I tell about how we met is that– I think this is a true story, I was teaching a mindfulness and meditation class at Google to a room full of Google engineers. You walked in as though you were one of the students and sat down in the class, and it was just so delightful. As I recall, you even raised your hand and asked me a question. I thought, “Oh, man, how am I going to answer this?” It was just super sweet.

[00:02:14] Jon: I remember that day. I remember the room. I was just so pleased by the entire effort in those early years to really bring the Dharma into the heart of this new enterprise that I won’t call the beast, which was in a certain sense supposed to be liberating us from all sorts of other beasts and how important it was to be offering this to people who are in the future, so that they create a future that it’s possible to live in present moments.

[00:03:00] Marc: Just to unpack that a little bit, this was at Google’s headquarters several years ago when I was there doing these trainings mostly for Google engineers. It’s interesting that you use that word Dharma, that was always what we were doing, but we were translating Dharma or translating wisdom and Prajñā and with this aspirational idea of can we bring this into the modern workplace? It was so great to have your support there, especially in those early days as we were very much experimenting and finding our way about how do we teach, how do we bring these mindfulness practices, meditation practices into the corporate world?

[00:03:58] Jon: What year was that? Do you remember?

[00:03:59] Marc: I do. That was probably 2007 or 2008 that you were there.

[00:04:08] Jon: I remember because it’s on my website, both of those Google talks, because at that point, it was very unusual to actually film a talk. Who did that? Now of course, everything is filmed and everything is uploaded to YouTube. Nobody ever dies anymore, they just migrate to YouTube. I think I have a lot of confidence that in some sense, that Dharma does itself, that wisdom is a intrinsic quality or opacity of life, and as part of life, we have the potential and also in some sense, the responsibility to offer whatever it is that we feel is potentially illuminating, liberating, calming, nurturing, and just whoever’s receptive to it will benefit potentially and then pay it forward.

[00:05:21] Marc: Whenever I’m teaching it, and in these conversations, I always hold that what I heard you just describing as the highest aspiration, may people be transformed, may people be changed and healed. Then there’s the second area or at least maybe you’ll have a few practices, a few tools and practices if your life– one or the other, transformation is the highest aim, but at least some practical ways that you can take something that you heard or learned during this time that you can integrate into your daily life.

[00:05:54] Jon: Agreed. I agree that you don’t want to set the bar so high that it may be super pure and totally right, but nobody gets it and it just doesn’t make any sense within the framework of one’s life. I feel like you start with transformation and work backwards, healing is a very important element of this work, whether you’re at work or at home or whatever you do, family and so forth, that there’s all sorts of suffering that’s actually intrinsic to being human. It’s not our fault or anything like that. The healing of that suffering, which means learning how to be in wise relationship to it or coming to terms with it, contributes directly to that transformation that you were talking about.

That healing comes from never stopping learning and growing. There’s a an arc, which I think is part of human evolution, actually, is like an evolutionary arc that we’re creatures who are capable of actually learning and just wagging our tongues like this, and you’re being able to understand me across thousands of miles and with computers and everything, but even if we’re in the same room, the miracle of language. We use it all the time and of course it’s completely related to thought. These miracles are completely taken for granted. When you stop taking them for granted and recognize their power, then learning actually catalyzes growing, like real growing into ourselves, into adulthood, you might say, or into planetary adulthood or into compassionate embodiment or whatever you want to call it.

Then that itself contributes to the furtherance of healing in the way we were talking about, and then that transformation. I don’t see them as actually even linear. I think it’s all rolled up into one, and everybody traverses this territory in uniquely different ways. I just love that.

[00:08:07] Marc: Of course, as I’m listening to you right now, I am thinking and acknowledging that all of the people who are listening to you at some point will be having their own conversation with you, will be hearing your words, will have wide, vast difference depth of what it is you’re saying. That, to me, whether it’s in all of our healing, this is a lot of how I spend my day job is trying to help people align around what people are saying and listening, and how vastly different it can be in all relationships.

[00:08:50] Jon: There’s a certain [unintelligible 00:08:52] of beauty in the present moment, which is very fleeting, but it has elements of real transformative power because it’s uniquely synthesized by a mind in ways we don’t understand. That’s where creativity and imagination come into the embodied living in a certain way. If you went back and heard something that impressed you 10 years ago, some talk or maybe that Google talk that I gave for whatever reason you’re going listen, or I went and listen, I might be completely appalled at what I said and how unskillful it was or how wrong in some ways or whatever.

That’s a beautiful part of the adventure is that there’s a certain lack of precision about it, a certain built-in imprecision that we need to be compassionate about, both in ourselves and in each other, and then understand that in some way, the big picture is a reflection of the [inaudible 00:10:03] of all of that uncertainty in the present moment and how amazingly beautiful that is. I’m thinking because I know that you’re a parent, there’s the mystery of having children and grandchildren, and the universe of communication and non-communication in ways that actually are profoundly humbling and also, I guess I would say, enchanting.

[00:10:29] Marc: One of the things that was really striking to me, again, I’m going back to where we first met at Google, was the paradox or the precision, and the non-precision. Maybe precision, and you use the word enchantment or flexibility, that there is a precision to the technology that we’re using. Here we are amazing precision that is allowing these computers to work, that the coding that took place to make this technology work.

I think one of the things that Google engineers were enthralled by letting go of that and being more spontaneous, listening in a different way the importance of creating more open and safe spaces.

It doesn’t mean that you’re not precise when you need to be precise. I felt like I was getting lessons there. I needed to be more precise in how I was describing meditation and mindfulness. Sometimes we would bring in the science often and there was a certain important sense of precision in the science of meditation, very different, I think often than one’s experience. That was interesting to me, that distinction between science. You’re a scientist, and you’re a mindfulness teacher, you have both of those parts in you.

[00:12:09] Jon: Yes. There’s an unseen beauty in a certain way. Scientists, I think and appreciate this in a particular way but engineers in a different way, perhaps, and everybody in their own way are beautiful matrix, interactive, continually changing matrix between the known and the unknown, or what one thinks one knows because often we think we know a lot, and we actually don’t know half as much as we think we do. The beauty of the unknown which is not necessarily a problem. It’s its own seduction. What’s next? What is possible? That’s where, of course, imagination and creativity really do come into the picture.

It’s not just about science and technology, but it’s about home life [unintelligible 00:13:02] thing or relationships, living one’s life, and not missing all one’s moments. It’s possible, as Thoreau famously said in Walden, to live in such a way that right before you die, you wake up and realize, as he put it, that I hadn’t lived because you were so caught up in all of the thinking mind-stuff and wanting things to be different that you actually got it all wrong. Didn’t see your children, didn’t appreciate and weren’t there for whatever it was, or were there in body but weren’t there and they knew it. You realize that, and then you die.

Part of this work, whether you’re doing it in a corporate setting, or in a hospital, or in a school, or anywhere else, is to actually encourage people to wake up now because there’s no time to lose. The future is a figment of our imagination. There’s only this moment. Yet we’re always living in the past in the future and the present moment gets completely eradicated and that’s the only place where we can actually see, hear, smell, taste, touch, love, understand, and know that we’re not understanding and then live that. It’s not like, “I’ll be okay in the future when I’ve meditated for 30 years.” You’ll just be 30 years older, but you won’t be any better off.

The point is not to improve on yourself, it’s to recognize your beauty now because there’s no improving on it, you just get older and things disintegrate. It’s like just the second law of thermodynamics, that everything is going more towards disorder and entropy. Recognize the miracle as [unintelligible 00:15:02] put it, the miracle of the present moment, the miracle of mindfulness, the ability to be awake and aware in this timeless, non-dimensional moment. It’s insanely illuminating and life-supporting in a certain way that just opens up enormous possibilities. For anybody and everybody, it’s not like you’re, you have to be special, or you have to go sit in a Zen monastery as you’re pointing out. No, that’s, of course, great to do if that’s your [inaudible 00:15:38] point of your life.

The reason I started the MBSR clinic in the hospital was because I felt like, well, hospitals are dukkha magnets, there is a lot of suffering. If you’re suffering beyond a certain point, you wind up in a hospital and you usually don’t walk in by yourself, you’re carried on the stretcher. The ambulances come, they take you. Where are they going to take you? Unfortunately, with the earthquake, and 22,000 people’s lives just wiped out in a fraction, second or day. Hospitals are the place where people go when they’re suffering. What better place to actually offer some elements of wisdom around how to be in wiser relationship to suffering, and actually, potentially transform that suffering into wisdom?

[00:16:37] Marc: Yes. The messages I’m hearing one is, don’t wait. You don’t have to wait. In fact, I was just meeting with a friend of mine who was just given a prognosis of having three to six months to live. Actually, it was a great gift being with her. She was so buoyant in a way, somehow, for some people actually knowing that our time is limited but our time is limited no matter how old we are. I hear you leaning into that. Also, you don’t need to wait till we’re in the hospital either, that the sense of waking up to our whatever our suffering is-[00:17:22] Jon: Yes, better not to wait because it’s true, we only have moments to live, all of us. Of course, that’s a play on words but it’s an incredible opportunity, or a wake-up call to say, “Hey, don’t take this one for granted thinking you’ll get more,” because every time we breathe out, if somehow the organism– and it isn’t up to us, but if somehow the organism didn’t take another breath in, it’s over. Every moment, there’s a certain way in which we’re dying and being reborn literally metabolically, biochemically. It’s not that one wants to get [unintelligible 00:18:09] preoccupied with this but to recognize the beauty and the power and the gift of the present moment.

Learn, train oneself actually, to be more in the present moment, to recognize what keeps us from it which of course is where it intersects with what you do enormously because the digital world is basically an enormous force that often is one of perpetual distraction and seduction because a lot of it’s really fun and interesting, or, I don’t know, appealing in one way or another to one part of oneself. You can get so seduced and wind up betraying yourself because you only have 24 hours, and you’ve devoted six or seven of them to stuff on YouTube. It may be the greatest stuff on YouTube but there’s other aspects to life. If you don’t nurture those, then there’s a certain way in which that’s its own form of a disease.

[00:19:20] Marc: Many years ago, I led a one-day meditation retreat for a group of Google engineers, and mostly we sat for the day. Most of them, the first time that they’ve had the experience of what it was like to enjoy the silence, enjoy the present moment and they said, “Wow, this was transformative. Do we need to quit our jobs at Google and go live in a monastery?” I said, “Well, you could there’s something to that, but I think you need to bring the monastery into your day-to-day life.”

[00:19:58] Jon: Because you did, as I understand it, spent years in a monastery and not just any monastery, a really hardcore Soto Zen monastery that’s like most people wouldn’t survive for 24 hours. Just the wake up time and the ways in which everything is regulated in a particular way.

[00:20:22] Marc: I think part of that training– there’s many, many parts to it, but one is turning difficulties and challenges into exciting possibilities. Wow. I get to get up at 3:40 this morning. Can you believe it? That’s going to be amazing. I get to walk in the dark and look at the stars on my way to the meditation hall. Like, wow.

[00:20:47] Jon: A lot of people don’t wake up with that thought. They wake up with, what the hell did I sign up for?

[00:20:54] Marc: I had many of those mornings as well. Recently, went back, did a three month practice period. The second morning, I was like, what was I doing. [chuckles]

[00:21:05] Jon: Well, that’s the beauty of it, is that you rapidly recognize that all of our thoughts are completely out of control. They have a life of their own and they’re like a prison. They form certain kinds of boundaries and barriers. Einstein had significant things to say about this. We live within this prison of our own creation which is not the actuality. Whether it’s a Zen monastery or some other form of Dharma practice or mindfulness practice, the recognition that you only have moments to live really is an invitation to see the boundless spaciousness of this moment and to learn how to live inside what I call the domain of being, as opposed to having a constant agenda for just getting the next thing done.

The recognition as you’re sitting with your mind day in, day out for hours at a time, sitting and walking, that the mind has a life of its own and it’s just going to do whatever the hell is going to do. When you recognize that those are just like weather patterns, that they’re not the truth of anything, that you don’t have to quit or run away or do something else just because you’re thinking mind is telling you you have to do that, then you begin to reclaim the full dimensionality of your being. That being dimension, that human being, not human doing. That’s deeply related to mental health, deeply related to physical health, all the way down to the level of gene expression apparently.

Of course, affects one’s level of joy and engagement in the world in a way that is meaningful and that is not self preoccupied and self-centering so that you can actually be of use in the world and recognize that you’re part of an infinitely larger web of connectedness and wholeness with other beings, not just human and with the planet itself. Which is really an important realization given what we now know about global climate change, warming, all of that stuff, which is really, you could say science teaching us to be mindful of the body of the planet and its wellbeing. You take photographs of the glaciers from space over 50 or 60 years and you realize like they haven’t changed in 600,000 years and now all of a sudden the glaciers are virtually gone.

The ice sheets in the North Pole, there’s open water there for many more months than there used to be within my lifetime. Then Antarctica, the ice sheet, the edges are falling into the ocean. This is a wake up call. This is not different from in the monastery. It’s a wake up call for humanity. That’s mindfulness practice coming out of our technological capacity to sense and be aware of what the planet’s doing. The Amazon and the Congo Rainforest, these are spoken of as the lungs of the planet. It’s not just some nice poetic metaphor. They are the lungs of the planet, including the oceans and algae and so forth. We need to take care of those lungs because if you eradicate your lungs, it’s a lot worse than what smoking will do to you.

From that point of view, it’s all mindfulness. We are looking in the mirror and understanding what we’re doing to ourselves in a way that actually requires us to show up with a different open spaciousness of heart and mind and then intelligence.

[00:25:18] Marc: It’s a subtle and profound shift in a way of being, as though we can’t shift our economy though, it’s as though it’s going to be bad for the stock market or bad for the economy if we shift towards taking care of the planet. It’s like this idea of ignoring, as you were saying, use your metaphor, ignoring our lungs, ignoring our bodies for some sense of material concern. That material concern, it’s important in a way, but it’s completely insignificant in comparison.

[00:25:51] Jon: Well, if we think of it as wealth or riches and concentrated riches, of course, everybody wants concentrated riches in wealth. Capitalism does have its way of lifting people out of poverty. China lifted more people out of poverty than any other country ever without. In some ways it’s more of a capitalist country than the United States in economic terms. In political terms, like [inaudible 00:26:22], the honoring of the individuals in the society. I think we’re really at an inflection point on the planet and all governments. If it’s all really about governing, the first question is how do you govern yourself?

To go back to [inaudible 00:26:39] or to go back to the Chinese Chan Masters, it’s like, how are you in relationship to the experience? Then that’s a very focused question in a way. It’s also the biggest question in the world because the interesting piece is who are you? Not just how are you, who are you? If you begin to actually question who am I or what am I? Of course, that’s the deepest meditative [inaudible 00:27:08] practice of all, Ramada Maharshi’s practice. Who are you? There’s the mystery of– As my Zen teacher used to say, open your mouth and you’re wrong, attached to any thought. That gives you a definitive answer. That answer will not be anywhere near complete enough.

To me, this is what we’re talking about is not just, “Oh, now everybody’s got to go and buy a meditation cushion and sit on it and have pain in their knees and just be a real tough guy for an extended period of time and you’ll get some benefit in the long term from it.” It’s so much not that. It’s about a love affair with who you actually are when you realize or recognize even for a brief moment that you’re not the story you tell yourself about who you are, the story of me and then fill in the blank, how pathetic I am, how fabulous I am. It’s the I am part that needs some degree of inquiry and investigation.

Everybody knows that in the middle of the night when things are not going well, you wake up and you know your story’s not true but you don’t have anything to fall back on. Yes, you do, actually. You have to fall back on what you might call this. If it comes down to, well, how about just this breath? Just never mind this breath, just this in-breath. Just the pause at the peak of the in-breath and okay, now what is it? This out breath. You actually give yourself over to attending in that way. I see that as a love affair with life and with the domain of being, which so far transcends the narrative, the story of me or even the story of humanity that then we get into this not knowing and that’s where all the creativity and beauty and love lies when we practice in that way.

It would be criminal, at least this is, in some sense, why I started doing what I do, it would be criminal to keep that only within sequestered monasteries on mountain tops. This is like something that– it’s not like everybody should be a Buddhist, no. Everybody should be a human being and then relate to the full dimensionality of that humanity using all of the various things that people have figured out over the millennia about what’s helpful. Meditation, the way we’re speaking about it is really helpful. Is it hard? Yes. It’s the hardest thing in the world, perhaps, except that it’s also just the mind saying that it’s hard because how hard is it to actually be who you really are?

A lot of it’s more just getting out of your own way and then learning how to be patient and cultivate equanimity so that when the proverbial stuff hits the proverbial fan, either in your mind or outside in the world, you don’t lose your mind when you most need it. That’s like exercising a muscle. You work with the resistance of the weight and nobody likes to– the weight keeps getting heavier the more you do the contractions. Over time, something’s starting to grow in that way. The mind wanders, you bring it back. Each time you’re seeing what’s on your mind, I can’t believe that’s in my mind too. I’m identifying with it and I attach to it and you bring it.

You just let it be. You don’t push it away. You just let it be. You bring your mind back and you hold it in awareness so that you’re not forgetting what’s unfolding. I don’t know any other way to describe it but as a love affair with the actuality of being and the miracle of being alive, especially at this particular moment, where the technology alone, like the photographs that we’re getting from the infrared web; James Webb Space Telescope, you want to see where humans and the earth and the solar system really come from. Just go on that website and take a look at the photographs.

[00:31:27] Marc: I’m mulling over your words of a love affair with the actuality of being. I think I want to bring in our– we each have a book about to come out and I so appreciated your words about my book. We were talking as we were preparing about one of the chapters in my book is called Drop the Story, or Dropping the Story, right? Dropping the story of me and opening up to this love affair. I want to ask you about your book, which I know is about pain and working with pain. I wonder is there the key practice that you describe about skillful Dharmic ways to work with pain in our lives?

[00:32:15] Jon: Well, when I set up the Stress Reduction Clinic, the MBSR program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979, that’s 44 years ago. The idea was that people don’t go to the hospital for fun usually, they go when there’s no alternative, suffering. Western medicine and western science and biology has come a long way in terms of understanding disease and the causes of disease and potential treatments for disease, especially, infectious diseases. Just witnessed how quickly they came up with a vaccine for COVID. Globally, it’s a horrible thing, but they did it in less than a year. That’s because of all these sciences that have developed over the past 100 years.

There’s also this inner dimension of disease that the Buddhist talk about as dukkha. It’s the first of the four noble truths. It’s often missed as life is suffering, which is not what it’s about at all. It’s that there is the challenge of suffering. There is suffering. Now how are we going to be in [inaudible 00:33:36] relationship to it? Since hospitals function, like dukkha-magnets in society, when the pain gets too intense, that’s where you get taken. Why shouldn’t hospitals, aside from all of the scientific medicine that they’re using to help people with whatever conditions they arrive at, especially the chronic ones where we don’t actually know what to do to really be helpful, why not teach people how to contribute to their own liberation from suffering and from pain conditions?

We were seeing an awful lot of people sent from the pain clinic. They actually got rid of the pain clinic in the Department of Anesthesiology after a while. I never understood why, but it had to do with funding. Somehow or other, they would not fund pain therapy. It was insane. What’s a hospital for if not for that? Anyway, the idea of the MBSR program was to have a clinic where doctors could refer people that they no longer knew what to do with, but were still suffering. Then we would teach them these ancient practices and just see what would happen in terms of their level of suffering.

We can make a big distinction as often as done between pain and suffering. Pain as they like to say, is inevitable, but suffering, and I’m not sure I love this way of putting it, suffering they say is optional, but when it’s happening to you, it doesn’t feel optional at all. I want to be as compassionate about that as possible. There is some wiggle room there for how one is in relationship to the pain, whether it’s somatic pain, emotional pain, cognitive pain, social pain, or some giant [inaudible 00:35:37] containing all of that and how you are in relationship to that versus the suffering because the suffering can be worked with in a certain way and it is possible to have these elements of pain and not suffer.

That was what it was about MBSR was set up to be. The stress reduction clinic was set up to be a safety net to catch people falling through the cracks of the healthcare system and challenging them to do something for themselves that nobody on the planet could do for them. It has to do with just how to be in a [inaudible 00:36:13] relationship with what they’re experiencing, especially, when it really hurts. Whether you want to differentiate it, it’s physical pain or emotional pain or obsessive cognitive contraction or whatever. Mostly we’re talking about physical pain, people being sent from the pain clinic and from the department of anesthesia and the orthopedic clinic of people with pain and, of course, the general medicine.

We would train them in all these meditative practices, including mindful Hatha yoga, by the way, which is an incredibly important part of it, see what would happen. What would happen is that in eight weeks, people who had been suffering with their conditions for eight years, we’re seeing things like, ”I feel like I’ve got my life back. I feel like I have a way of being with it.” You say, ”Has the pain disappeared?” No, the pain’s the same. My headaches are still here. Of course, headaches are the easiest thing to have go away and so often they do, but “My back pain– or whatever, “It’s still there?” “Yes, it’s still there, but I have a different relationship to it.”

That’s where the suffering gets attenuated. This book, to come back to that mindfulness meditation for pain relief is basically meant to be a user-friendly door into that space, into that universe. It’s very large type and it’s in multiple colors with beautiful illustrations and then brief encapsulations of the various guided meditations that we’ve been using for 44 years to help people wake up to this potential dimension of healing that’s been here right under our noses, all puns intended from the very beginning, but that really, you need a certain degree of instruction and then a certain degree of, dare I say, discipline in one’s life to actually practice, whether you feel like it or not.

At first, it feels very artificial practicing and it feels very mechanical. Sit down and watch my breath and be in awareness. The first thing you’re aware of is how hard that is, your mind is all over the place and you’re saying, “This is nonsense and it doesn’t hurt that much anyway.” On and on, it’s endless. The mind is just out of control and it’s got its own narratives, it’s got its own stories. What we are doing is we’re cultivating access to a different superpower. Thought is an amazing superpower, but there’s one that we have that’s never really developed in school. Now it is much more because they’re teaching kids mindfulness in elementary school.

When you recognize that awareness is its own superpower and you don’t have to get it because you were born with it. You say, “Well, awareness of– what do I care? I’m aware of what? My breath, my body, this table.” It’s like, no, don’t be so quick to think you understand what awareness really is. You live inside the mind coming and going, and then you just see if you can just be aware of the mind coming and going without building a big story about it. It’s the image that’s often used as you well know classically, is that the thinking mind and the emotional turmoil of the mind is a little bit like the waves on the ocean or on a lake. Depending on atmospheric conditions i.e. the weather, it can be tremendously turbulent and chaotic and energetic, or it could be flat, just totally calm and everything in between.

That’s the surface. If you drop down, even in the midst of typhoons and hurricanes in the ocean where the waves are 40, 50, 60 feet, if you drop down 100 feet or so, gentle undulations, even in the most turbulent conditions, well, the metaphor is, you can drop into your mind in that way, drop into your body in that way so that even though the surface is really turbulent, and a lot of the content of that is how horrible this moment is, how much of a failure I am, how I’m on the way out, or I’m too old, or I’m too young, or I’m too this or I’m too that, and then you just drop underneath it. You don’t try to shut off the waves of the ocean, put a nice big sheet of plexiglass over the Atlantic Ocean. I’m sorry, that’s not possible.

You can’t suppress the thoughts, but if you drop underneath them, then you’re tapping into this other form of intelligence, this superpower we call aware– You can just be aware of the waves and not take the story of each wave personally at all. You can see how much you take it personally. That’s part of the practice is like, “Oh, I’m not supposed to take it personally, but, oh my God, I’m taking it so personally,” but you can be aware of that.

You see, that’s the superpowers. No matter what comes up, you can hold it in awareness and then you can ask yourself, “Is my awareness of this pain, which, of course, we’re going to say is my pain– is my awareness of my pain actually suffering?”

This is something you can do. This is a laboratory experiment, and you got the lab. Is my awareness of my anxiety anxious? Is my awareness of my pain suffering? Just be honest with yourself. Take a look and see. I’m going to just say that from the experience of hundreds of thousands of people who are in there, that the answer is universally, no, it’s not. What’s going to happen in the next moment? It’s going to come back, and then I’m going, “Hey, but remember mindfulness is all about staying in the present moment,” so not fair to actually say, “That’s just more thinking about the future, and that’s just thinking so we can be aware of that too.” Whether it’s a thought, whether it’s an emotion, whether it’s a sensation, just hold it all with equanimity. Well, that’s a practice. That’s why you have to exercise the muscle. The more you practice, the more it integrates into your life.

[00:42:33] Marc: Well, I so appreciate your teaching this. Thank you.

[00:42:37] Jon: It almost feels so commonsensical that it doesn’t feel like [unintelligible 00:42:00] framing it as a teaching, but it’s just common sense. You start to play around with experience and you realize, “I’ve got this other capacity to just attend, to pay attention.” That’s the gateway into awareness. It’s not about coming more aware. Our awareness is infinite. It’s like the universe. I challenge anybody to find the center of your awareness or the periphery or circumference of it. I don’t think you’ll find it. It’s just like the universe. It is boundless, and it’s already yours. Our challenge what we have to work at is accessing it because it gets overgrown with brambles and thorns and all these twigs and vines and stuff like that, which is all generated by our thought habits.

[00:43:35] Marc: Well, Jon, I wonder, maybe as a way of closing, you’d like to say or– let’s see. One of the questions that’s coming up for me is, given all the things that are happening in our lives and our world, if you want to say a few sentences about what gives you hope these days? Despite all of the challenges or right in the midst of the challenges, what is it that gives you hope?

[00:43:59] Jon: Looking out the window gives me hope. My grandchildren give me hope. My children give me hope. The air and the sun and the moon give me hope. The Ukrainians give me hope. My colleagues and friends in Ukraine who are teaching mindfulness give me hope. Response of the world to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria right now. We focus on the horror, which is, of course– but that’s already over. It happened and it’s over. It doesn’t give me the opposite of hope.

There’s enormous sadness and empathy and compassion for the survivors and those who have lost, but look at also immediate outpouring of people with their bare hand rescuing whoever it’s possible to rescue, which is almost unfathomably impossible under 10 stories of concrete collapsed floors in apartment. People rise to the occasion and do whatever it is that we can do. There are examples of that everywhere. That gives me hope.

It also gives me hope that there are people out there, like Paul Hawken and Kaz Tanahashi and all sorts of people who are very deeply grounded in– I’ll use this vocabulary because I’m talking to you– the Zen experience and the Soto Zen tradition.

They are out there in a very rigorous but beautiful way, both on the artistic side and on the environmental science side, demonstrating that there’s a lot we can do and that we absolutely have to do to [inaudible 00:45:54] how we are in relationship to the planet, which means how we are in relationship to the way we use energy, to the way we understand what it means to live through 24 hours and so forth. Now we have to change our own behaviors as individuals and as a species. That just gives me boundless hope.

[00:46:15] Marc: No, Paul Hawken’s work very hopeful about Drawdown and Regeneration is a new book coming out. Kaz Tanahashi, amazing being artist, teacher, Dogen translator.

[00:46:28] Jon: Yes, and also coming out with a book about this and the example of Costa Rica and mentioning that perhaps– I don’t remember exactly how he framed it, but the fact that Costa Rica got rid of its military. You could say, “Well, that’s just some idiosyncratic thing,” but maybe that’s a lesson that the amount of wealth that we spend defending ourselves against each other is insane. There must be some wiser, cheaper way to actually befriend our commonality as human beings, whether we live on one side of the earth or the other and to stop telling ourselves stories that actually elevate us, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

That big narrative depends on the color of your skin, though, as to how that unfolds as we’re beginning to see, and that’s not just idle woke-ism. This is actuality that when it doesn’t want to be faced, then you label it woke and you write it off. There are forces at work that are far bigger. I really love that we’re beginning to recognize the full spectrum of American history, for instance.

[00:47:50] Marc: Jon, I so appreciate you. I know you might be too humble to realize this, but I think you’ve brought these practices, mindfulness practice, awareness practice. I think many of us, me certainly, stand on your shoulders.

[00:48:09] Jon: I prefer the linked arms for, but I hear what you’re saying and I touched by it.

[00:48:15] Marc: That ultimately it just might save us. It just might save us–

[00:48:19] Jon: Yes, that’s a challenge. It just might.

[00:48:24] Marc: I think of it as that we are all sacred beings, and that, ultimately, this teaching is a way of just uncovering, accessing what is and allowing the sacredness of our beings to emerge and help and heal and connect each other. I just want to thank you for all of your wonderful work in this.

[00:48:46] Jon: That’s very beautiful, Marc. Very beautiful. I thank you for saying that. Absolute pleasure. Congratulations on your new book. May it be incredibly effective in transforming people’s hearts and minds and the world.

[00:49:01] Marc: Yes. Finding Clarity, a book about compassionate accountability, our next topic. Thank you so much. It’s really a joy to spend this time with you.

[00:49:10] Jon: Okay.

[music]

[00:49:17] Marc: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[music]

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The Practice of Spaciousness

In this Practice episode, Marc offers a short meditation on finding more spaciousness as a way of being. He also gives a short talk on ways to be less busy, and more open, engaged, and spacious through the practice of setting an intention, engaging in ongoing learning, and intentionally practicing spaciousness and accountability.

Today’s Zen puzzler is a story about spaciousness and “finding the one who is not busy.”

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

In today’s episode, we do a short, guided meditation on the topic of finding more spaciousness as a way of being, being less busy and more open, curious, engaged and spacious. I then do a short talk on this topic of spaciousness, of finding the one who is not busy. I outline this as a practice from setting an intention to practicing, to holding yourself accountable and ongoing learning. Today’s Zen puzzler is a story about spaciousness. It’s a story called Finding the One Who Is Not Busy. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Let’s do some sitting practice together.

[bell chime]

So pausing, stopping, and just in the transition from whatever you were doing to stopping, bringing attention to being here, noticing the body, making conscious choices about how to be, whether you’re sitting, or walking, or driving, or bringing attention to how you are in your body right now. Making conscious choices about how you are placing your hands, your feet, opening the chest and shoulders, and allowing, allowing the body to be a sense of at rest and spaciousness even if you are moving.

Mindfulness practice and awareness practice doesn’t always mean to slow down or to stop, but right now we’re practicing if we can, practicing slowing down, practicing, pausing, and cultivating a sense of curiosity, warmhearted curiosity, and a sense as well of spaciousness. I think this is an underutilized, undervalued practice, noticing the space around you, the space in between you and objects and also, cultivating open and spacious way of being.

So much of our stress and anxiety is usually the opposite of spacious. It’s usually, think of it as a sense of a lack of space or tightness. This practice of cultivating a quality mindset of openness and spaciousness is really useful, and important to be able to cultivate it here when we’re– There’s no pressure at all here, just breathing, being, noticing, but practicing now so that we can bring this same quality into the challenges of our lives and work and relationships, conversations.

Right now, we’re bringing attention to the body and bringing attention to the breath and feeling, accessing that feeling of spaciousness in the body, spaciousness with each breath, just simply breathing in and breathing out with nothing really to measure or accomplish. Can you feel it? Can you feel that sense of openness and spaciousness right now?

Yes, this sense, this practice of that our minds includes everything, right? Nothing can trouble us right now. You yourself make the waves in the mind. If we leave the mind just as it is, it will become more settled and more calm. This is the, call it spaciousness, or we can call it big mind, practice of big mind, where everything is included is the essence of mind. This is the experience of, whether we call it spaciousness or sacredness or yes. Waves come and go, but our minds are open like clear water. Whether it’s waves or whether it’s water, this is spacious. This is a big mind and keeping it simple. Keeping it simple, simply breathing in, breathing out. Here, nothing to accomplish.

I’m going to transition. You are welcome to continue sitting, or you can stay and join me as I am going to ring the bell to end this period of sitting and do a short talk on spaciousness and finding the one who’s not busy.

[bell chime]

[music]

The practice of spaciousness within a busy day or finding the one who’s not busy is a really important, simple, useful, lifetime practice again and again. Let’s start with this story that you may or may not be familiar with, but it’s the question that I’m most asked by Google engineers is what is the least amount I can meditate and have it make a difference? My answer to this question is one breath.

Experiment with being aware and appreciating one breath each day and see how this influences your work and your life. This is verily practicing with a sense of spaciousness by being aware of the breath. One aware mindful breath can add a mindset and an approach of spaciousness that you can then remember, cultivate, bring into our busy days, into our busy lives.

Again, I don’t like the word busy so much. I think it’s way overused and it’s become almost a religion of busyness. We wear it as a badge of honor. “How are you doing?” “I’m really busy.” What if instead of being busy, we were engaged? We were even spacious. “Oh, how are you?” “I’m feeling really spacious today. I’m getting a lot done. I’m being really effective. I’m having great conversations. My writing is going well.” Yes, it doesn’t have to be busy. It’s a very different sense. It’s so common. It’s almost the default mode in our culture, the busier, the better.

It can be challenging to stop, to relax, to take time for yourself, to take some well-being time, or family time. Often, I’ve noticed that transitions can be challenging, especially if we are using a lot of our energy and activity and then we try to transition to be with our families, or children, or our partners, or even just some time to relax. I think it’s important to have- -the ability to make these transitions. More we are aware of our energy, the more we can practice with spaciousness and being aware of our energy right in the middle of our engaged days. The transition can be much simpler and easier. It’s not such a great big leap.

Again, there’s another reason why I think it’s so important, this practice of spaciousness is. It’s not only stepping outside of activity, but shifting our approach, shifting the way that we work with our minds and bodies. It’s a core part of a mindfulness practice, being able to bring and cultivate a sense of spaciousness right in the midst of activity.

I love watching great athletes like a great quarterback who is relaxed and spacious even as they are about to get clobbered by the opposing team. It’s essential that they stay spacious, focused, and make decisions about throwing the ball, not throwing the ball, handing off the ball. Again, I think this is true of whether it’s tennis players, or basketball players, or even golfers, spaciousness.

One way to think about spaciousness as a practice is to begin with the intention, to have the intention of bringing and cultivating spaciousness into our daily lives. It begins with the aspiration, how can I find a sense of greater ease in the midst of my work, in the midst of shifting from one activity to another, in the middle of having difficult conversations or driving or being in meetings? It may seem impossible, but it’s about setting the intention even if it feels hard.

I was just with my three-year-old grandson recently in Missoula, Montana. We were walking together and it was really cold. It was like zero degrees or even maybe a few degrees below zero. I was concerned about him and I said, “Are you warm enough?” He looked at me, and said, “I’m not afraid of the cold.” I loved that attitude. I think it’s that same attitude about cultivating a sense of spaciousness right in the midst of challenging busy days. I sometimes think, “I’m not afraid of being busy. I’m not afraid of being really engaged and working hard.” I think it starts with the courage and intention to practice.

Then I think in order to be able to be successful, competent at this practice of spaciousness, we need to have some practices. I think it starts with a daily meditation practice, practicing spaciousness where we can, step outside of the activity of our day. Great quarterbacks, great athletes, they spend a lot of time practicing. It’s not easy to stay calm and spacious right in the middle of when there’s a tremendous amount of activity and people coming at you.

You can start by this experiment that I mentioned earlier about Google engineers. Start maybe by taking one conscious breath a day but even better is to spend 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, a half hour, whatever works for you though. It’s really more about consistency. There is something about practicing spaciousness outside of the game of work and life makes it much, much more possible to bring that sense of spaciousness into our activity.

One is setting the intention, having practices, and then it’s also I think accountability, being able to check in. “How’s it going? How’s it going? How did I do in my practice of meditation today? How did I do in spaciousness? Were there some moments when I was feeling spacious? Were there moments when it was a lot more challenging, maybe I lost it, I felt some anxiety and tension, and it was hard but great,” so just checking in, a sense of holding ourselves accountable, and then ongoing learning.

This is a learning process, learning from, “How am I doing with my intention, my practice, and with this process of noticing, remembering to check in. Then, beginning again, starting fresh each day, perhaps during each transition, bringing back that intention of cultivating a sense of spaciousness.

I want to read a short poem about spaciousness by Zen teacher Ryōkan, who lived in Japan from the 1700s to the early 1800s, a beautiful teacher, someone who lived a life of spaciousness in the midst of activity. He ended up becoming a renowned poet and calligrapher who had this radically spacious childlike way of being in the world. He says, “What was right yesterday is wrong today. How do you know it was wrong yesterday? There is no right or wrong. There is no predicting gain or loss. Unable to change their tune, those who are foolish glue down bridges of a lute. Those who are wise go to the source but keep wandering about for long. Only when you are neither wise nor foolish can you be called one who has attained the way.”

Those who are wise go to the source. Here I think he’s saying wisdom is about finding our source of spaciousness and [inaudible 00:16:45]. Only when you are neither wise nor foolish, so going beyond our usual judgments about good and bad, yes and no, right and wrong, attaining the way. I think this attaining the way is the way of living a life where each moment has some kernel of spaciousness, some sense of a human spiritual practice.

This particular translation of this poem is by Kaz Tanahashi, my good friend, from a book called Sky Above, Great Wind. It’s a book about Ryōkan’s poetry. Please do aspire and practice to bring more spaciousness, engaged, warm-hearted, curious spaciousness into your day-to-day life.

[music]

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

Today’s Zen puzzler is a story about spaciousness. This is a story about two Zen teachers that lived in the 7th Century China. This is actually a traditional Zen koan. Some of these Zen puzzlers come from collections of Zen koans, often from the 5th, 6th, and 7th century, and sometimes I’ve been playing with more modern ones. This one is an ancient koan, but it is so, so relevant, and I think important in today’s world.

It’s two teachers who live in a monastic setting. One teacher is sweeping some stone steps inside the temple with a wooden broom. Another teacher comes up to him and looks at him and says, “Too busy.” Essentially, he’s saying, “Why are you sweeping when you should be meditating or undertaking some kind of contemplative practice?” In this story, the first teacher holds up the broom and looks at the other, and says, “You should know there is one who is not too busy.” You should know there is one who is not too busy.

Though we often associate- -busyness with activity and speed and lack of busyness with stopping or slowing down, this is not always the case. This is an important practice of being able to find our own spaciousness, our own centeredness, our own real connection with ourselves right in the midst of activity, whether we’re sweeping, or working, or writing, in a meeting, in a call. Whatever our activity is, this particular Zen story, this Zen koan, Zen puzzler is inspiration and opening the gate to finding the one who is not too busy.

Not being busy does not mean stopping, not even slowing down, stepping out of the– We can find spaciousness without having to stop, without having to step out of our activity. This is an opportunity to learn, to adjust, to find our composure right in the midst of the activity and intensity of our lives. Just like this talk that I just gave, it’s about the practice of spaciousness, but not even– It’s a radical spaciousness because it’s spaciousness, connection, heartfelt, right in the midst of whatever we’re doing, whatever it is.

Again, I think it does take intention, some aspiration, some practice, some ongoing accountability. You might experiment with this particular line, finding the one who is not busy. You might journal about it, maybe write it down as a note to yourself to keep near you on your desk or in your car, wherever you spend time. What does that mean, finding the one who is not busy?

It doesn’t have to be some answer. It’s more like the way these koans are used in Soto Zen practice. It’s not about finding an answer. It’s more about using these words, using these stories as ongoing reminders, questions, inspiration, a way to imagine being able to, again and again, finding the one who’s not busy, finding the one who’s not busy. Thank you very much.

[music]

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

[00:23:16] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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Less Stress, More Ease and Joy with Elissa Epel

Elissa and Marc speak about health and well-being, and strategies we can embody to enhance and how we relate to challenges and stress, including embracing uncertainty, noticing what we can and can’t control, and finding the positive, and even excitement, in the midst of life’s challenges.

 

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ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Elissa Epel, Ph.D. is an international expert on stress, well-being, and optimal aging and a best-selling author of The Telomere Effect, and The Stress Prescription. She is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, at The University of California, San Francisco, where she is Vice Chair of Psychology and directs the UCSF Aging Metabolism Emotions Center. She studies how psychosocial and behavioral factors, such as meditation and positive stress, can slow aging and focuses on climate wellness.

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Embracing Transitions

In this Practice episode, Marc leads a short guided meditation followed by a talk on Change and the 3 Stages of Transition: 1) Pausing, 2) Letting Go, and 3) Re-emerging. He also shares a poem from Naomi Shihab Nye.

Today’s Zen puzzler is from a formal Zen koan: “What is Zen or what does it mean to be human?” The answer involves an exploration of what we can learn about our lives from trees.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[music]  

[00:00:02] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. In today’s episode called Embracing Transitions, we start with a short guided meditation utilizing this theme of transitions, pausing, letting go, and re-emerging. I then do a short talk on change and embracing transitions and unpack the three stages of transitions, endings, not knowing, and new beginnings. I share a poem from Naomi Shihab Nye about change and appreciating change.

Today’s Zen puzzler comes from a formal Zen Koan about the question what is Zen or what does it mean to be fully human, where the teacher responds about a cypress tree in the garden, and what can we learn from trees after all about our lives? I hope you enjoy this episode.

[music]

Well, let’s do some sitting practice together.

[music]

I hope that the bell can support us and help us to pause, noticing the body, noticing the breath, arriving, arriving. The transition from whatever you were doing to being more fully here and now. Arriving here. Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says the real miracle isn’t to walk on water, the real miracle is to walk right here on earth. The real miracle is to be here, fully here, this body, this breath. Whether your mind is calm right now or not so calm, bouncing, just noticing, and using the breath and the body as a way to anchor, as a way to support us. The great gift. Seeing everything as gift.

The energy, the warmth coursing through us right now. Gravity allowing us to be here on this earth and this breath, the gift of this breath. Simply noticing, breathing in, and breathing out. The theme for this episode is around transitions, around change. Noticing the transition from whatever you were engaged in to stopping, pausing, allowing our big mind, big heart to be present, always with us, but somehow we don’t always notice. Part of the transition is ending whatever you were doing and entering this space of not knowing.

Right now, letting go of our usual expectations, judgments, criticisms, and what is it like to just be here. Checking in with the body. Noticing the breath. Letting thinking mind do its thing in thoughts, like clouds in the sky, and noticing whatever you are feeling right now. What is it like to be here? What is it like to be alive right now and cultivating some approach? The approach is curiosity, kindness, and warm-heartedness. Warmhearted approach to this transition.

Noticing this ordinary practice, and at the same time, something sacred, extraordinary about this life, this body, this breath. A childlike curiosity, that this breath, this time is new, is fresh. We don’t have to pretend it is so. It’s shifting from habit energy to the energy of more freedom. The freedom and courage to be here alive, not knowing what will happen next.

Then the other aspect of this model of transitions is emerging. Ending this particular time and emerging into whatever is next with a sense of learning, reinventing your life, not being caught by old old ghosts and patterns and habits. Bringing a sense of freshness. I’m going to reemerge right now as I ring the bell to end this sitting, but please feel free to join me or feel free to continue sitting.

[music]

Transitions and embracing transitions. We’re almost always in some kind of transition or maybe it might be more precise to say that we are always in transition. We always are in this living, on this edge of change and maybe there’s different images for how we live in time. One image is like living on the edge of a wave that’s breaking, that there’s this sense of now and the other image for time is that everything from our past, everything, even perhaps from our future is right here. Everything is right here and right now. The transitions. Some are enormous, like starting or ending a job or beginning or ending a relationship or a birth, a transition into adulthood, or a death.

Some transitions are more ordinary, like starting the day or beginning our work day or stopping or starting playing an instrument or a sport, or completing a project. I’m currently celebrating the transition of having recently completed a book called Finding Clarity and I’m noticing I’m both celebrating that it’s complete and I’m also grieving that it’s a project that was close to my heart for a long time but now beginning the new process of birthing the book out into the world with a sense of not knowing. I don’t know how this book will, how it will be received in the world.

Some transitions are inevitable, like the rhythms of starting and ending each day, a conversation or a period of meditation are kinds of transitions. Sometimes we bring great awareness to these changes, these transitions, and sometimes not so much. Some transitions we celebrate and others we resist. We can welcome them or we can appreciate them.

I recently stumbled upon a book that I remember really enjoying that was written, I think more than 40 years ago, is a book called Transitions by someone who I discovered lives here in Mill Valley, California. His name is William Bridges and he describes three stages of transitions. There’s a lot of different models, and I think models are extraordinarily useful. Mindfulness and Buddhism is a model.

Emotional intelligence is a model. We learn from models. The historical Buddha presented Buddhism as a model. Things like the foreign noble truths and the eightfold paths are models for how to live, how to shift our lives from habit energy to more freedom. I think this model of transition is also a useful model. The model that William Bridges describes is that looking at transitions as starting with endings.

What is it we are letting go of? When we wake up, our night of sleep is ending. When we begin a new job, we’re ending whatever we were doing previously. When we start a period of meditation, it may be the beginning of meditation, but it’s the ending of whatever we were doing. When someone dies, this is ending, some profound ending. Recognizing endings is I think a useful, practical, and powerful way to look at transitions.

How something is ending and letting go of a relationship, or a job, or a meditation. Ending. It’s a way of leaning into and allowing space for whatever might be happening next. Then Bridges describes the next part of transitions is what he calls the neutral zone. In Zen practice, we might call it not knowing, letting go of expectations. After ending is a state often of disorientation, sometimes confusion, but it’s also a state of openness. It can be beautifully uncomfortable. Again, sometimes painful. This is especially true in more major transitions like ending a relationship or ending a job, and often we resist or avoid this stage.

This is a stage that is uncomfortable, where we don’t know what will happen. As I was describing, I don’t know what will happen with this book that is about to be birthed in the world. In truth this is a super interesting stage. I think about where I am in relationship to my partner, to my children, to my work life. This place of not knowing. There’s great discomfort, but also great sense of freedom and possibility in acknowledging and embracing and allowing this stage. I remember several years ago when I left my role as CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, it was painful. Even though it was my choice and I resigned, I really didn’t know what was next and I distinctly remember a phone call that I had with a friend and colleague John [unintelligible 00:17:53].

He strongly encouraged me to take my time and to allow myself to spend time and stay in this place of discomfort, of not knowing what I was going to do next in my career, in my work life. I really appreciated his advice, his support to stay with the discomfort and to allow it, not force it. Just let it take as long as it needed to take in. In some way, wonderful things have emerged in my own transition since leaving that role and in some way, I’m still in it.

I’m still in it always in some way transition. The third stage that is described in this particular model is new beginnings so it’s appreciating endings, allowing that place of the neutral zone or not knowing, and then emerging into new beginnings. This is the stage of putting our insights and understanding into play. Responding and acting. Stepping into this might be stepping into a new job, a new role, a new relationship. Sometimes it’s a new identity during larger major transitions.

Again, this is a model that can be applied to major shifts in our lives, or to the flow of transition of projects like writing a book or the transition of a day, or a period of meditation. To begin the ending, whatever we were previously doing, we stop, we pause, we enter a space of not knowing, a sense of letting go as much as possible. Then we get up and we enter the world new and fresh and altered. In this model, meditation practice can be hitting the refresh button of our lives. I think it’s especially useful, right? I get all these stages acknowledging endings not knowing and mining crafting whatever it is we’re learning.

This is very similar to a model that you may be familiar with that was popularized by a colleague of mine Otto Scharmer and his book Theory U. Here he describes the left side of the U is he calls it observing and noticing and sensing and then going down. The U to the bottom is again very similar to the neutral zone not knowing. Then coming up the right side of the U is reinventing, recreated our worlds.

Again whatever model works for you I think these are useful ways of discovering more freedom, transforming a sense of conditioning of habit energy into more freedom and more possibility in how we respond how we initiate, and ultimately in how we show up for our lives. I hope you can enjoy, appreciate, and embrace transitions. I want to read a poem that is about transitions. It’s a poem called Burning the Old Year by wonderful poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

Beautiful poem and I really appreciate Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem about transitions.

[music]

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

[music]

Today’s Zen puzzler. I really like this. Zen koan, Zen puzzler trying to unpack them and apply them to how we can make them practical. At the same time, allow the mystery and not knowing of them to penetrate our lives. Today’s Zen puzzler is from a classic Zen koan, Zen story. It is about a monk that asks the famous Zen teacher Zhaozhou, What is the meaning of Zen? Zhaozhou famously replies in this particular Zen koan, the cypress tree in the yard. Some of these Zen stories are somewhat logical and some completely make no sense at all. This one on its surface looks like it makes no sense at all.

Looks like Zhaozhou is avoiding the question. What if he’s not? What if he’s actually giving us a variety of clues? Again, the way these koans are used in Zen practice is that we just stay with them right? What is the meaning of Zen? The cypress tree in the yard. What is the meaning of Zen? What are our lives ultimately about? How can we penetrate our lives? Of course, the question itself it’s an impossible deep question, right? What does it mean to be a human being? I think this is a great question. What does it mean to be human? What kind of human being do I want to be?

I don’t think we ask this question enough. It’s a question that I think I keep coming back to. What kind of human do I want to be? What kind of human do you want to be? Here, the cypress tree in the yard. The cypress tree is true and elegant and always changing. This cypress tree was at one point a seed is now this beautiful magnificent cypress tree in the yard shimmering alive. One day will die like all living things. In some way, this is a Zen story about transition. It’s a Zen story about meaning. It’s a Zen story that represents this impossible deep question. What is the meaning of Zen? What is it? What is the meaning of our lives?

I think suggestion is to stay with this question of what kind of human being do you want to be? The cypress tree in the yard. What can you learn from the cypress tree? Trees are amazing. I’m sitting here right now looking at some trees out the window. Just spectacular and mysterious. To think that they are alive and how much movement is happening in them that we can’t see.

The elegance and mystery and beauty of the cypress tree in the yard. This question of what kind of human do you want to be? You might explore reflecting on these questions in meditation practice or throughout the day or try journal writing. What kind of human do you want to be? What can I learn from any tree right now right here?

[music]

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

[00:29:59] [END OF AUDIO]

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Mindfulness and Money: From Fear and Anxiety to “Enough”

Spencer Sherman joins Marc to talk about money, why so many people struggle with it, and why it’s often the root of fear and anxiety, and a feeling that there is never enough, regardless of whether we make little or have great abundance. They discuss the power of “beginner’s mind” or not knowing, and letting go of our fixed beliefs about money. Spencer leads us in a guided meditation on letting go of fear and cultivating a felt sense of “enoughness.”

 

Listen on:

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ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Spencer Sherman has been named one of the nation’s top wealth advisors, He is the founder of Abacus Wealth Partners. a sustainable financial advisory firm, with more than $4 billion under management. He has an MBA from Wharton and is the author of The Cure for Money Madness.

 
Guest Disclaimer: All materials are for educational purposes only and are not to be considered investment, financial, or tax advice, nor do any of the host’s or guest’s opinions represent the opinion of Abacus. Please consult with a financial advisor or CPA before making financial decisions. Should you wish to find a financial advisor that fits your situation, we welcome you to schedule a free introductory 15 minute phone call.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones : Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. My guest today is Spencer Sherman, named one of the nation’s top wealth advisors. He’s the founder of Abacus Wealth Partners, a sustainable financial advisory firm with more than $4 billion under management. Spencer has an MBA degree from Wharton and is the author of The Cure for Money Madness.

In today’s episode, we talk about money, mindful money, and how much so many people struggle with it. It causes fear and anxiety, and a feeling that there’s never enough, whether we make a little or whether we have great abundance. We talked about the power of beginner’s mind, of not knowing and letting go of our fixed beliefs about money. Spencer leads us in a short guided meditation, on letting go of fear and cultivating a quality of enough and enoughness. I hope you enjoy and appreciate today’s episode. Thank you. 

Hi, this is Marc Lesser of Zen Bones : Ancient Wisdom For Modern Times, and I am very happy to be here today with Spencer Sherman. Spencer, good morning. 

[00:01:45] Spencer Sherman: Good morning, Marc. Great to see you. 

[00:01:47] Marc: Great to see you too. I think this topic of money and mindfulness is one that is super important and really difficult, I know for me and for a lot of people. I think I want to just jump in, and share this story that I told you earlier about when the historical Buddha is walking with a group of students and a farmer comes running along, distraught farmer, and says, ”Have you seen my cow/ Have you seen my cow? This is my livelihood. Have you seen it?” The Buddha and his followers, they try to be helpful, but they say sorry, and the farmer goes running past. The Buddha turns to his students and says, ”Aren’t we the luckiest people on earth? We don’t own anything.” 

I think this points right to the rub here. The challenge in that is that we are mindfulness, meditation practitioners or not. We live in the world of money. We live in the world of ownership. I think that story to me points right to the heart of, how do we practice mindfulness? How do we have a healthy, supportive relationship with money and not one that’s filled with a sense of anxiety and fear and lack? I know this is something that you’ve given an awful lot of thought to, and that you’ve written a book about it, The Cure for Money Madness, and you’ve started a company. Jumping right in, how might we practice in a more healthy way with money? 

[00:03:42] Spencer: First, I would say practice. My initial thought is that we don’t bring practice to the domain of money, and yet it affords us many opportunities. So often, we are either spending or saving or investing or giving, or we’re thinking about money, or we’re having a conversation that includes money in it. Yet, we leave out our practice. Somehow, we’ve trained ourselves to ignore all the cultivated practice that we’ve developed over time, that to shine that light of awareness on the domain that is so dark, complicated, confusing, filled with fixed beliefs. Which we know fixed beliefs are not a healthy thing in any area of our lives, but especially with money, we have these very strong beliefs and fear, and anxiety around it. I say, to start a practice of every moment when a money thought comes up, when a money decision is arising, to intentionally bring your awareness practice to be aware of what’s happening in the body, what’s happening in the mind, to start to notice the patterns of beliefs that are driving us to certain behaviors. That’s where a tremendous amount of learning and transformation can happen. I think, unfortunately, we have sectioned off money from our lives as it’s this other domain. I say, money’s crying out for attention. Actually to me, it’s an incredibly– Money has the potential for offering us transformation. It doesn’t just have the potential of offering us food and shelter and all that, but it can be one of our greatest teachers because it makes us uncomfortable. What if we start to see this opportunity, that the discomfort is a doorway to personal growth, spiritual growth? Often, it can be a doorway to actually maybe even having more ease with our financial life or even more flow of money in our lives. That’s the result of doing this inner work, which I feel has been so omitted from our lives. 

[00:06:25] Marc: I want you to say more about how to practice with that, the sense I think of not enough. I was remembering, NPR did a story some time ago that still stands out for me, where they interviewed people about their relationship with money. I distinctly remember this woman being interviewed who lived in New York City. She was saying how she could barely pay the bills, and she was always fretting about money. Then they said, ”And by the way, what do you do?” She says, ”Oh, my husband is a banker and our yearly income is $500,000 a year, plus his bonus.” Of course, me and everyone was like, ”Wow, isn’t that amazing?” It doesn’t seem to matter how much money, it’s easy to harbor this sense of lack. 

[00:07:26] Spencer: Yes, yes. The affliction of anxiety, worry, the threat of our survival is there. I’ve seen it there at almost every income and wealth level. In fact, sometimes there can be an inverse relationship that as our money increases, instead of our anxiety going down, or happiness or our ease increasing, we can become less at ease with money as we gain more money. Some of that depends on how you come into money, but I’ve seen it especially true for people that have sudden money events, like lottery winners. I’ve seen it even for people that have that build-up money slowly over time, their lives become more encumbered. Going back to that story, there’s more ownership. There’s more attention going outward, less attention going into this inner landscape, which we know is the source of our happiness, is to be with what’s right here. That is right here enough. When we start accumulating everything, even the most dedicated practitioner is taking their eyes off the prize [chuckles]. It’s going out there instead of right here. I think the Buddhist teachings really point to this middle way, finding this ease with who we are and what we have, and what we’re doing in this moment. Not continually grasping for things to be different, which is the American way. I’m saying that especially with money, it’s time for us to explore another possibility, which I think could bring us a lot more freedom with our finances. 

[00:09:25] Marc: Spencer, I think it might be useful if you would just take a few minutes to tell your story. How you’re not just some random guy. You’re this random guy who started a company, which is now an enormously successful and influential company that manages large amounts of money in socially responsible ways. What are some of the highlights? How did you enter this space? 

[00:09:55] Spencer: Well, I had the belief in my early 20s that. money would deliver, that it would bring me freedom. It was very much fitting with the culture I was raised in, that if only I could acquire a home of my own because we grew up in a small apartment, if only I could have the sense of financial abundance, that life would be easy, that there’d be the sense of happiness and ease because everything is available. I had this belief that money was more important than anything because that money could deliver everything that one wanted in life, that I wanted in my life. 

I was working for a large investment firm on Independence Square in Philadelphia, and a fire broke out. I have this panic attack, as they were still putting out the fire. It was unsafe to go into the building. I panicked and felt that the most important thing in my life was still in that building. I somehow convinced the fire marshal to let me in, to grab what I thought was so important. I walked through these darkened hallways with murky water, horrific smells, it was the worst day of my life in many ways. 

I come out of that building and I looked down, and what I thought was so important was now my worthless desktop computer that contained all my client files. Everything that was about my identity, that was about earning money. Of course, all of that stuff was backed up, but in that moment of panic, I felt like I had to rescue my life. Even though I was in a sense, sacrificing my life for getting this computer. It was a huge wake-up. It actually was the lightning rod, Marc, that led me onto a 10-day silent meditation retreat. I knew I had to do something significant because I was pretty upside down in that moment. 

I just realized that my body was shaking from the terror of what I put myself through, how dangerous it was. There was asbestos, electrocution, all kinds of risks, to retrieve that worthless computer. That was one of my entry points into this work. This was after business school. The silent retreat put the incredible antidote, because I’m on retreat, and I have nothing. I have no material possessions, very simple food, a very simple room and I’m sensing this ease and peace and abundance that I never felt in my life before. That was in my 20s. That’s what really propelled me forward, it’s like, “How is this possible that in the space of emptiness, I’m feeling this fullness?” 

That’s like, I like this path. This is a really interesting [chuckles] path out of suffering, out of this idea that the more stuff I own, the more attachments I have to the world, the happier I’ll be, and discovering on a visceral level that the opposite is true. 

[00:13:28] Marc: How did you go from there to launching and growing Abacus? 

[00:13:33] Spencer: Well, I really had this passion around helping others discover a new way of being with money, that I felt that money was such a trap door for suffering. I wanted to help people realize that they are ready enough, that they might already have enough, that they do enough. That this striving for more is just a cultural phenomenon, that there’s no basis for going for more and more. There’s been no study that shows us that extra efforting for more or the gaining of more entanglements of ownership actually brings us what we’re seeking. 

I felt compelled to go into this dark space that had caused so much suffering for me, as well as my family. Money was a huge source of pain in my family and my father and his sister completely separated over a money issue, inability to speak about this taboo topic. 

[00:14:50] Marc: When did Abacus start and how’s it going? 

[00:14:54] Spencer: I started the first version of Abacus way back in 1988 and it was built with this idea, this “don’t know mind is beginner’s mind”. See a lot of the ideas that I was learning from my meditation retreats from Buddhist practice, seem to flow so well into financial practice. This idea that what this Zen teacher in Rhode Island knows [unintelligible 00:15:24] was his name, the Rhode Island Zen Center. I met him in Boston and he kept saying, “Don’t know,” to questions. 

When you look at finances, and you look at some of the Nobel Prize-winning economist on what they recommend, they say, basically, to go in with a don’t know mind. That if you don’t know, you would lead you to invest in everything, to spread your money out, to not take these enormous risks by buying. Putting all your money, like in Tesla stock, or Amazon, which both went down 50% or more last year, that this not knowing is a very powerful place to be in life. It’s actually a place of wisdom to admit you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. That was one of the premises of Abacus. 

Then this idea that instead of promising clients, that once you get to this higher level of wealth. It’s interesting, the financial advisor profession because there’s always a higher number, that then you’ll reach this exalted state of wellness. Instead of that, to be advising clients that, “You’re already there.” To find a way to show that their plan can work. Just as you are today was one of my intentions with the company, to be more present focus rather than future focus and to focus on this possibility that enough exists right now. My belief is it’s only possible to sense enoughness in this moment, that it doesn’t exist in the future because if we tell ourselves, “I’ll have enough when I retire when my kids become independent,” or whatever, we’re training the mind to be okay in the future. 

A mind trained for the future will still be resting in the future, will never arrive in this present moment. To me, there’s like, if not now, when? Now is the time as we’re speaking, to feel into the possibility of enoughness, of sufficiency. 

[00:17:41] Marc: This is I think the rub, it’s easy with money especially to feel comparative mind. No matter how much you have, there’s always people that have more so there’s that trap. There’s many traps. 

[00:18:00] Spencer: Each of these traps, I’ll just say Marc, give us an opportunity for practice. That’s what’s so amazing about this field of money is that instead of when you notice your neighbor’s house, or you’ll notice your neighbors meditation practice getting better than yours, or there’s the envy of anything, but especially comes up around material possessions. Look at the car, they’re driving the house they have if only we have designed our house the way they did, or that’s the lot I’m going to buy my next lifetime, that we have all these incredible practices like the Mudita practice with sympathetic joy practice, which can be so penetrating, so powerful to dissolve that comparison mind. 

[00:18:47] Marc: I, actually, last night began reading The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté. I think money really taps into something about normal or have to or need to and it taps into our anxieties and our fears. I think I appreciate that you’re saying it is great terrain for practice, it’s really great terrain for practice. I wonder how? How to practice with this sense of enoughness? How do you find a sense of equanimity right in the midst of being uncomfortable about money? 

It’s interesting too, the studies saying that after a certain level, once you do have enough, having more doesn’t bring any more happiness. Although, I recently think that some new studies are contradicting that, saying that actually that levels may be higher than what we thought. It’s interesting, a lot of contradictory information about what really is enough. What if you’re not there and you’re still a young person and you’re still building one’s career and you can’t afford a home. Homeownership has gotten harder. I also think of the madness of our tax laws and how it makes so much more difficult for people to be able to afford homes. 

I was thinking of Winners Take All, which I imagine you’ve read that book where he describes the financial systems as a crime scene, which has only exacerbated I think our anxiety and deep feelings, struggles around money. 

[00:21:04] Spencer: You said a lot there, but let me see if I can respond to some of the things you said about. The studies on enough. What they discovered when I’ve read those studies is that when you ask people in the moment, how’s your life, how happy are you? They’re not seeing differences. Once people get beyond and it’s a number that varies, but it might be 60,000 to 100,000 of income, depends on geography, family size, many, many factors. They’re not seeing a correlation beyond those numbers when you ask people in the moment. When you ask people to give an assessment of their whole life, a narration of their lives, they tend to say, “I’m happier today than when I’d less money.” It depends on what you trust. I trust more in-the-moment responses, “How are you feeling now on a scale of 1 to 10.” 

There is some debate, but I think we know from anything in life that you get diminishing returns as you get more and more of anything. Then we come back to the story you shared about when you have so much around you, so much ownership, what does that do to your state of being and wellness and your equanimity? I would say that, yes, I feel that for many people, they will benefit tremendously from increasing their income to get to a place where they have enough for basic food and shelter, et cetera. 

I think in some ways, one could make an argument that Scandinavian countries or some other countries have a certain built-in floor because they want the best of everyone. When you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if we’re stressed about our next meal, we’re not in our creative best brain place. I think that there’s wisdom to figuring out how do I increase my income if I don’t have the basics. 

It can vary. I know people who live on, well less, like live on $20,000, $30,000 a year, and have a very robust life. Then the opposite, like the example you shared of people who are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars a year and still feel like it’s not enough. It depends, where’s your compass pointed. Are you comparing yourself to another or are you looking at your own life and your moment-to-moment wellness? 

Is that house or whatever you’re fantasizing about actually going to deliver what you think it’s going to deliver? Having said that, yes, there are many issues with the housing system and many people have written about that. I’ve written about that. More and more articles are coming out, supporting some of the things that I’ve shared for years that to me, there’s not [unintelligible 00:24:15] home ownership, and many people might be better off renting. 

It can be a slippery slope at times depending on where you are. For many people, there’s a freedom in not having [unintelligible 00:24:29] story, this ownership, the risk of something going wrong, the timing of getting in and out of that house. All of that could complicate one’s life and one’s finances. What I say is that, is to find this way of meeting yourself where you are in this moment and to practice letting go of the thought that if only I had an extra X dollars, I’d be okay or I’d be happier. 

That’s a great place to practice. I think what we discover and there’s many stories, I don’t know if you know the fisherman story that we come back to– like we reach out, we reach out, we reach out but actually, our happiness is right here, our wellness is right here. I want to say that some of us actually can use some more dollars or food or housing to get to that basic level of sufficiency. 

I also want to say, Marc, that there’s nothing wrong or shameful about wanting more money in one’s life. It’s the grip. It’s how attached are we to that. Money can give us more options in our lives. It can allow one to say, devote more of their lives to sitting on a cushion if that’s what one wants. Although I think that all those practices are available to us in our work lives, as you’ve spoken about. Having intention to have more money, I think is great. Naming the steps that you’re going to take to bring more money into your life, wonderful. Then let go of the result, let go of the idea or really take in the possibility that nothing really will shift necessarily internally. That you’ll have this more money, you’ll have more options, but that it’s not going to bring you this abundance of inner wellness and joy that it’s already here. It’s already right here. \ 

I think that to me is what the Buddha talked about. That there’s nothing wrong with going for something in life. It’s the attachment to it that gets us in trouble, that causes us the suffering. I think we get so easily caught around money because the culture is so strong. There’s so much noise current telling us that this will happen once we reach that level. 

[00:27:11] Marc: I’m hearing you describe the practice or maybe the aspiration of becoming an emotional Jedi when it comes to money. Part of that I think is like in anything that we’re trying to accomplish, whether we’re growing a business, growing a family, building a product, developing ourselves, it’s interesting to see the gaps, the gaps between here’s where I am now and here’s where I’m wanting to be. In terms of again, whether it’s developing how I work with conflict or growing my company, there’s always some sense of gaps and some discomfort with those gaps. I think so much of the practice that I hear you describing is not getting caught by those gaps and finding. How do you find a sense of enoughness and even joy and appreciation with what is, while you work toward shift? Earning more money or coming to grips with, “Oh, maybe this is enough, and what’s underneath my feeling of not enoughness or what happens to me? Why does comparative mind come up?” That’s something that I say to myself like, “Oh, there’s my comparative mind thing happening. Isn’t that interesting? I’m comparing myself. What’s that about?” Somehow, naming the discomfort and naming the gaps. 

[00:29:02] Spencer: Yes. We can come back to that comparing mind. I also want to say that the irony of taking on these enough practices, this enough mindset. [unintelligible 00:29:16] if you will way of living, is that ironically, we often end up with more. I’ve seen this happen with many clients, students is that you walk into the job interview and you’re at ease. You’re not desperate for the job. You’re more likely to get hired. 

I think that metaphor, you can stretch that out to almost anything when we’re in that zone. Like I once was listening to Michael Jordan speak about basketball and he’s not thinking about winning the game. He’s very much in the moment of how his hand is moving when he’s making that shot. It’s not on the end prize. That’s the result of many, many moments of presence, of sufficiency, of enoughness, of not striving. He’s absolutely relaxed and having fun. It’s like if we can bring that joy, that ease into each of our moments and recognize that for many of us, there is this enoughness– and enoughness takes many forms. There’s enough of money, but there’s enough of resources, intelligence, wisdom, sense of humor, perspective, health, friends, time. We actually have, in some ways, more than enough or more than we might imagine right here. 

[00:30:46] Marc: This might be a good time to shift a little bit towards some practice if you would be interested to leading some mindfulness practice in helping us to make that shift toward an enoughness. 

[00:31:07] Spencer: The context for this is that very few of us, especially in the West, think that enough is possible at any amount of wealth, that more is always better. There’s the famous interview with the journalist and John D Rockefeller, the world’s first billionaire. “How much is enough?” The journalist asked John D Rockefeller and his answer was, “Just a little bit more is enough.” That, I think speaks to the culture, that it’s always about more. As soon as we get– I’m actually going back to when I was like 15 or 16 and learning to drive. You get used to a certain speed and you want to go faster. It’s not enough, that speed anymore. 

This is a practice that invites us to play in the sandbox and jump in and try something on, even if it sounds absurd, and let’s see what happens. Let’s play a little bit. I invite you to either close your eyes or keep them slightly open with a downward gaze and come into a relaxed, open presence, bringing awareness to the back of the body, sensing the sensations, the back of the head, the back of the neck, back of the spine, and down the legs, and up the front of the body. Being aware of the belly, moving with each breath, aware of the heart beating, aware of any tension in the face. Maybe gently inviting the facial muscles to soften the muscles behind the eyes to relax and sensing as you’re sitting here in this upright but not uptight posture. 

As the breath is flowing naturally on its own, coming aware of this presence, feeling your feet sinking into the earth, top of the head rising to the sky. Aware of this presence, this fullness, this sufficiency of this energetic presence that you bring to yourself and all others. 

[pause 00:34:25] 

This relaxed, vibrant presence. [silence] Taking on the possibility that you have enough presence, that you have enough intelligence, enough sense of humor, enough resources, enough house. Just trying that on, that in a world where no one thinks they have enough, and the mind is full of comparison. Experimenting with the possibility that you have enough, enough friends, enough health, enough breath, enough money, enough time. That in this moment, you have enough. Sensing the enoughness of your presence in this moment of all that you bring, all that you have. 

Then sensing the possibility that you do enough, you do enough at work, you do enough at home, that the voices might be saying, “Oh, you could just do a little more,” but in this moment, playing with the possibility that you actually do enough. 

[pause 00:37:19] 

Then playing with the possibility that you are enough, just as you are, even if none of your New Year’s resolutions come to be. That with whatever’s arising, you are enough. Sensing that potential in this moment, this enoughness. You have, you do, and you are enough. From this place, you might ask yourself, how you might show up with your finances, with work, with your family or friends. Take this, this mindset of enoughness with you. Then as you’re ready, you can open your eyes if they’ve been closed and just staying with yourself. Stay connected to that fullness, that presence that we’ve cultivated of ease, of enough. 

[00:39:20] Marc: Thank you, Spencer. May you and all of us have enough, be enough. 

[00:39:28] Spencer: Yes. My belief, Marc, is that it would be a very different world if we opened up to this idea of enough, that it’s possible, very possible by any measure, for all of us to have enough. That there’s just this great inequality that we’re experiencing, that’s very divisive. These principles of enough, I think, could really bring so much wellness, both to us personally and collectively. 

[00:40:05] Marc: Well, thank you. Thank you for the good work that you do in the world. Thanks. Really appreciate your time and your presence. 

[00:40:15] Spencer: Thank you, Marc. 

[00:40:21] Spencer 2: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and help change the world. Thank you for listening. 

[00:40:45] [END OF AUDIO] 

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