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. I want to start with an old folktale, which is said to be a Chinese folktale, but I'm really not sure where it comes from. And I imagine some of you have heard this story, which is that it's about a farmer whose horse runs away. And everyone says, that's bad. Lost his horse. A few days later, the horse comes back with a whole herd of horses. And all the townspeople say, well, that's good. And then the farmer's son starts to train one of the wild horses and breaks his leg. And everyone says, That's bad.

[01:00]

And then there's a war breaks out, and the army comes in to get all of the able-bodied young men, and they can't take him because he has a broken leg, and everyone says, that's good. So this is a simple story, but I think it's in a way, I think for most of us, for all of us, it's what our lives tend to look like, is this sense of being caught by duality. by not having the full picture. And in a sense, I think of this as a story about mistaken beliefs based on limited data. And I think Zen and all of Buddhism could be described as antidotes for mistaken beliefs. For example, some of the core beliefs core tenets of Zen practice, of Buddhist practice, are things like enter your suffering and difficulty, that this is where your own real heart and intelligence comes.

[02:12]

This is an antidote to the usual mistaken belief about the opposite. Or things like embrace impermanence. and this sense that the self is a fiction, or that real freedom or real enlightenment are possible. These all, in some way, could be viewed through the lens of antidotes to our own mistaken beliefs. And then there's the ones that many people hold, things like the mistaken beliefs of, I'm not good enough, or I don't have enough resources, or I don't have enough time. All of those things those kind of more day-to-day mistaken beliefs. Some of you might also be familiar with... It's interesting how I think through the last maybe 20, 30, 40 years, there's been quite a few people in the business world who have studied Zen and have really worked at kind of taking from a Zen practice and putting that into...

[03:20]

very practical sense of how organizations work. And one of those people is a man named Chris Argelis, who he created something called the Ladder of Inference. Again, I imagine some of you know this. If you picture a ladder, on the bottom of the ladder is as though you could take a video camera of events. the observable data. Next up is selecting the data. Then we add meaning. We make assumptions. We make conclusions. We have beliefs. And then those beliefs then spur us into action. And I think what's particularly interesting about this model is that it's a closed-loop system. that once you form beliefs, you only look at data, you only select data that supports your beliefs.

[04:25]

This is a big problem. This is one of the problems we're having today. I think we can see it more easily on the world stage, but I think this is true of every part of our lives. On the world stage, it affects things like climate change, gun control, voter fraud, nuclear arms. It's interesting to actually look at these and many, many other issues. And the problem is, once people form their beliefs, you stop looking. And on both sides of the argument, people stop looking at the data. So I... I want to talk... I think I'm not going to try and solve all the world problems today. I only have another 20 minutes. But I do want to focus on this issue of mistaken beliefs on a more personal level, on the level of what... I want to have the conversation, what are some of the mistaken beliefs that tend to...

[05:45]

heavily influence our day-to-day lives and tend to maybe lead us down the road that we don't want to go to, which is maybe a road of separation, of suffering, of dissatisfaction. And if we could practice with some of these antidotes to mistaken beliefs, it might be really useful. And I remember, I think it was about a year ago that I spoke here and I mentioned that it was at a training that I was helping to lead inside of Google many years ago and we were trying to figure out how do you teach engineers how do you teach people to become mindfulness teachers and I brought in my good friend and Zen teacher Norman Fisher who's spoken here many times and was the abbot here And Norman came up with these practices, these seven practices of how to, the necessary principles of things to embody in order to become someone who's going to be a mindfulness teacher.

[07:02]

And I wrote those down, and I actually adopted those seven principles to become how I wanted the people in my company to work, and how I wanted to live my life. And I started down the road of actually writing about these, and I could see a book was emerging, and I called Norman and said, you know, Norman, I'm feeling a little funny because I've taken your seven principles that you taught at Google, and I'm starting to develop those into a book. Are you okay with that? Norman's response was, I have no idea what you're talking about. What seven principles? So I felt permission. And since then, I've kind of changed some of them. So what I want to do is go through just briefly seven, and then I'm going to focus on one for this morning.

[08:07]

The seven, the first one, is the mistaken belief that that you are your thoughts and emotions, and that your perspective and way of seeing yourself, others, and the world are accurate. So this is a mistaken, a very core mistaken belief. And the practice, the suggested practice to penetrate this is to interrogate reality. Interrogate reality, which is really, I think, what... what Zen practice is all about. The practice of the sitting practice, of just sitting, is this practice of being still and having a deep inquiry about what's happening with this body, this mind, this heart. And then when you get off the cushion, again, this deep sense of curiosity and inquisitiveness about what does it mean

[09:10]

to be a human being. What is, what, what are all these, who are all these other people? What are all these other perspectives? And, and how can I, how can I take that into account? So that's mistaken belief and practice one. The next is that the mistaken belief that happiness and success come from accumulating knowledge and control. And here the, the practice is don't become an expert or, Here we are in a beginner's mind temple. So it's the practice of developing one's beginner's mind by cultivating, seeing, again, the reality that each moment is actually fresh and new. We don't need to make that happen. It's about doing less of the things that get in the way of seeing how fresh and new everything actually is. The third mistaken belief is that pain and discomfort are negative and are to be avoided.

[10:20]

And here the practice is connect to your own pain. Connect to your own difficulty. Again, this, clearly this, you know, Norman might have got this from the Buddha. This was the kind of one of the early and most fundamental teachings of all of Buddhism is to connect to your own suffering. Connect to the fact that we are born and we will die, that we will lose everything and everyone, and to embrace that and to enter that and to not avoid that. The next mistaken belief, one of my favorites, is the belief to avoid noticing others' feelings of difficulty and pain. Act as though everything is just fine Act as though everything is just fine. Avoid anything negative. And here the practice is to connect to the pain of others.

[11:22]

Connect to the pain of others. Be real. Be curious. Notice and care about. Be curious and show care, empathy, compassion for others' difficulty and suffering. The fifth is actually the one that I want to unpack more. which is the mistaken belief that we are all essentially alone, have to strive to care for our own life, and that independence is more important than being dependent. And here the practice is depend on others to see that we live our lives in collaboration and in interdependence in a way that is almost unfathomable when we actually stop and look at it and think about it. So I'm going to come back to that. The sixth is that your response to others and situations is mostly automatic.

[12:26]

You have little choice in how to respond. And here the practice is respond appropriately. That to cultivate, again, there's a somewhat famous Zen tradition where the student asks the teacher, what is the teaching of a lifetime? What is the teaching of a lifetime? And the teacher answers, an appropriate response. An appropriate response. So in this case, it's what does it mean in a situation or with others to be real, to be heartfelt, to be... And sometimes an appropriate response might be to respond with fierce anger or with incredible gentleness. So it's not about always being nice, but what does it mean to respond appropriately? The last is that the mistaken belief is that busyness and complexity are inevitable in this fast-paced, technology-driven world

[13:39]

And the busier you are, the more successful, satisfied you are. This is the mistaken belief. And the practice is keep making it simpler. Keep making it simpler. Stay focused, engaged, not busy. Again, from Zen, there's a beautiful story about that. encourages us to find the one who's not busy, right in the midst of living a fully engaged life. But it doesn't mean we need to be busy. So I want to come back to this practice of depend on others. Because it's really, one, it's so invisible to us. It's almost like, you know, Fish swimming in water aren't aware that they're swimming in water.

[14:42]

Well, for us, I think for humans, we're swimming in the sea of people. We swim in the sea of other people and almost don't even know it. And if we go back to this ladder of inference about Where do our beliefs come from? Our beliefs come from almost everything we believe is somehow influenced by others. Very few of us in this room could write the formula to prove that the earth revolves around the sun. We believe that because everyone around us tends to believe that. I don't want to badmouth the Trump administration here, but they might change that. I mean, they're kind of undoing a lot of the science.

[15:43]

But it's interesting to see if we really look at, if you ask yourself, where do your core beliefs come from? How do we know anything about music, about math, about politics, science, arts, ethics? All of that comes from who we're with, the people that we're with, where everything we do is incredibly influenced by those beliefs. And we tend to live, we tend to be around people who believe the same things we do. And more and more, we only look at information that tends to reinforce our own belief system. So it's interesting, this practice of depending on others' cuts through in many different ways. And to me, there's going to be two big buckets, two big aspects to this practice of depending on others.

[16:46]

One is the practice of kind of cultivating a deep and profound trust in yourself. This is the first bucket. And I think... This core practice that we have here at the Zen Center and in all kind of Zen temples is this practice of, again, just sitting. And I think one of the ways that I often think of and talk about meditation practice, or as it's called here, zazen practice, it's not about making yourself calm or reducing stress. Those might happen, but it's really penetrating your real heart. It's about embracing the beauty and difficulty of what it means to be a human being. It's penetrating and entering this question of what does it mean to be fully human?

[17:55]

And in that, in terms of... depending on others, it's reducing the distance between others. It's seeing the oneness that we, again, it's a mistaken, our separateness is really a mistaken belief. And it's seeing our oneness, the way that we are incredibly interdependent with everyone. And the practice, I think, is how to take that from an idea to embody it. It's easy to say, oh yeah, oneness, great, check. But how does that show up in every part of our life? How does it show up when you're driving your car and someone cuts you off? Or you're in a relationship and there's difficulty. How do you really move into that sense of oneness?

[18:59]

I want to read, I was looking around at some old lectures of Suzuki Roshi, who was the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center. And this is just some of his words where he says, the secret of all teaching of Buddhism is how to live on each moment. Moment after moment, we have to obtain absolute freedom. And moment after moment, we exist in interdependency. So in short, practice zazen. Concentrate yourself on your breathing, moment after moment. This is how to have an understanding of Buddhist teaching and how to help others. We do not aim to emphasize a particular state of mind or particular teaching. we emphasize our own understanding and how to bring this truth into practice.

[20:07]

And then he goes on to say, this is, I thought, a really beautiful line where he's quoting Dogen, who is the founder of Zen in Japan in the 13th century. And this is Suzuki Roshi says, Dogen said, we must practice like we are water and milk. When each one of us are concentrated on this practice, we are not separate beings anymore. Oneness of all students and priests, when you live in each moment, each one of you is an independent being, and at the same time, our practice is to obtain absolute interdependence. So we're each one independent and at the same time independent. So this is this teaching of to really embody depending on others is this practice of embodying the sense of lack of separateness.

[21:17]

The other bucket of depending on others is to develop communication skills, to be a more skillful, emotionally intelligent communicator. And for this, I recommend studying different... Well, one, keep practicing. The sitting practice, I think, is a core container because the skills alone are not enough. There needs to be some practice to embody the skills. But I think the skills are really important. The skills that are taught in things like the book Difficult Conversations, where they teach one of the core practices in difficult conversations is to be able to separate out what is the content, what are the feelings, and what are the identity issues.

[22:23]

And I think this is part of our sitting practice, is even... getting in touch with our own deep identity issues. Things like, am I competent? Am I a good person? Am I worthy of love? And how when you look at all of our communication, so often these identity issues are what's driving it. I've also become a student recently of... nonviolent communication. And it's really helped me a lot. I'll give a little story, which is the other day, I got an email from someone who is, someone who I trained to be a Search Inside Yourself teacher sent me an email. And the email said, I reached out to one of your employees at the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. He got back to me right away.

[23:27]

But then he stopped responding. I think this is horrible, and therefore your company is a really lousy company. This was his email to me, basically. I'm paraphrasing some. And I thought, oh, let's see, how could I use, how might I respond in a way that uses... this practice and to my own being able to not get caught by it and also put into play some of these practices from nonviolent communication. So I wrote him and I said, I notice that you're trying to get a hold of one of the people who works for me and they took longer to get back to you than you wished. I notice you have feelings about this. You're kind of feeling upset. You're feeling a little bit angry. You're feeling disappointed. I hear that you have needs. You need this person to be maybe more respectful or to get back to you. And you also have a request.

[24:29]

Your request that you're making of me, though you're not saying it directly, is would I help? You need my help to get this person to respond to you. And you're making a judgment. Your judgment is that because this person didn't respond to you, it's a lousy company. And I'm going to disagree with you here on your judgment. And I want to point out that this person who you're trying to reach, I happen to know, was away in Asia for a week and a half. And then when he got back, he was sick for a week and a half. And you are not taking into account the full data here. So this is just, I want to recommend that studying and putting into your life as much as you can these practices of depending on others. And I want to share a poem that I thought was a really interesting poem that in a way touches on

[25:42]

this practice of depending on others. And the poem is called The Secret, and it's by Denise Levertov. Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I, who don't know the secret, wrote the line. They told me through... a third person. They had found it, but not what it was, not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can't find and for loving me for the line I wrote and for forgetting it so that a thousand times till death finds them, they may discover it again in other lines, in other happenings.

[26:51]

And for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all. Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I, who don't know the secret, wrote the line. They told me through a third person. They found it. but not what it was, not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can't find and for loving me for the line I wrote and for forgetting it, so that a thousand times till death finds them, they may discover it again in other lines, in other happenings. And I love them for wanting... to know it, for assuming there is such a secret. Yes, for that, most of all. Let's try something.

[27:55]

I have a reputation, I've been told, for having people talk to each other here in the Buddha Hall. And I think I'm going to do that right now. Sorry. I know some people hate this. That's okay. Notice, if you hate this, notice. Just notice your own resistance. But maybe you don't. So what I want to suggest is just don't say a word yet. Just turn to the person next to you. Just turn to someone. Find a person. Don't say anything yet, please. You need to let me be the orchestra leader here for now. Let me have a little control. And if you're with a threesome, that's okay. It's okay, but just turn to someone. Noticing your own resistance?

[29:00]

Or not? And what I want to suggest first is just notice what it's like to actually be Just jump in. Just jump in and join someone. Florian needs someone. Just notice what it's like to be with another person. You don't need to stare. But just notice how are you influenced right now just by turning toward being with another person. Just notice it for yourself. And then I want to suggest that You have a, that in a moment you can introduce yourselves to each other if you don't know each other and then just have a short conversation back and forth, listening, sometimes listening, sometimes speaking. And my suggested topic is what do you think about this practice of depending on others?

[30:04]

How does this practice of, like, what's your resistance to it? How might, depending on others, help you? What might it look like to practice that? This is my suggested topic. Possible topic number two is anything you feel like talking about. There might be something that's really up for you. One other instruction, and I've learned this from experience. it can get super loud in here if everyone talks in their regular voice. So I want to suggest seeing if everyone can keep your voices as low enough as you can. So you might have to actually get close to this other person. I know this could get uncomfortable. But you might have to get close and notice that if you keep your voice low, then everyone won't have to shout to be heard. And... I think that's all I'm going to say, and we'll do this literally for a total of five minutes, and then we'll ring a bell, or I'll say ring a bell in five minutes, and then we'll come back.

[31:14]

And make sure that both people get a chance to speak, and both people get a chance to listen. Please. Hey, can you ring the bell, please? All right, if everyone can finish. So thanking your partners and coming back. Yeah, I guess they generally don't let you guys talk to each other in here.

[32:35]

Any just quick comments, reflections? How was that? I'm just curious. If anyone wants to share. Can you speak a little louder? Resistance came up immediately. And then as I turned and was looking at her face, it fell away. And I was able to see the sameness. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Lucky. Good thing. Good thing, yeah. Any other? Yeah. I was amazed how much you can learn about a person in a short time. I feel very close to this person in five minutes. And maybe one more, and then we have to move on, I think. I was going to say how it was interesting to see how a complete stranger can be going through very similar situations, and it was kind of uncanny how you relate to that, and you feel so alone, and yet someone else can be going through something like that.

[33:38]

I think this is one of the most profound mistaken beliefs, complete stranger. Right, right, right, right. That, you know, the... Is it the old... Judy Collins, right? We're all made from stardust. I mean, literally, it's actually been proven. I think we're all made from, I think it's the same star. Everything in us, right? So I want to encourage you, this practice that we just did is safe to do at home, listening to other people. Laughter It has its dangers. It has its real danger. You might find out things that you had no idea who this other person, you know. So in a way, even though I'm kind of using that language of calling stranger, what if you approach everyone like as though you don't know them and as though they're your brother and sister, right?

[34:42]

Have them be like your, and I think this is the only way we're ever gonna actually solve the ridiculous, the divide that we have, not just politically, but everywhere. Everywhere you look, there's this overwhelming sense of fear and separation. And I think that the human heart, I think the problem is the human heart is like a, you know, it's like if you've seen those sea anemones where if you just touch them, they close. Even the toughest people, I think. We appear tough because I think we're all so, so tender-hearted. So to me, this practice is how can we develop and trust that tender heart and be able to stay open and not close. And to become someone who can... And it's contagious, right?

[35:43]

if each of us can stay open, the people around us can stay more open to hearing things that maybe challenge some core beliefs and to stay in the conversation as opposed to closing. It's a beautiful Saturday morning and I feel deeply honored to get to hang out with all of you. Thank you very much. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:40]

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