this podcast is offered by san francisco zen center on the web at sfcc.org our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you good morning everyone good to have you here in this time of thanksgiving and welcome to all of those of you who are online this morning and not with us here in the temple Great to have you with us with our online sangha. How many of you are here for the first time? Anyone here for the first time? One, two, three. It never seems to amaze me how almost every single time this is someone's first time. And so, welcome. It's really great to have you with us. We want you to stay after. We'll have tea and cookies. You can ask questions if anything seems strange. We want you to feel like this is a place where you can come and be any time to unpack this mystery of who you are and what's going on with this body and mind.

[01:10]

So great to have you with us. A few times over the last, I would say, year, folks have asked me about a subject that they said that they hadn't heard at Zen Center for a while. And I said to one of them recently, okay, the next time I give a Dharma talk, I will talk about that one subject. And so, today, I want to talk about work practice, a place that we spend a lot of our lives. I mean, we say work practice, and so you come to the monastery and you do monastery things and you do these traditional, you know, sitting zazen and learning how to bow and learning the different bells and learning how to be present. And then you go out and you're in your... you know, office or you're in your place of work and you go to that meeting. That person says that thing. You feel you really wound up. You've got these deadlines.

[02:12]

You've got to meet them. They give you a new piece of technology. You have to learn it. You've got a colleague that isn't so easy to get along with. Every day you just think, oh, I can't wait for how I can get home and get out of this. And maybe I can get back to the monastery on the weekend and I can sit some zazen and I can... maybe center myself from all of this busyness, craziness, this mountain of kind of chaos. Has anyone here ever felt that way before? I've felt that way before working at San Francisco Zen Center. So maybe that relates, but we call this work practice. And so what is work practice? And... Is there some way, tangibly, I could look at work practice and start doing a couple of steps in a direction that would possibly be a little bit more skillful way for me to engage the things that I do for work?

[03:14]

Now, I work in the administrative offices here, and for the last seven or eight years, I've looked at that as kind of like our, to use the Silicon Valley term, our incubator. Like, how do you actually make this business model work? How do you actually take this thing and make it breathe? How does it work? And so, what I want to share with you today are things that we've learned in the accounting office and the development office and the different offices as we've experimented with this body and this mind with the Zen principles of work and where they come from. and how they've been used in the past and how we use them today. And so today what I want to do is I want to take us through a little bit about where these came from, how they evolved to where we got them today, and then things that we've learned from taking the things that have been given to us in the monastery, especially documents around work and work practice like the Tenzo Kyokun and their key principles,

[04:24]

and then how we use those key principles from documents like that in our everyday life in order to do work. So hopefully this will be practical, something that you can use, and something that you can use as a way to maybe shape or frame the concept of work practice. So we probably had the feeling that it feels separate at work. than when I'm sitting zazen and it feels like things are going good in zazen. And we've talked about that a little bit already. But there is a time in the monastic tradition when people were not actually doing work in the monastery. And the tradition of these long sleeves actually comes from that period of time. And by the time the monastic tradition in India was immigrating over to China, The monks were the people in the monastery that were the thinkers, the wise people, the people who did the ceremonies, the contemplatives, but they were not the people who were doing the work.

[05:35]

And we have these long robes with these long sleeves that are not so efficient for doing work. But when it goes to China and it becomes Chan Buddhism, it was merging with the culture that it was in. And the thing is beautiful about it Buddhism is one of the many things is that the culture that it goes to, it needs to stay alive and relevant. And even a person who was so down on religion like Nietzsche said, well, if there's one good thing I can say about religion, it's Buddhism because at its core, it realizes that it has to change. So as it goes to a new culture, there's already a Taoist culture, which has a long history of work practice. In fact, there's something similar to the Tenzo Kiyokun about 300 years before Buddhism goes to China, which is about how to actually work in a kitchen when you're a Taoist. Now, they weren't vegetarians, so there's a lot about cleaving meat and bone and stuff like that.

[06:37]

But at the same time, this was the tradition that it was coming and merging with in China. And so what you find is you find that this is a very essential piece of teaching that from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, there isn't any separation between subject and object. That what we do in the monastery, me being the subject, and thinking that there's an exterior object, a rake, a skillet, some water, a thing to do, a screen, a mouse... there's something separate, that there isn't actually something separate that is one flowing activity of subject and object, just like what we have whenever we are in the monastery doing the traditional monastic activities. And this concept was really popularized and unpacked in China. And there was a person who gets most of the credit for it. It probably was happening before him, but he wrote The Pure Rules of Bajang.

[07:40]

Also, we call Baizhong Hakujo Ikai in the Japanese. But Baizhong, you'll find some of the stuff that he wrote in the Blue Cliff Record. But one of the things he wrote was the pure rules of Baizhong. And it was really powerful because it had to do with the work in the monastery as well as a lot of other things in the monastery. The concept of having monastery work really got popularized in that document. And it was perfect because about 60 years or so after Baizong died, there was a great purge in China around 841, 845 AD or CE. And a lot of the monasteries were wiped out. But one of the reasons why it was able to persist is that one of the things that was used to wipe out the monasteries in China during that great purge was taking all of the temple money. and taking all of the temple resources.

[08:41]

And up until, you know, a few hundred years before that, before work practice, they would have been completely wiped out. But because they were able to have farms and they were able to till soil, they were able to sell vegetables, they were able to do things like this, Buddhism was actually able to keep thriving and keep alive. And a lot of people trace this back to this period of time from Baizong and his rules of the monastery. And that's also where the phrase, a day without work is a day without eating, which also is what you find in that document. And so this was a central piece of from the time you get up to the time you go to bed it's all one continuous thing it's not we have practice in the monastery and then we go do work but it's practice in the monastery it's practice at work it's practice with the person in front of me it's practice with the bus driver at Muni it's a practice with the person that is giving me the coffee that's the barista it's practice when I'm looking at that screen It's all practice.

[09:44]

It's all no separation of subject and object. And that's where these things come from in regard to our practice. So fast forward a few hundred years to Japan, and you've got the Tenzo Kiyo-kun, which is the document written by the founder of this school, Ehei Dogen. Or maybe his... One of his folks in his lineage, some folks say it's Kaizan that was the founder. But in any case, Dogen wrote the Tenzo Kiyokun, which is the instructions to the cook. And if you've ever lived or worked in any of the monasteries here at... Zen Center, you know that we chant the Tenzo Kyokun at the beginning of the shift has to do with the ways in which you are with the objects, with the activities, and with the people that you find in that workspace and how that the meals that we're creating are offerings and how to be with the thing that you're doing.

[10:45]

And in the Tenzo Kyokun, it's really interesting how the Dogen A.H. Dogen, founder of this school, divides this up. And he divides up the work, and he talks about it as needing three different components. And these three different components are what I want to talk about in regard to wherever it is that you work. And it has to do with joyful mind, parental mind, and magnanimous mind. Some people say that parental mind could also be affectionate, caring, and concern mind. And magnanimous mind could be the stable, impartial, mountain mind. The joyful mind being the grateful, appreciative mind. Now, I don't know about you, but I have been in many places in my life at work where I did not feel joyful, I did not feel that I was caring and affectionate, and I did not feel that I had a stable, impartial mind.

[11:54]

This probably relates to some of you here. To be in a place like that internally would be wonderful. It would be wonderful to have that 24-7 as a way of working. And these are the minds that you find on the altars at Zen Center. They have the three different, usually, some sort of way of them being placed on the altar to remind us about the different minds to have while we're going through and working. And by the way, just to... put a plug in. We're rebuilding the Sangha here after being closed for the last year. We weren't able to bring in new students, so the pipeline of guest students was not flowing. We were not able to accept any more people because we didn't have any housing. And so we're going to be reopening this building, this temple, this physical building. The temple's been open, but the physical building we're going to be reopening in January. And if any of you want to volunteer and do kitchen work and learn about doing work with joyful mind, doing work with parental mind, doing work with magnanimous mind, come and join us.

[13:09]

Ask me, email ccoffice at sfcc.org, ask the director, ask any of us walking around here that are residents. We're looking for folks that want to volunteer and help out in the kitchen. And that would be lovely if you could join us with work practice. So there's kind of a flow of this in regard to the Tenzo Kyokun. The joyful mind is the one that is the overarching kind of attitude. The parental mind is the affectionate, caring concern for the thing that is right in front of me. It's the thing that I have concern. I handle things as though they are my own eyeballs, it says. It's the affectionate concern, the care for the thing in front of me. And then magnanimous mind, that is how I deal with the shifting things that happen. that jump in and go left and right, and maybe I really like this person, I really like this meeting, I don't really like this person, I don't really like this meeting, I don't like this activity that I have to do, I don't like this thing that person just said in that meeting.

[14:20]

The magnanimous mind is how I deal with the different things that come in and that I'm not expecting, or maybe that I am expecting, but it goes a different way. And that last one is kind of where we end up from having a joyful mind, from where we are working with things with care and concern, it then moves into being able to be with things with that impartial mind. And Dogen in his Tenzo Kyokun writes, like a mountain, stable and impartial, and exemplifying the ocean in its tolerant views from everything, holding everything in the broadest perspective. The many rivers which flow into the ocean become the one taste of the ocean. When they flow into the pure ocean of the Dharma, there are no such distractions as delicacies or plain food. There is just one taste, and it is the Buddha Dharma. In cultivating the germ of aspiration to live out the way, as well as in practicing the Dharma, delicious and ordinary tastes are the same and not two.

[15:31]

There is an old saying, the mouth of a monk is like an oven. The mouth of a monk is like an oven. That is a monk that has stable, impartial mind, that can take in what's going on and just deal with what's going on and not be placing Michael's lens on top of it. I like this. I don't like that person. I don't like this thing. Oh, I'm going to give this a lot of attention. Oh, I'm not going to give that. It's just like, no, what is the situation calling for? What is this person offering me? What is unfolding in this activity? And holding it like a curious artist, like holding it like a curious scientist, an artist letting the canvas unfold. You don't start doing a canvas and paint knowing exactly how it's going to flow. You feel the tautness of the canvas against the brush. You notice how the paint is thick or runny. You notice how it's coming together. You're working with it. There's no difference between subject and object. You're an artist.

[16:32]

You're working with the canvas. You're letting it come alive. If you're a scientist, you're working with the scientific experiment. You're setting up a hypothesis. But you're not placing your lens on top of it like, I hope this comes out this way. I hope I learned this from this. I hope I can prove this. No. If you're a curious scientist, you're just letting it unfold. You're watching it and you're moving with it and noticing what it's teaching you as it's unfolding bit by bit. Magnanimous mind, impartial mind, learning to be with the shifting things in your environment as they're coming in and not placing the lens on top of it and not thinking, oh, I really like this, oh, I don't really like that. And through that, you actually learn how to set healthy boundaries. Because then the boundaries that you're setting are not boundaries that are set with impartial mind, with a mind that has its bias and is not impartial.

[17:33]

How I want things, oh, I want these people to be celebrated. Ah, I don't really like these people. how about we let these things unfold? The more that I try to actually divorce myself from preference, then I actually can set healthy boundary. So we move from joyful mind to parental mind to magnanimous mind in the kitchen. And so this is where the rubber meets the road is getting into the details. the details of what actually happens. Because when you're in that kitchen, you notice that there is that feeling of, okay, I'm feeling spacious and I'm accepting everyone, I'm hanging out with my friend, or I'm talking to this person, or I'm trying to be really spacious. And then you know what it's like when someone says, you've got to get that celery cut in 45 minutes and we're having lunch. And then all of a sudden you don't feel like this, you feel like this.

[18:36]

I usually symbolize them. It's come from a book called Leadership Embodiment where they draw triangles and they draw circles. Triangles and circles. And noticing how that when I'm in circle mind and I'm like spacious and open to everybody, I don't really feel like I'm getting much done. You know, I feel like I'm in water cooler mind, like I'm hanging out, talking with everybody, you know, and then whenever I'm in triangle mind and I'm in like getting stuff done mind, you know, I'm kind of like that. That's when I might be a little edgy with people kind of like, you know, I don't have time for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't do that right. Go do your stuff, you know, show up, you know, well, let's go, you know, kind of all those kind of like, you know, pointed things, you know. So how do we actually merge circle and triangle, circle and triangle? How do we get them where that they merge? And that's what Dogen is getting at in the Tenzo Kiyo-kun is merging the circle and the triangle. And that's why I think that what he's unpacking there, because there's no separation between subject and object.

[19:37]

There's no separation between actually the thing the moment's calling for and getting things done. This is the beauty of work practice. It is something that's so relevant in today's world because how many folks do you know that go to work and they're just like, oh, once I get home, then I can be myself. Or when I come home, then I can get in touch with my body and breath. When I go home, then I can be in touch with my emotions. But if I got in touch with my emotions when I was at work, oh my, that would just be terrible. I would get nothing done. I'd fight with everybody. I'd go in the conference room. I'd lay in the corner. I'd cry, whatever. It's like, so how do we actually learn the lessons of the Tenzo Kyokun. So the reason I always like the example of cutting carrots is that they are a really straightforward thing to do, and they're a great place to start with learning flow. Now, when we come in here and we sit, we are taking up a somatic pose, and then we're being with whatever arises.

[20:38]

We're kind of sitting with magnanimous mind, if you will. Whatever comes in, we just hold impartially. But we set up the entire thing first. We do the entire, you know, grounding ourself on our body and the presence. And we can come in here and just flop down and just start sitting however. But, you know, we have this whole ritual. Now, sometimes that ritual intimidates folks and they feel like, oh, if I step in there, I'm going to break someone's religious experience. And it's like, no, you're not going to break someone's religious experience. This is just for you. And until you actually take it up and it works for you to be in this body, in this mind, in this moment, it's pretty much irrelevant. So that's all it's for. But the reason is so that the setup is you have some sort of sense of presence when you get down on that cushion so that then you can invite in magnanimous mind, impartial mind, and let the universe flow through you. So when you're cutting carrots, that's what's going on is you're merging the circle and the square. You're setting up the space. You're not just coming in and just grabbing a carrot. No.

[21:39]

Someone tells you the instructions. You go and you set up your space. If you're taller like me, you put a few things underneath the board because you're going to be in bad posture. You notice your posture. You notice whether you're kind of like aligned. You set up your space. You're going to put the carrot tops over there. After I cut them, I'm going to put the carrots, the little circles, I'm going to put them over in this bucket. I'm going to get a little thing here to scrape my board. I'm going to get a knife. I'm going to make sure it's sharp. I'm going to be sure the board is clean. You get the whole thing set up. And you might even take a second and like breathe. And then you start cutting carrots. Take the tips off both ends. You might need to slice them down the middle so that you can create half moons. You start doing all these things. And it is a process of learning to be with that carrot. Now, you've got to get those carrots done by a certain time. You probably know that there's a...

[22:40]

clock on the wall and we've got to get these things done. It's the reason I think that Dogen liked to write about the kitchen and loved the kitchen was that it's where the rubber meets the road or where the intersections collide. It's where the circle and the square meet because it's not just about, oh, I'll talk to that person later. They're having a bad day in the kitchen. If you don't talk to somebody right now... That might burn. That might be unhygienic. That might cost a lot of money. So sometimes you have to just step in and do your very best. And when you're actually doing work with an object, how do I have no separation between me and the object? How do I just flow? And if you practice this, just like you practice sazen, you will notice that over time the kitchen starts to expand. and that you can actually be aware of your body and your posture and your breath and the board and the knife, not as something singular, moving around to all the different constituent parts, but actually flow.

[23:47]

Like you're in a sport. People talk about flow in sports, you know, where you're doing all these complex things, but you're not thinking about your hand as you're shooting the basketball. People talk about flow in music, and you're playing the cello, and you're not thinking about all the different strings, and you're thinking about your hand and your pinky and your thumb and your other hand. If you think about both hands while you're playing the cello, it's not going to sound good. You have to actually be in the flow of what's happening. Juggling is another thing that's superb to use as far as analogies. You focus on any one ball, they fall. You have to be right in the middle. Now you're doing something. It's an executive function. You are executing something, and it is happening, and it's intentional, but you're not actually focusing on any one ball while you're juggling. Oftentimes when I teach work practice, I do juggling, but I'm sorry, I didn't bring any balls today. It's too hard in these robes. You know, when you start to think about something, the balls fall.

[24:49]

When your mind wanders, the balls fall. When you think about one ball, the balls fall. You learn how to cut carrots that way in the kitchen. And the reason you start usually with carrots, and I like to start, you know, the newer folks with stuff like carrots because it's really simple. And how do I learn to be with my body and mind and breath while I'm in a place executing something under a time clock? That's what we're studying. And in cooking, there's this phrase called mise en place. It comes from French cooking. Any of you that are fans of cooking or history of cooking, you know that in the French cooking, a lot of it originates in Lyon. And so it's the Lyonnaise. And in Lyonnaise, if you go to the French cooking school, they will have you learn the phrase mise en place. And mise en place is the setup. It is setting up what is going on. It's literally translated putting in place. And so you don't just start doing what have you.

[25:54]

You find out what the meal is. You find all the different parts, what needs to be done first. You check and make sure you have all the ingredients. You make sure that you have all the tools to do it. Then you set up your workstations. You set up all the different things that you need in order to cook the things after you cut them. That's the whole, and it's an art, and you learn that in cooking school, that you have to set everything up, just like when you come in here. Because people know that that's how you actually ground yourself in what you're going to do, is by setting the thing up. So you have presence that comes from setting things up. And then when you're cutting the carrots, this awareness expands. It expands into flow. And as you are in this awareness, what happens then is that no matter what you're doing in the kitchen, I guarantee you, it doesn't take too long before someone's going to interrupt you. And they're going to say, we said half moons, but we're going to actually do quarter moons or whatever.

[27:00]

But because the awareness has expanded, the end result of that is the capacity for adaptability. Because Zen is not about autopilot, like I just learn how to do things, and then once I do, then I just go. Moment by moment, things shift and change. And so we're moving from adaptability to increased awareness. We're moving from presence to increased awareness to adaptability. Now, we might not want to adapt. We might fight adapting. We might do a whole bunch of things in between the awareness and the adapting. But at least it gives us the possibility, let's say, of being flexible and adaptable, which is what we want to do. I oftentimes talk about the—when I was the Tenzo or the kitchen manager at Tassajara, the one who kind of guides the kitchen and plans the kitchen, I had this— Fukaten, the floor manager named Shon Roo.

[28:02]

And it was one of the most adaptable people I ever met. I mean, we could have like an entire dinner that had to do with dolmas and it was Mediterranean and grape leaves and whatever. And then like right when the meal starts, the truck comes in from over the hill at Tassajara and they'd say, yeah, we didn't find any grape leaves. And you're like... Okay. And Sean would always be like, okay, why don't we do this? There wouldn't be like this 20 seconds of bemoaning things. You know, you've been in like a place where everyone has to have like a period of grieving. You know, it's like something didn't go our way. We didn't get the grape leaves in. Let's gripe about this for a little while. This is the third time the person on the town trip didn't bring us the grape leaves. And how come this, you know, it's all that wasted effort. No, what's the moment asking for? It's asking for me to be adaptable. And so I adapt into this next thing that's happening. And I move. We study this at Oreoki. Oreoki is the formal eating that we have here. It's a great way to study work practice.

[29:03]

First, you have presence. You have this, I mean, Oreoki is basically about 40 to 45 minutes of ceremony and about six minutes of eating. So most of it is about grounding ourself in the ritual of what's going on. But we ground ourselves in the presence. Then our awareness expands in regard to what's happening in the moment with the person coming in with the pot, with the thing that I'm unfolding with my oreo key cloth and my bowls and cleaning different things. The awareness expands about what's happening. Oh, I've got to pick up the gamasio. It's my time to use it. It's the awareness constantly is expanding. And then I can be adaptable to what's happening in the moment. And so this is the merging of the circle and the triangle. Noticing what's going on, but being in the flow of it. And not being detached like it's a means to an end. So, taking it outside of here. How do you do that? How do you work with software and hardware and...

[30:07]

and all the demands of the modern world and the things that are encroaching upon us. Well, let's look at the Tenzo Kyoku and we'll just put them in three different categories of joy, caring, and magnanimous. These are some of the things we've learned in our little incubator at Zen Central, our administrative offices. And I want to share them with you. Now, first off, If you were gonna leave this room right now and go run a marathon and you're not a runner, how do you think you would do? It would be pretty brutal. And if you had to go with the shoes that you brought today, it might even be even worse. You see, if you're finding that at work, it's really difficult for me to be at work and be in my body and mind, And then you hear a Dharma talk and you think, okay, that's what I want to do.

[31:10]

I want to be in my body and mind. I want to have flow. I want to be adaptable. I want to have magnanimous mind. That's great. But be kind to yourself. The setup in regard to joy as the overarching feeling is is that you have to set up something that is realistic, where you're not constantly disappointing yourself. We are organisms that were forged in petri dishes, and there were different things that we learned that were easy and things that were hard. And there's lots of things that we haven't figured out yet because we haven't had a way to work with it. And so just like trying to run that marathon, don't discourage yourself next week because that will actually take away your joy. Doing your best and trying to be there intentionally is the first step. Embrace whatever happens on Monday or this afternoon or Sunday or whatever it is that you go back to your formal work.

[32:13]

Reverence. It's another piece of building joy. Reverence. You ever notice how sometimes that we... It's really easy to come in here and see this beautiful altar and to be thinking about the people that brought these traditions to us before and to be bowing in front of the altar and to be thinking about Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, kind of symbolic to bring us back to some space of reverence. From there is where the liberation, the joy and bliss of zazen and the practice comes from is revering and connecting. And then I've got this job, this place that I go to work, and have I done anything there to revere the tools, the people? Is there any ritual that connects me to why I'm there? A long time ago, I realized that I used to drop my mobile phone all the time and break it. I didn't totally break it, just like crack it or whatever, you know, drop it and things, and still workable.

[33:25]

But someone said to me, you know, you'd probably do that less if you took the cover off of it. And as a practice, I don't have a cover on my mobile phone. And in order to revere that technology, that phone that I have, it's, you know, four years old. But if I went back in time 30 years ago, that phone would have been just amazing. And people would have been floored by what that phone can do. And yet, it's so easy to take it and just throw it on the bed or shove it in my back pocket or what have you. So I try to always, when I pick it up, at least start with two hands. You know, touch it with my hand and another finger or something, just like they do when you're drinking water in the monastery. Finding little ways where you can start to bring reverence back to not just objects, but to people. Have you ever thought about, like, who in your work environment do you appreciate the least? Just kind of do a little inventory. Who do I appreciate the least?

[34:27]

And then how can I actually connect to that person a little bit more? How can I actually touch their humanity? What if I looked for something that they do well and tell them about it? It's so easy to get caught up in the mind of just I've got to get the carrots done that I'm not actually paying attention to the carrots. But being with the thing that's there, have you ever had a screen that has so many objects on it that it blinds you and distracts you, and you've got maybe 50 pieces of software you don't even know how to use, but you download it at some point in time, and it's just sitting there? Taking an inventory of the things that are in front of me. Bringing reverence. Reverence is one of the key pieces to building joy in life. Because it's when you're connecting in a heart level to something and having appreciation. And if I don't connect to the things that I work with, the people that I work with, if I don't revere anything there the way I might revere an altar or a tradition or a person that I love, then it's going to become very easy for my heart to become detached from that environment and from those processes.

[35:48]

And it can easily turn into something where I'm just getting stuff done. Parental mind. Or the deeply caring mind. This is when we're doing our activities. You know, the rituals that get us in our body. One other thing, actually, I want to mention about... Nope, I'll mention that later. Caring mind. Parental mind. You know... the whole mise en place, coming in and setting up our space. Is there a ritual you have when you come to your workspace? It can be great to just give yourself 30 seconds when you come to work and just set everything up and notice your body, your mind, your breath, ears over the shoulders, nose in alignment with the navel. Take a few breaths. Notice the objects. Notice if your workspace, whether you do physical work and you're cooking and you're farming or whether you're sitting at a desk,

[36:53]

You know, how are all of the different things set up before I do my work? And then what rituals get me in my body? What rituals bring me to my body when I notice that I am not being so caring? You know, there's that breathing technique, the four... seven, eight you might have heard of. It's the only one scientifically that they can measure that lowers your blood pressure and affects your central nervous system. But you close your mouth, you breathe in through your nose for four seconds, then you hold your breath for seven, then you exhale slowly through your mouth for eight. There's different things you can learn that can ground you. You know, in the temple, we learn about, you know, really caring for our work. And when we want to, like, get stuff done specifically, we usually stick it in Soji, where we have, like, 15-minute block where I can focus on stuff. If there's something you can't really get started on, do Soji.

[37:54]

You know, tell yourself, you know, Michael, please go and do thus and such. And then you go and give yourself a 15-minute time period, and you go and you do it. It's one of the easiest ways to get started. I think they learned that sometime in the past. They're like, how do we get started on that thing we never really get started on? How do we take care of that task we really don't want to do? With the caring mind, we start dealing with the things that are popping up in front of us, one after the other, the things that are happening in our workspace. And... Most spiritual traditions, most yogic traditions will teach you that it's very hard to solve the mind with the mind. Oftentimes we drop into the body to then get into a different container, to have different presence, to then bring ourselves into a place that has a different mind state. What rituals get you back into your body? One of the things we do, you might see sometimes with folks in administration walking around the block here.

[38:56]

We do the Pomodoro technique where you set an intention for 25 minutes. You work on that intention. Then you go. After 25 minutes, the alarm gets up. Everyone leaves their desk. You walk around the block for five minutes. You come back. You reset your intention. You do it again. There's different things you can do. At one point, I scheduled all my meetings with three minutes in between because I really needed to strengthen my core. And I just get underneath my desk and plank. Just get myself back into my body for a little bit. There's different ways to work with what is happening in front of you. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a whole book about this called The Miracle of Mindfulness. It's essentially a collection of letters that he wrote to his brother. His brother was working at a busy Asian capital. He had a wife and a kid and a job. And he said, you're so lucky, Thich Nhat Hanh. You get to live in the monastery. Of course you get to be present all the time. But there's no way I can be present. I got all these... distractions. And so his letters in The Miracle of Mindfulness that are collected into that book are essentially him telling him how to take those moments back.

[39:59]

There's all sorts of spaces that we live in where we just skip right through and we don't even think about the fact that, yeah, the way that I work is like as fast as I can go without making any mistakes. Do you ever intentionally work at 75% speed? Thich Nhat Hanh says, you know, when you have to do things and you have control in your household, dust your shelf at 50% speed. Take off each book with two hands. Look at it for a second. Place it on the floor. Turn the mundane, the things that you have control over, into ritual. The caring mind. The relationships with technology. The same sort of thing with coworkers. And then this ends us up with magnanimous mind. That's really the progression. You end with magnanimous mind. And with magnanimous mind, it's really interesting to kind of touch that aversion. Because you might have learned that breathing technique, but you can turn anything on itself and go to war with yourself. And then every time you feel some sort of way that you don't want to feel, you think, oh, I've got to do something to shift this.

[41:06]

Human beings surf with lots of ups and downs, highs and lows, many depressions, many disappointments, little frustrations. Noticing and being aware so that, yeah, I come out of that meeting, I'm a little bit disturbed, but maybe I really don't have to go do a breathing technique. I can just be like, yeah, it doesn't feel so great. But I really don't have to reset this. Using discernment. and not just automatically taking every little hack and tip and trick to feel differently because I always need to shift something. Because then it takes away from being able to surf the highs and lows of being a human being. In magnanimous mind, it's great to, with that principle, to be taking inventory of when I don't end up there, to doing an emotional inventory. There's this one emotional journal exercise where you at noon, you write down the most impactful emotional thing that happened so far today.

[42:10]

And then at night before you go to bed, you write down the most emotionally impactful thing that happened since lunch. And you write about it from how it was in the body, how it felt, how it was in the mind, the emotion that came forward and then the thought that came forward after that. Because if I'm looking at being impartial and I'm looking at how I manifest in my work and then I notice when I wasn't inclined to be impartial or when I wasn't impartial, it can give me some clues into where it is that I might need to do some work. There's been many studies done on the inner mind, the inner chatter that people have. In fact, there's a book called Chatter that's a great book. I recommend it. And it talks about... dealing with the things that plague us in our mind. It was a psychiatrist named Ethan Koss. He wrote the book called Chatter. The voice in our head, why it matters and how to harness it.

[43:13]

And in it, he says, writing provides a tool to structure your thinking. Talking has a similar modality. And we write sentences, and so then there's a structure, and we impose that on our thinking. In our minds, it's just chaos, and the chatter has no guardrails or rules. Now, it's great to be able to let things flow and what have you, but also there's time for taking inventory. Sometimes being in the moment means planning for the future. Sometimes being in the moment means taking inventory of what's going on. It's not that we're constantly going along taking inventory and not letting things flow, but if we never take inventory, we really don't know what's going on. Noticing the person I don't want to talk to at work. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but I remember years ago, I worked in this tech company. There's this person I really didn't like to talk to, and I just never felt like I had time for them. I always felt like they ran into me at the most inconvenient times. Every time they ran into me, I just felt like, oh, there's just not time for this.

[44:16]

I don't know what it was. I just never felt like I had time for them. And then one time it dawned on me, it just really was like, wow, this really is about me and not them, is that I rushed past the conversation with them. I went around a corner and I ran into this person that I really like to talk to. And all of a sudden I felt like I had a lot of time. There's all sorts of things that we might have to do in our work that we don't want to do. And there's other stuff that we do want to do. This is where we're studying magnanimous mind, the impartial mind. The end result of how it is that we're working. I suggest taking inventory and doing an emotion journal. Doing an inventory of a thing that I call small spaces. I don't know if you've ever been in a place where you feel like all of the... My work is so demanding and I have so many people telling me what to do that I have no control and I'm at work and I just get pushed around. Many people feel like this.

[45:20]

But if you do an inventory of the small spaces, how many places do I have control? How many places do I get to make the decision? Oh, I actually can go out and walk up and down the four flights of stairs right now. I can actually look off into the distance for a minute and refocus my eyes. It will be okay at lunch to sit for five minutes and do zazen in my chair. I can actually return to that place of where I felt really heart-connected to that small dog. Whatever it is that helps you reset or do a four, seven, eight breathing exercise or I'm just going to go find that person at work and tell them I think they did that thing really well. There's all sorts of ways when you do an inventory of what it is that you have in the small spaces. You start to realize how much more control I actually have. Control is a very elusive term to use, but that's the modern vernacular. in a sense, when that person's talking to you and they're telling you what to do, you still actually have control.

[46:24]

But it can be much harder to practice when you're given a very overarching time deadline sort of thing. So start with the small spaces. It gives you a sense of autonomy. Autonomy is something that really helps settle a person. So there's many things we could keep unpacking, but Using the Tenzo Kyokun, using the things that we're given in the monastery, and looking at how we settle in our bodies with presence, then we have expanded awareness so that we can be more adaptable to what happens, is something we can bring into our workspace. It's something you can bring into the next thing that you do. Learning to work in a way that has no separation between subject and object. And doing that takes time and training. You can't just go out and run a marathon. And it's very different than the means to an end way of working that most of us have been told to work. That's how we're usually taught in our culture.

[47:27]

Just get it done. But just as in the monastery, we need to come into the body with presence so we gain in our awareness so that we know what is going on and I can more skillfully respond and not just simply react. Work is a large part of our lives. Be sure you are just as alive with your skillet, your computer, your meeting, your commute. It's all simply just another setting to unravel the one mystery of you and how to be you in the universe. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge. And this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:26]

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