This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Seems like the sound is working. Sounds loud up here. I was thinking of when I first started practicing Zen. And I was a 23, 24-year-old living at Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm in Marin. There was one of my teachers, a woman teacher. I can remember her looking at me in the eyes and saying, Mark, you have a way of pissing away your power.

[01:02]

And I can remember thinking that this, I wasn't sure if this was a criticism. It seemed like this wasn't something, this didn't sound good to me, like something I should be doing. At the same time, I took it as a real compliment and challenge because I had no idea that I had any power to piss away. And this question of what is my power And what is human power has remained a regular kind of koan, story, challenge for me in my life. And actually it's how I've, one of the ways I've devoted much of my work life and I feel like much of my life in general is helping others to find their power through working in the business world and in the non-profit world working with leaders, working with business people, and also I think this is a way I would define, one way to define what Zen practice is.

[02:11]

And what I want to talk about tonight, which in a way is I think one way of getting at this question of power, is the topic of appreciating your life. How is it that we can really appreciate appreciate our lives, appreciate this short, amazing, mysterious life that we each have as a human being. Driving here, I got word that an old, old friend who I was a student with at Tassajara when I lived here, I heard, he's someone who I practiced with, someone my age, and I heard that he was quite ill and may be dying, may recover, but quite ill. and in the hospital, and all of his systems are shutting down. And it was a real wake-up call for me. It was like, in a way, I think if we look at things, we all expect that our parents will die.

[03:18]

But I realized I didn't expect that my friends were going to die. And powerful to have word of a... of someone who is a close friend dying. So I want to jump right in as a way of talking about appreciating your life. I was reading several things that I've been reading recently. All seem to agree that in order for something to be considered a Zen talk, it had to contain three pieces. So I thought I would get right to the three pieces so that this would be considered a Zen talk. Is this going to fall over? Thank you. So these three elements, which are sometimes referred to as the three marks, are impermanence, no self or no individual self, no independent self, and awakening.

[04:34]

which is sometimes translated as enlightenment. And the word I like, the best translation that I've seen is intimacy. And impermanence is this fact and awareness that we will die and that everything changes, that life is short. No self no independent self is something that, in practice and in our lives, I think we all have this feeling of wanting there to be some identifiable independent self. But I think we have some sense that, in fact, the more that we look, and this is one of the beauties, one of the practices of meditation practice is that we get to sit in a place where we can let go of our ideas about their being an independent self.

[05:44]

It's a little... I was talking to the group that I'm working with here this weekend where we're studying leadership. imagination and Zen, and I kind of took this idea, kind of comparing these ideas of impermanence and no self to the Tassajara Creek. We call it the Tassajara Creek, and we use that name. It's a convention. But at every moment, the water right now is different than it was just a moment ago. It's not the same creek. It's certainly not the same creek. that it was when it was raging here in the winter, and not the same creek that it was last summer when it was hardly running. And this is much like our lives, that we use this convention. And it's a really important, powerful, and necessary convention to talk about our self as though there's some continuing person.

[06:52]

And we need that. We need to be able to look... at the past, present, and future. But we forget that this is a convention. It was Albert Einstein who said that past, present, and future don't exist. They just happen to be conventions. And he said they're very compelling conventions. And the third of these three marks is Awakening, intimacy, which means that real freedom is possible. That it's possible to appreciate everything about our lives, even the difficulties, even the suffering. And in addition to these three marks, there's also what are sometimes called the four seals.

[07:54]

And again, it's a sense of a seal being something that dignifies something or makes it official. And these four seals happen to be the same as these three marks, but with the addition of suffering. And suffering is the first. So there's suffering, there's impermanence, there's no independent self, and there's awakening. And there's some sense that... the way to move from living with suffering and to transform our lives to awakening is to live within these no-self and impermanence. And in some way this is about moving from living in a world of small mind to living in a much larger life. Small mind is living in the world of me, where we're just trying to survive, we're trying to make enough money, trying to gather things, living a life where we're looking at grasping at things that we want and pushing away things that we don't want.

[09:14]

This is the life of living within small mind. Living in a life of... a larger mind, a big mind, is practicing with impermanence and practicing with this idea of no independent self and moving it from being some kind of intellectual idea to somehow embodying, embodying a sense of that we are much larger than we think and our lives are much larger than we think. And the basic practice that I would say is how to do this is the practice of appreciating our lives. And one of the ways that we can appreciate our lives is to make studying our lives a central activity and to see our own lives as a kind of amazing laboratory.

[10:17]

There's this famous expression from A. He Dogen, who was the founder of Zen in Japan in the 13th century, where he says to study Buddhism is to study the self. And I was recently reading some detail about the translation of that, where the word for study the self actually means to become accustomed, to become familiar, to become familiar with the self. And the particular Chinese character that's used for studying the self is actually the character for a baby bird and the parent of a bird. So studying the self actually literally means it's like a bird learning how to fly and a bird paying attention to itself and to its parent.

[11:20]

and seeing how to fly, learning how to fly, both by watching others and through experimenting. And that this concept of studying the self is a basic kind of human activity, much like the activity of a bird is to fly. And I think I found this a really moving and wonderful idea. And again, taking, you know, I think... I think when we first encounter Zen practice, there's some idea that it's somehow something outside of ourselves or that the idea is about studying Zen or studying some religion or studying some practice. But ultimately, it's the practice of studying ourselves, becoming familiar, becoming accustomed to the study of ourself, much like a bird learning how to fly.

[12:21]

I was also reading recently some of Shinru Suzuki's writings. Shinru Suzuki was the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and Tassahara and I was surprised to see in one of his lectures there was a question and answer period and someone someone was kind of almost sort of challenging him about to define Zen. What is Zen? What is Zen practice was his question. And there was an answer that I had never seen him give before, which I thought was a pretty wonderful answer, which was he said, Zen is having the humility to apologize to our parents for the trouble we caused them. That this is a basic definition of Zen, of having that kind of humility, But at the same time, to have the confidence where we can find and express our true voices, to find our own authentic voice.

[13:28]

And I think in some way, when I put these two together, it's really, again, the practice of appreciating our lives, the practice of humility and confidence. Another way that I think about what Zen is, and I also think of it as aligning a lot with the work that I do, is around helping people dispel false beliefs. I recently had a dream in which I went to a doctor, and I had no idea what kind of doctor it was. There was something strange. At first I thought, maybe this is an animal doctor? What kind of doctor is this? And I walked into this doctor's office, and the doctor came out and said, I only do one thing. I help remove false beliefs. And I was quite stunned, both in the dream and when I woke up, in that I think in some way this is what the Buddha would say,

[14:37]

what Buddhism is, what Zen practice is. And it's also what I aspire to do in my life now, both as a Zen student, Zen teacher, and as someone who works with business leaders. And I think a lot of us have some of the kind of core false beliefs that I've noticed. It seems like almost everyone seems to have, either in a very light way or some people in a very heavy-duty way. And I think of these as three false beliefs around our own identities. So not only do we get fooled into thinking that there is some substantial self that exists, we then build all of these ideas and beliefs around around what this identity is and what it's good at and not good at. But three particular identities that I notice and false beliefs that I see a lot in people that I work with are that one is that I'm not competent enough, the second is I'm not good enough, and the third is I'm not lovable.

[15:54]

So if you have any of these ideas, these are all... These are all things that are worthy of examining and letting go of. And of course, it's healthier to have the false belief that you are competent, that you are good, and that you are lovable. But this is actually a much healthier way to live and a much healthier way to examine our lives and to practice with... just appreciating our lives, appreciating that, of course, we are competent, good, we have good, sincere intentions, and we are all completely lovable. I was thinking how much I love summers at Tassajara and that I think that... I also love the winters at Tassajara, and they're really different.

[17:02]

And I can remember the years that I lived here. During the winter, in some way, I didn't want winters to end, and I was looking forward to summers. And then I didn't want summers to end, and I was looking forward to winters. And I always particularly loved the... opening the gate and closing the gate ceremonies. So that in the beginning of the summer, there's this opening the gate ceremony where we open the gates to guests, open the gates for anyone to come and visit Tassahara. And at the end of the summer, when the last guest will leave, there is a closing the gate ceremony. But I want to just talk for a minute about summer practice. I can remember I was here early in May, and as I was leaving, someone ran up to me and said, could you please come down here and talk about work practice here at Tassajara?

[18:04]

And I don't know exactly what the need was, but I always thought that... the practice of service and the practice both of taking care of guests and the practice of being a guest are wonderful ways to express ourselves. And also in the context of this leadership workshop that I'm now in the midst of, these are wonderful ways to express our own deep appreciation for life as a leader. And that my basic assumption is that we're all leaders and we're all Zen students. And I think if we look closely, we see that we can lead, if we're in the kitchen, we lead by how we chop onions and how we cut carrots and wash lettuce, that we're actually leading by doing these activities. We lead by how we serve coffee or clear the plates in the dining room.

[19:09]

It's the spirit in which we do it, the spirit in which we take care of guests and take care of ourselves and express our own joy and appreciation for being alive. And we lead as guests by how we interact with the servers, that there's a kind of a dance that happens. And again, all of this, I want to come back, is wrapped in the sense of practicing in the midst of in the midst of suffering, in the midst of awakening, and with practicing with impermanence and no independent self. I want to read, finish with a really short poem, and then I'm hoping that people will have questions or something people want to comment on or talk about.

[20:13]

I've rarely time it so that there's enough time, but I seem to have done that. This is a very short poem by Hafez, a 14th century Persian poet, and it's called A Strange Feather. All the craziness, all the empty plots, all the ghosts and fears, all the grudges and sorrows, I must have inhaled a strange feather that finally fell out. All the craziness, all the empty plots, all the ghosts and fears, all the grudges and sorrows have now passed. I must have inhaled a strange feather that finally fell out. Maybe given how much time there is, I'm going to do one more thing.

[21:18]

Well, actually, let's first see. Are there questions? Are there things that people want to talk about? Yes, Judy. Can you say more about your thought of enlightenment or awakening as intimacy? Yeah, I think... I think of awakening and enlightenment as becoming intimate with ourselves first, like really becoming intimate with who we are, becoming intimate with our strengths, our weaknesses. So even though there's this sense of know self, the way, the path to know self is to really know ourselves with complete intimacy. And I think the way that to... So there's, I think, two primary ways to do that.

[22:24]

One is sitting down on our cushion and spending time just giving the gift of having time completely outside, of needing to do anything, dropping everything, dropping body and mind and being on our cushions and seeing what arises and being intimate with what arises, accepting everything. And the other is to be with people. I think if you really want to learn about yourself, be in an intimate relationship. Just try it. I often say that this was beyond what the Buddha could do. The Buddha decided this was too difficult. don't have, you know, that if you really want to practice, you can't have those kinds of relationships. But here, I think that tremendous opportunity being, whether it's in relationship of living in a valley like this and practicing with others, but then there's having intimate relationships and

[23:45]

even having families, being involved in... I mean, for myself, I feel like I've learned so much through relationship. I recently... This is a good segue for a little story that I thought of starting with. I've been married for almost 30 years, and... my marriage has, like, I think almost every marriage has had its ups and downs. And in recent year, my wife and I were questioning whether we wanted to stay together. And we spent almost a year with our rings off deciding whether we were going to put them back on or not. And we, earlier this year, we decided to put them back on and we wanted to do a ceremony. So we invited a group of friends who had really gone, a lot of people who came to the ceremony were people who we had known even before we met.

[24:53]

We met at Green Gulch. And so it was a small group of friends, most people who had been married for many, many years. And we asked each person who came to address the question, what is the secret of long-term relationships, or what is the secret of sustainable relationships? And there are a lot of really wonderful answers, but the most memorable answer was a couple who had been married for about 30 years, and they're both Zen students and Zen teachers, and the wife turned to the husband and looked... in the eyes of the husband and said, the secret to long-term relationships is to constantly lower your standards. But I think she being a good Zen teacher, what she meant by this is not what we think of.

[26:02]

Because there's an expression in Zen practice that says, if you want to find... intimacy, if you want to find enlightenment, if you want to find real freedom, give up picking and choosing. Just avoid picking and choosing. So there's some, like, what a radical idea. And I think in part, it's partly why we practice, the monastic practice is in part giving up picking and choosing around the schedule. When the bell rings, you come to the zendo. And there's some real intimacy. some real intimacy in letting go of our usual ideas about intimacy and about picking and choosing. Thanks. Any other questions? Yes. I call it my foolish attempt to integrate Zen practice and leadership practice.

[27:21]

But also, you know, it's interesting. I can remember I gave a talk last year at Green Gulch, and someone, they phrased the question like, how do you deal with all of those dishonest, evil... I know this isn't what you're asking, but there's a little touch of that in what you're asking. But the question is like, Because when we read the newspapers, mostly business and unethical conduct seem to be almost synonymous. But I started and ran a couple of businesses, and I'm involved with literally hundreds, maybe thousands of business people. And they're all... um, you know, they're all Zen students, whether they know it or not. They're all, uh, trying to do good things in the world.

[28:22]

You know, of course there are, of course there are people. Of course there are people who, uh, are greedy and are just filled with greed. Just like there are Zen students who are greedy for enlightenment or something. There's some kind of material. It's easy to practice in a materialistic way. But, uh, I find the business world to be a phenomenally heartfelt, open, ethical place. Also, I was in a meeting recently in downtown San Francisco with a room filled with lawyers and insurance people and accountants, and I mentioned the word Tassajara, and half the people in the room's face is lit up. that either they had been there, here, there, here, or they knew about it. And I think there's this real pull more and more to opening towards practice in the business world.

[29:27]

And one of the most wonderful calls that I get, which I get every once in a while, is I pick up the phone. It's, hi, I'm the CEO of a major corporation. And no one knows it, but I'm a meditator. And I'm looking for a coach who can help me integrate meditation practice and my business life. And so very heartening. Thanks for that question. Anything else? Yes. seeing people as an obstacle or something that we're up against. And I read about using the way of saying, wishing well-being and happiness for that person as a way of dealing with this and practicing.

[30:38]

Of course. Of course. I think to start by being kind and loving with yourself is the place to start and to work with that and to have allies and friends in your life who can help you with that and to have people who can care about you and love you and support you in that, I think, is really, really important. And to make generosity a practice, to really practice with being generous with other people, being of service, and noticing when you're not so generous, when you are tight, and paying attention to it, and not then

[31:41]

beating yourself up about that. I was thinking, I had a complete meltdown the other day. One of the things I'm particularly bad at is the physical world. Someone asked me to install a closet in their home, and I said yes. I don't know why I did this exactly. And I was... really having trouble putting these molly bolts into sheetrock walls, which is not something I know anything about, but I decided to delve into it. And there I was, there I was, putting these bolts into walls, and it was not working. And the person who I was doing this for, this young woman, was asking me about meditation while I was doing this.

[32:42]

And I was starting to melt down. I was sweating and just judging myself and completely tight. And she was asking me about meditation. And fortunately, she left. And I went upstairs where my wife was sitting. And I was drenched in sweat. And I said... I can't do it. I can't put up the closet. I'm going to hire someone and I should have. So it's okay to melt down from time to time. It's good for your practice. It really is. I think we have time maybe for one more question. Yes. I think it means to be present, to show up for your life in a way that where you're not worried about looking good, you're not worried about making mistakes, you're not worried about being a good Zen student.

[34:10]

And instead, really feel how precious our life is and how precious it is to stay close to our own truth and to look for what it means to be a sincere human being. to find your own voice, to really find your own voice and your own path. And to appreciate your own deep suffering and the suffering of others and not hide from it, shrink from it, run away from it. And I feel like this, for me, continues, you know, to be, this is... I sometimes think that I've come a long way, and at the same time, I feel like I'm just starting.

[35:20]

That it's like, it's a little like the, you know, you're walking up a mountain, think you've gotten to the top, and it's like, oh my, it's way up, it's still higher. And at the same time, as I said, I feel like for, I have... I have moments in my life where I can feel my own sense of living and breathing in my own power, particularly when I'm helping others find their power. For me, that's become one of the best practices, is to, while I'm helping others to find their power, I'm having that same dialogue with myself, and it's so helpful and refreshing. And I think transparency, to be transparent, transparent with yourself and with others, and to be able to ask for help and to help others.

[36:20]

Last question, please. sitting in a meditation chair and having a terrible pain in your bed, or the suffering of ending a relationship, or the suffering of finding out that you'd be laid off with a job. What is the Zen Buddhist way to end suffering? All those things sound really familiar. In some way, I think it's not running away from any of those things that you just named. So you can end the suffering of the pain in your shoulder by saying, shoulder hurts.

[37:36]

And pay attention to it. And look for ways to sit without shoulder hurting, but to not run away from it and get help. How can I sit without shoulder hurting? Or, you know, I... You know, one of the most difficult... I'm part of the... honorable crowd of business leaders that was fired from a company that I started. And there's tremendous suffering in that. And at the same time, there's tremendous learning in that and tremendous growth in that. And my body, I can see, is falling apart some as I'm getting older. And I think it's appreciating. appreciating our suffering and seeing that, I mean, ultimately, one of the most profound teachings of Zen is that suffering and freedom are no different.

[38:48]

And that the way to suffer is to try and escape from suffering. And the way to find real freedom is to appreciate our suffering. Appreciate it, learn from it, enter it, transform it. So, yeah. I feel deeply moved by having this opportunity to hang out with all of you. Continue. I really want to thank the students here for helping to make Tassahara guest season practice so strong and alive. It feels great. Thank you all. And I want to thank all the guests, because if you weren't here, the students wouldn't have anything to do. So thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[39:49]

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, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

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