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. Empty. Don't reduce it to your own limited ideas. So I think this was a path laid out about if you want to find what to do, don't limit yourself by the what. try on looking at your own attitude, your own deep heart. Let go of the usual story. And I think this is usually how, this is my understanding of what meditation practice is. So I know there's so many words for... meditation, which is some people call it mindfulness or meditation or mindfulness meditation.

[01:04]

Sometimes I find if I notice people are resistant or reluctant to do this practice, I might call it attention training. That is the practice of training your attention or sometimes just sitting. Let's do some sitting practice together, which actually maybe is the is the root word anyhow of what's called, we call it zazen here in these temples, zazen, which means just sitting. But this practice of just sitting is the practice of stepping out of our ordinary lives, pausing, just pausing, just literally pausing. And noticing the stories, noticing our thinking mind, noticing our feelings, this practice of mindfulness, mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of the mind, mindfulness of how we interact with the world.

[02:14]

So we practice this sense of paying attention to the story. And then we practice... letting go of the story, dropping the story. But we do this dropping of the story with a sense of wholehearted curiosity. So we're training ourselves, we're training ourselves over and over again in stopping, becoming more and more familiar with our own stories. and becoming more and more familiar with how we can drop the story, have the courage to drop the story and see what's there. What is it like to just sit here? What is it like right now for each of you? There you are. What is it like just sitting here, just being alive, just hearing my words,

[03:21]

your words, your story, my story, however we're interacting, what is it like? What is it like to just be here? What is it like to just be alive? Yeah, it's incredible, this sense of when we enter into this realm of asking these questions about What is my path? What is it I want to do? How can I be of service? How can I find meaning and purpose in my life? All these wonderful questions. And then coming back, coming back to what's the story I'm telling? What lens do I see the world through? How can I, little by little, drop those lenses that are not so accurate, that are not serving me, those stories that protect me, those stories that keep everything in some way that's explainable but often quite narrow?

[04:37]

How can I just be curious and open? What is it like to be alive? What is it like to be a human being? The other day I was driving and listening to, it was a science talk, and there was a scientist talking about the study of smells. Some of you may have heard this, and I think there was a recent New York Times piece about this study, that for years it was assumed that a human being could distinguish 10,000 different smells. Pretty amazing. 10,000 smells. Well, this new study said that this study was actually wrong. And that a human nose can distinguish one trillion different smells. And that humans can actually distinguish just as many smells as a dog can.

[05:45]

We just don't put our noses close enough to the ground. Dogs do have different kinds of receptors, but in terms of distinguishing smells, the human brain, the human nose, a trillion smells. I mean, who would have thought? We so underestimate what's possible by narrowing who it is we think we are. We tell this narrow story. Or this new science that's coming out about neuroplasticity. It was not so long ago, it was thought that once you became an adult, your brain was set. Well, we now know this is not the case. This has become one of the leading edges of science, of the study of the brain and neuroplasticity. One of my favorite studies about neuroplasticity is that if you voluntarily blindfold someone, so you take away someone's vision,

[06:50]

In a matter of, I think it's within a couple of weeks, the neurons, the nerves that are in the back of the brain that are generally devoted to sight will start to move toward hearing. And in so many ways, science is discovering that what the Buddha discovered 2,500 years ago is true. that where we put our attention matters, that we can train our attention to change the brain, to change the story, to open up to whole new possibilities of how we are, who we are, how we operate in the world. It turns out that just this... this simple practice of sitting and over and over again stopping, noticing the breath, noticing the story, dropping the story, learning to focus the mind on a point like the breath or like the body, calming the mind enough so that we can actually get a sense

[08:17]

of the story, that we start to see more and more, there's more clarity, we get more information about our emotional life, about our feelings. That this practice, in a relatively short time, science is now showing, through different kinds of brain scans and MRIs, that this seems to lead toward increased... happiness. People feel better. It seems to lead to less stress, lower stress. It also seems to lead to a change in perception of self. I think this really was fascinating to me to see that science is entering this realm of self. And I was co-teaching the other day with a leading neuroscientist who announced, science has discovered the self does not exist.

[09:22]

You know, this was thought of as this, you know, something the Buddha said or something, you know, these Zen guys, spiritual guys say, yeah, great idea. But it's interesting that science is now saying this. And I think this is creating whole new realms of possibility. of making these practices more and more accessible. And actually, this has really been my vow and my path. And I think since coming to practice, and especially since I've been working out in the world, of my passion and interest of how can we make this practice accessible to a wide, wide group of people. without losing the depth, without losing the depth of practice, without losing the real deep purpose.

[10:31]

I love these robes and these forms and these traditions, and I'm very glad that I get to come back. For me, this is a returning home. But for me, I feel like much of my day job is showing up in lots of different settings and trying to make my best effort to bring these teachings into the world where anyone can access them. I've been... hanging out at places like Google and Genentech and SAP. And there's a huge amount of interest in people wanting to learn about these practices. Google has started this company-wide program.

[11:34]

Google has 40,000 employees. And they started a company-wide program called GPause. And they are promoting mindfulness practice as a path toward well-being. And they've made a commitment to their attempt is to be the healthiest and happiest workforce through using these practices of mindfulness. It was about seven years ago that Norman Fisher and I and a few other people were invited to Google to help develop a program at Google called Search Inside Yourself. We created a couple of years ago, it's called the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute,

[12:40]

S-I-Y-L-I, and people ask, well, how do you pronounce that? Well, it's silly. We pronounce it as silly. And I'm now the CEO of Silly. And my partner, one of my key partners, is a fellow named Meng, whose title is the jolly good fellow of Google. But our mission in Silly is that all leaders in the world are wise and compassionate, thus creating the conditions for world peace. All leaders in the world are wise and compassionate, creating the conditions for world peace. So we're aiming high, but it's a little bit like here we chant, beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Beings are numberless. So all leaders are wise and compassionate. Let's create conditions for for world peace and this program the search inside yourself program that i helped to develop and now teach in lots of different settings not only corporations but also working with doctors and health care workers and teachers people in education and government people lots of uh non-profits

[14:06]

It's interesting both to bring these practices inside of institutions and organizations to make them accessible, but also I find I keep learning so much from organizations and from all kinds of other kinds of psychological practices, spiritual practices that help to make these practices make these teachings more and more accessible, usable, relevant. So one of the things I've been studying and learning from has been the framework of emotional intelligence. And in some way, I think there's very little difference between Zen practice and the practice of emotional intelligence. They're just different entry points, I think, into the same thing. Emotional intelligence, it's the study of ourselves.

[15:12]

It has these kind of five, there's five core pieces. There's self-awareness practice, which is basically, essentially, mindfulness practice. And how can we develop self-awareness? We develop self-awareness through studying ourselves, through sitting practice. And this has actually been one of the things that In this program, in the Search Inside Yourself program, that we have very much married mindfulness meditation to self-awareness, that if you want to develop self-awareness, the way to do that is through sitting practice, as well as through taking sitting practice into all parts of your life. So there's self-awareness, self-regulation, which is how we deal with difficult emotions. This is something that... It's a core part of, I think, our sitting practice is becoming more and more familiar with our own anger, our own difficult emotions, and becoming so familiar with them that we have more and more ways of working skillfully with difficult emotions.

[16:19]

Motivation is the third part of emotional intelligence. Why do we do what we do? What really matters to us? So we talk about, in a way, it's the practice of wholeheartedness, which is what I started with. How do we actually practice wholeheartedness? How do we do that? Empathy is the fourth part of emotional intelligence. And seeing empathy, or feeling the feelings of others, as a practice. And that's something we can develop. So again, pretty miraculous science around that we are wired for empathy. There's this discovery made not so long ago, of mirror neurons, that we contain neurons in which literally, when we see other people make movements or have feelings, the same parts in our brain fire, that would fire in others. This was discovered when they were studying, they had hooked up the brains of monkeys initially in Italy.

[17:28]

And they noticed that when the scientists were making movements to move the food around, the same parts of the brain of the monkeys, as though their arms were moving, were moving in monkeys. And now they've tested this many, many times with humans, have the same mirror neurons, that we literally, we all know this, but that we can feel the feelings of others and see more and more that we can practice. Imagine practicing... similarities. The practice of, as we see people, that the first thing we think is, you're just like me. You're just like me. I wish you kindness. I wish you happiness. May you be well. That we can practice this. And again, this goes back to the neuroplasticity, that we can sculpt, that where we put our attention changes us, changes how we show up in the world. And the fifth part of emotional intelligence is social skills.

[18:30]

It's like the skills of sangha, community, the skills of how we learn from being with, living with, working with others. I want to come back to this original question that I posed about... How do we know what to do next? How do we find our path? How do we find our way? And I want to use a little bit of the, kind of bring together some of the language of emotional intelligence and maybe the language of Zen practice. In emotional intelligence, one answer to this question would be to the practice of motivation. to become more and more aware of, why am I here? What gets me up in the morning? What is my deepest motivation?

[19:32]

And the more that we can understand this motivation, it will help us in figuring out what to do. It will help us become more wholehearted. So in emotional intelligence, they talk about three motivation practices. The first is the practice of alignment. which is to understand, to have an understanding of what's really important to you, what really is in your heart, what do you really value, and in what way are you in alignment or out of alignment with that deepest sense of heart and wholeheartedness. So this question of alignment and seeing alignment as a practice, that we keep coming back, noticing, In our sitting practice, in what way are we aligned, or are we kind of sitting, leaning this way or leaning that way, or what story keeps coming up that gets in our way of being more and more wholehearted?

[20:38]

The second practice of motivation is the practice of envisioning, of having a sense of what it is we really want. What is it we want? If what we really want is to help others, what does that look like? What's our vision for that? Or if we want to play music or whatever. So first we start with alignment, which is a sense of becoming more and more aware of our own gifts and talents and possibilities and passions. And then envisioning is like, how do we want to take that into our activity? What does that look like? What does wholeheartedness look like in action? And the third practice of motivation is the practice of resilience. Resilience is how we deal with difficulty, how we deal with failure.

[21:44]

what we do when things get hard and our legs hurt and we're bored, or when we notice this critical mind that we feel like a failure, we feel like we're not there. And just to see that, oh, this is a time to practice resilience. And resilience, I think, both in emotional intelligence and in the realm of Zen practice is... dropping the story of success and of failure. And how scary might that be, right? Our culture is so much about success. We live in this pool of we all want to be successful. We don't want to fail. And yet, how do we practice with that? How do we drop success? How do we drop those stories?

[22:47]

I was thinking of my own. In a way, for me, there's many great examples that I have in my own life of the power of envisioning. I'm amazed that I had this crazy idea 30 years ago, when I left Tassahara, that I wanted to bring these practices into the corporate world. I remember meeting some business people who were concerned about my sanity. And that when I asked some people for help in writing my business school applications, I got some really funny looks when I was... I was the director of Tassahara at the time. But there's many, many examples. But I do feel in my own life that I've stayed with that vision, and I continue to stay with that vision of how can I bring practice into the world.

[24:02]

And I feel now like I've been asked to create practice a university that brings wisdom and compassion into the world, this kind of search-inside-yourself leadership institute, which I've... It'll be called Silly You. And I've already... We haven't designed the T-shirts yet, but I picture it'll say Silly You, and on the back it'll say Silly Me. And I have so many examples, which I'm actually not going to go into very much, but resilience. I have more examples of failure in my own life than I care to mention. After I left Zen Center and was director of Tassajara, I felt pretty good about myself. I'd become a successful Zen student.

[25:07]

And the first job I got was that I sold myself as a waiter. They were looking for an experienced waiter. And I figured, well, I had served food at Tassajara. Well, I was fired within the first few hours of being a waiter. I was also fired by my board from a company that I started. It's actually, I've come to, it's become a notch in my belt. Steve Jobs, and there have been many, many successful people who've been fired from companies that they started. And then there's those big examples, but there's just a zillion little examples. The other day, I was in my office with a couple of women who work for me, and they looked at me and they said, why aren't we doing more webinars? Why aren't we doing more online activity?

[26:11]

And I noticed that what came up in me immediately was a kind of defensiveness. And I walked away, and I sat down for my next meeting, and I just sat there for a moment, and I said to myself, I can't believe... the story that I'm telling myself. And that when they asked me that question, why aren't we doing this, I immediately, what came up for me was, they're saying, why aren't you a better leader? Why are you such a screw-up as a leader? I heard that voice. And I went back and had that, it was actually a wonderful conversation to have, to share that with these people. and have a conversation about how easily we all seem to get triggered, how easily we go to a sense of failure. Now, not that we always need to be nice in the business world.

[27:18]

I've started watching the show House of Cards, which is all about manipulation. And it's like, it shows me, there is this world out there. Some people, not everyone has our best interest at heart. It's hard for me to believe that, which is why I started watching this show. Because in a way, this practice of dropping the story is about seeing clearly. How do we train ourselves over and over again to see clearly? how do we train ourselves to see the best in people, to open up, to be open-hearted and transparent, but also a skillful means to be able to work in situations where not so easy. I've been really admiring Mr. Obama and how he's been, you know, seeing how he's working on the world stage at some of these most difficult situations.

[28:28]

I loved seeing in today's news that Putin wants to talk to Obama. Isn't that just amazing? Who knows how this will turn out? But I think it's interesting at all the different levels, whether it's in our personal relationships, at work, on the world stage. What's the story? What's the story we're telling ourselves? What filters do we see the world through? And how can we How can we see more clearly? Okay. I think I want you guys to talk to each other for a minute. I have an idea for something I want to do. So first... Very quickly and very quietly, without saying a word, find another person and just turn to another person.

[29:32]

Without saying anything, please, without saying anything, find a person. If you need a person, raise your hand and you can find each other. Someone right here needs a person. A threesome would be okay. If it's not easy, a threesome would be okay. Here's someone right here who needs a person. One of you out of the three want to? Or just jump in. So I hope you'll play along with me. Be childlike here. Let go. If your story is, we don't do this here, see if you can drop that story. So here's what I want to do. Figure out who's going to be person A and person B. And here's how it's going to go. Person A is just going to say a couple of sentences, literally a couple of sentences.

[30:39]

Person B will listen. Then person B will say just a couple of sentences and person A will listen. And then you'll just kind of check in with each other. How was that? How was it doing that? This is going to be very short. So, the topic. You're all wondering, what's the topic? What I want each person to speak to is the topic of what gets in the way of me being wholehearted and what supports me in being wholehearted. Try to pretend that you know what you're talking about. And it's okay, actually, just to explore and be awkward. You also don't have to have it together here. We'll have confidentiality. Whatever's said, we'll have the Las Vegas rules here. Whatever's said here stays here.

[31:42]

Just see if you can drop down into your... Go as deep as you feel like, but just a couple sentences from person A. here's what gets in the way of me being wholehearted. Here's what supports me. Stop. Person B, here's what gets in my way of being wholehearted. Here's what supports me. Stop. And then very quickly, a little, how was that? What was that like doing that? And we're going to do this literally for a total of five minutes. Maybe you can... Ring a bell, we'll signal each other, but in five minutes. Also, try to keep your voices down. Get close, so we don't want to have to yell to hear each other. Okay, go for it. Five minutes. Come on back. Please thank your partner. Come on back. Just quickly, and we're kind of running out of time, but any comments about how was that?

[33:03]

A couple of comments. Brave souls. Yes. That we all had some shared, not background, but shared thoughts on. what makes us slow and what we do to support ourselves. Yeah. I found it really amazing how much we have that we don't know. I found it interesting. First, we said a few sentences, so I thought this was going to be super fast. And then you said, oh, five minutes. I thought, oh, plenty of time. But then it ended up feeling like not enough time at all. So it's just interesting. Perfect, thank you. One other comment?

[34:06]

Yeah. I just found like articulating how we feel is kind of liberating and it's outside of ourselves and I think I certainly have a tendency to keep all of that inside, I feel like I'm practicing. Whereas when I finally have articulate what was going on, another person actually heard what I was saying. It made some kind of difference there. Great. Yeah, so maybe what I want to leave you with then in terms of, okay, so how might you practice some of the things that I've been talking about? Maybe start there. Talk to each other. Actually, and... Like, just be curious. Just be curious about each other. There's so much to bring that attitude. But maybe start with being curious about yourself. So these practices that I outlined around how to practice wholeheartedness, right?

[35:09]

Pause, notice, bring a sense of curiosity, wholehearted curiosity. What's happening with me? what's in my heart, and create some space there, whether it's in your sitting practice. You can do that with each breath, or in cutting carrots, or in between emails, whatever your activity is, to bring the sense of curiosity and presence, wholeheartedness. I want to end with this poem that I'm sure many of you know, although I'm often surprised. I assume everyone in the room knows these things sometimes, and it turns out very few people are familiar with... We don't read enough poetry. Read more poetry. This is one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver called Wild Geese.

[36:13]

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees forever. a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Tell me about despair, yours, I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.

[37:19]

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over, announcing your place, announcing your place in the family of things. Thank you all very much. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:11]

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