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. So we are, we're all heroes in our own journey and from the perspective of Zen practice partly what that means is that we are we are all completely ordinary people and we are Buddha or we are enlightened or we are sages at the same time and this is I think the challenge that we that we each face of finding what it means to be a human being, finding what it means to be a hero in our own journey.

[01:05]

I was thinking, just a few days ago, I did a presentation in a large corporation. The program was Mindful Self-Awareness. And I was introduced as the author of a book called Less, accomplishing less by doing more. And I... When I went up to start to talk, I thanked her and the woman who introduced me and said that, in fact, I wondered if she had intentionally outed me as a Zen person because the Zen title of my book would have been Working Hard, Accomplishing Nothing. LAUGHTER but actually this is another one of those another one of those I think paradoxes like our hero's journey of being being ordinary and being extraordinary at the same time that though we practice this that there's nothing

[02:24]

nothing to accomplish, no gaining idea, not trying to get anything, and yet there is so much that needs to be accomplished. There is so much suffering and poverty and violence. So this practice isn't about accomplishing nothing, and yet it's a different kind of effort. And Zen, I would say that Zen can be talked about as the practice of seeing more clearly or the practice of uncrusting our hearts. And the word Zen that we hear so much about that now we see on breakfast cereals and yoga centers, actually comes from a... Zen is a Japanese word that comes from the Chinese word, chan, which comes from a Sanskrit word, dhyana, that at the root, this word means completely absorbed, or no separation.

[03:46]

The sense that there is no separation between people. that we are completely unified. And it also means that we as ordinary people and as extraordinary people are that what looks like these two parts to ourselves is actually one and is completely unified. It's really wonderful for me to be here. at Tassajara, a place where I felt like was a big part of my own journey, that I lived here for about five years, many years ago. And it was just an amazing time in my life, both just the practice of spending so much time sitting

[04:50]

and studying and working with teachers. And then the combination of the natural beauty and all of the dramas that were happening, from bobcats jumping through windows to I was here during the fires of the late 70s. I can remember one winter when the creek was about to jump its banks and we all were huddled up by the gatehouse standing there with umbrellas, wondering if the buildings would still still be there. So there is that wonderful sense of aliveness, both from the practice and also just from the physical challenges of Tassahara. And then I think I was surprised that the challenges that I faced in my own journey when I left here I left here with wife and young baby in tow and went right to New York City to business school, naturally.

[05:59]

Well, actually, it was because my last year here, I was director, and I had this big aha that even though I thought I was a Zen... monk, I was also running a business. And that there is a way in which Tassajara is a business. Although, I think it was last summer, I was sitting at lunch, and a woman across from me said, this is an unbelievable business here. Who's the business brains behind this place? And without hesitating, I said, Buddha. And that one of the brilliant things about is that no one really sees it as a business. It's really seen as a place of serving people, which is actually a pretty wonderful definition of what a business is at its heart. And when I left here and went to New York, I can remember two little stories.

[07:07]

One is one of the... The fact that I had been at Zen Center for 10 years of my life, I found... that resume did not open a lot of doors in New York City. I was surprised about that. So I thought I could get a job. The first job that I tried to get was as a waiter. I thought, well, I had served tables here. I know how to put food on tables. And even though it said they were looking for an experienced waiter, I thought I could fake it. And I was fired within the first half hour. because they could tell I wasn't an experienced waiter. And then I remember another job I tried to get was as a temporary administrative person in New York City, because I didn't know how to type at the time, and I remember going up, this was on the Upper East Side, into like the 34th floor of an office building, and

[08:15]

handed in my resume and I was sitting and waiting for someone to come greet me. And at one point I noticed a group of people were all gathered around a table and they were kind of whispering and laughing. And I heard someone, I could overhear someone say, there's a Zen monk out here looking for a job. And that didn't lead to a job. But it's interesting having gone kind of full circle in some way or at least in the midst of my own journey that I spend my work time these days teaching mindfulness and meditation at places like Google and Twitter and some other high-tech companies and non-profits and pretty wonderful and I feel like I'm still very much on this journey. And it's interesting, it was Joseph Campbell who wrote the book A Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949, kind of describing this mythological process of the hero's journey.

[09:27]

And I also looked up and noticed it was in the 13th century that there were these famous ten ox herding pictures. And there's many similarities between these two paths, which I'll describe in So in some way, the hero's journey could be talked about simply as three main stages. There is the stage of setting forth and somehow answering our calling, listening deeply enough to what our calling is. And in the Zen practice world, it's often called a way-seeking mind. The calling is the... the calling to practice, the calling to the sense of wanting to go deeper, of wanting to find and express our own true nature. But there can be many callings. There can be callings in terms of our work, in terms of our relationships, in terms of our family.

[10:33]

So I would kind of ask you to consider what is your calling. This is something we've been considering in the workshop that Jackie and I have been leading called Leadership, Imagination, and Zen. And just talking about starting with looking at what are we called to do? So there's the calling. The second part of the hero's journey is entering the unknown and stepping, sort of pushing offshore and entering some place where It might be somewhat uncomfortable. It might be some gray area, some sense that we can't quite predict or control or know what will happen. And the third part of the hero's journey is the returning home. And originally, as Joseph Campbell described the hero's journey, he talked about 17 different stages.

[11:36]

And they're actually all pretty wonderful. But there's a few that I think are particularly relevant and useful to look at for us in our, whether we're here working at Tassajara or whether we're out living and working in the world. The first is the second step, which is called refusing the call, which is noticing our own resistance or our own sleepiness or our own whatever it is that that stops us from answering some calling. And in some way, even meditation practice, every time we sit down to do zazen practice, can be looked at as the hero's journey. So it doesn't have to just be looking at this large sense of our whole lives.

[12:38]

We can apply it. to a period of meditation where we come, we have an intention. We come because we're answering some calling, so we come and we sit. And the moment we sit, we don't know. The spirit of sitting is the sense of studying ourselves and looking at ourselves as though we are a laboratory, but we don't know what will happen with each breath. There's a sense of not knowing. And then at the end of the period, we turn around and we get up and we're off doing whatever the next thing is. Sometimes I think that Zen practice could be described simply as sitting down and getting up. If we look at our lives, usually, whether we're practicing Zen or not, often we're sitting down And we're getting up.

[13:40]

But as a metaphor, sitting down is taking the time to reflect, to go inward, to get to know the world of me. And getting up is how we then, how do we take what we've reflected on? How do we apply it? How do we reduce, how do we solve the issue of violence, poverty, suffering out there in the world in small ways or in larger ways? So this hero's journey, the second stage is refusing the call. The other parts that are particularly interesting, one is finding who our guides are. Who are the people? Who are our allies, mentors, people who can help us along the way? Who are our teachers? Who are we guides to is another really interesting question. Another piece of this hero's journey is finding our power.

[14:43]

Where does our power come from? And another really useful piece is this issue of how we deal with difficulty and knowing that we will face difficulty. And how do we deal with difficulty? In what way do we enter it? What way do we meet it? I think it's interesting how we can approach Zen practice and Zen meditation from many different levels. People think of it, I think often, there's a lot of neuroscience and study showing that by having a regular meditation practice, we can reduce our stress. Actually, there's amazing studies showing that we can heal skin disease like psoriasis from sitting 20 minutes a day for eight weeks.

[15:53]

We can actually change parts of our brain through having a regular sitting practice. This is one way to look at Zen practice. Another way is to look at it as a method of attention training, of actually training... our ability to focus and our ability to expand our awareness. I notice often if I'm teaching in the corporate world, sometimes just mentioning the word mindfulness or meditation can get all kinds of ideas in people's heads. But if I come in and say, we're going to do some attention training, people get it, the importance of being able to focus your attention, expand your awareness, and also the importance of the quality of our attention. So to be able, what an amazing thing that we can practice in actually training our attention.

[16:57]

But the more traditional Zen approach is just sitting. Like just sitting without any gaining idea at all. Just trusting in some way that we are an ordinary person and we are Buddha all at the same time. With each breath we are just expressing this. This is the kind of more mystical, more faith expression of what Zen practice is. And it's sometimes said that when we look at the hero's journey, one of the secrets of this hero's journey, which is sometimes talked about as the secret of Zen practice, is to realize that we don't have to wait to arrive.

[18:05]

We don't have to wait to arrive at our own home. That with each... With each step, we can find our own home. So in practice, we set out with this idea of moving from suffering, from difficulty, from not seeing clearly, to finding a place of real freedom, of being able to have much greater choice and possibility in our lives, but that we don't need to wait. It's a little bit like The Wizard of Oz, of Dorothy discovering that she had the ability to return home at any moment. I wanted to talk a little bit about, in some way, this journey, the journey of the hero's journey and the journey of Zen practice is...

[19:09]

becoming more and more attuned to the world of me, and really delving in and understanding what our own tendencies, our own resistances, our own proclivities, and we sit to really examine and become really intimate with the world, the world of me. And we also sit to become more and more clear about the world beyond the world of me. There's this expression from Dogen, who was the founder of Zen in Japan in the 13th century, who said, to study Buddhism is to study the self, and to study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to become awakened, enlightened, connected to all beings. So this is part of the paradox of the hero's journey and of practice.

[20:15]

I think I just want to read some words of Suzuki Roshi and then see if people have other things that they'd like to talk about. What I want to read from Suzuki Roshi is some commentary that he made about a Zen koan, which in a way is a koan that I think relates really well to the hero's journey. And it's a koan that says that you are you are on top of a 100-foot pole. Now what? Basically, what will you do? How will you find yourself? How will you express yourself? You're perched that our lives are like being on top of a 100-foot pole. And in a way, this is the sense of setting forth on this hero's journey. How can we leave this...

[21:35]

place that is known and it might even be a little comfortable being up there, at least we're there, and we don't know what will happen. And Suzuki Roshi is talking about himself and how he's in a room reading a newspaper and his wife is calling from the other room and this is his commentary where he says, the secret is just to say yes. And jump off from here. the kitchen for breakfast.

[22:37]

So this is in response, his wife is calling him to breakfast. So he says, the point of each moment is to forget the point and extend your practice. Yes, I think the point is to find how we can completely be our ordinary extraordinary selves in each moment. What does that mean? How do we actually do that? How do we actually embody that? The sense of being completely our ordinary selves and to become sages. How we can become, how we can find our own real wisdom. Whatever that wisdom might mean in terms of how we how we express ourselves. I wonder if there is anything anyone would like to talk about.

[23:48]

Yes? I mentioned Dogen talking about to know the selves, that old book. And I was wondering if the Buddha said anything similar to that of knowing yourself in that ordinary sense of our karma and our, you know, who we've become through causes and conditions. It seems like a Buddhist message was maybe more like dropping all that off than being something totally different. I think of a few different stories. One is a story where someone asked the Buddha, does the self exist? And in this particular version that I recall, he was silent on the matter. And one of his disciples turned to him and said, I thought you were teaching this no self.

[24:53]

It's kind of one of the core teachings of Buddhism that the Buddha talked about, that the way that we think of self as a separate entity doesn't exist. But in this particular story, the Buddha said, if I said the self exists, this would be not true. And if I said the self doesn't exist, this would be kind of nihilistic, that I'd leave this person with this impression that I was somehow the sense of suppressing self. So therefore, I didn't answer. I also think of another story that I'm not sure if this so directly answers your question, but maybe indirectly, where someone asked the Buddha, how can I find real peace and happiness in my life? And his response in this one sutra was, good friends.

[25:57]

Find good friends. So there's some way in which... the Buddhist teaching, I think, was extraordinarily deep and mystical and also very ordinary at the same time, much like this teaching of study yourself and forget the self. And I think, in some way, I think of it as a teaching about confidence, that we can know ourselves so well fully and so completely that we are confident to be completely transparent. And not the kind of confidence that is arrogant, but the kind of confidence of showing up, being able to show up in our relationships, in our practice, in our work, in whatever the situation might be. Thank you.

[26:59]

questions or comments or anything anyone would like to talk about. Yes. Kind of touching on something you brought up earlier, I was wondering if you're ever, I don't know, bothered or think that it could be a problem the way the term Zen and even Zen practice is maybe used for personal gain, you know, in business or in sports, you know, and just how the name is kind of thrown all over. Do you see any problem with that? You're not accusing me, are you? Well, I do wonder about that myself, actually. Although, I have to say, it's funny, I can remember being at a meeting in downtown San Francisco. in which I was with a group of... These were lawyers and accountants and financial planners.

[28:09]

And at the beginning of the meeting, we each introduced ourselves. And I said at this meeting that I was a Zen priest and I had been practicing Zen for much of my life and that I'm a coach and business consultant. And after this meeting... this one man sitting next to me pulled me aside and said, Are you crazy? You can't say that. No one's ever going to hire you or bring you in to do anything if you say that. So the next meeting, it was a similar group, and I didn't use the word Zen or priest and didn't say anything. And the person sitting on my other side, he was this marketing guy, and he pulled me aside and said, Are you crazy? No one's going to hire you unless you say you're a Zen guy. That's the only thing that's unique about you. This is what's unique about you. So I struggle with this myself. It doesn't bother me how people use the word Zen or spirituality or...

[29:21]

Or even, like, you know, all businesses are green now. I don't know if you've... You know, mobile is the most green business on earth. They do great commercials. They've got a good campaign going. But I think we know. We are brilliant, I think, at knowing what's authentic and what's not. So even though it can be, you know, it can be a little irritating when people... It's a little bit like when someone says something about us or when somebody says something about another person, I think we all know that it says more about the person who's saying it. I think we're really good at having our authenticity kind of antenna out. There may be some cases where I cringe, but mostly... I think we're pretty good at discernment.

[30:23]

Yes. To the first question, And the second question, yes. But, yeah, I think the way that I'm using the hero's journey is that it can be applied almost to, it can be applied to projects. It can be applied to even coming into, if we look at, for all of us, coming into Tassajara is kind of a hero's journey. It takes some effort to get over the road. we don't, none of us actually knows what will happen on that journey.

[31:25]

Anything can happen. When we get here, we really don't know. So there's a way, I think it's just a framework of seeing, entering, and becoming more comfortable with being in what we don't know, and of looking, sincerely looking for insight and and clarity. And that, yeah, it can be applied, as I said, to, and even to one, each period of meditation can be like a hero's journey. So huge application, big and small. Yeah, the, the, it's interesting, your question about the second, the later, later, how did you phrase it? What was your? Second half of life, yeah. You know, as you said that, I was smiling to myself because I feel like I'm really skilled at denial.

[32:27]

So I haven't quite placed myself there yet. Though it is true. And I think that our journey in that second half of life, I think there's more. our own mortality becomes more obvious. And there's a sense of, like it's written on the Han, right outside here, that birth and death are serious matters, and don't waste time. And I think we feel that less, generally, when we're younger, and we feel it more. So I think there's a sense of making each moment count, and And also there's a sense of changes in energy and being, I think, having a wider view about things.

[33:33]

A good friend of mine, Lewis Richmond, is writing a book, he has a book coming out called Aging as a Spiritual Practice. And he's been interviewing lots of people and studying this. But he's much older than I am. Not really. Thank you. I think we have time for maybe another question. Yeah. About the hero that most heroes we don't know about because we only hear about the ones who came back. And the hero is kind of like a really great icon for American culture, especially on the lowest level wage, the recruitment commercials, like the heroes. But most of them don't come back from you, come back from Brooklyn. It seems to be, to me, it seems to be a hero as kind of a precarious position.

[34:41]

I don't think that a hero would make it the zen or would have anything to Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying. The way that I'm using it is that I'm using the word a little bit differently, and I think the way Joseph Campbell is using it is that we're all heroes. It's not hero in the sense of doing anything heroic in the sense that you were talking about, say, soldiers, who there's amazing heroes. heroes there who we don't know about or come back broken. The proposition I'm making is that we are all heroes in our own journey. That when we really stop and look to that we're really bringing our own lives alive. To bring our lives alive.

[35:42]

And to bring a sense of that that we can be a hero as the dishwasher here by fully washing the dishes or baking bread. That's what I'm talking about and how we can find a sense of possibility, aliveness, freedom in whatever we're doing, no matter what it is, whether we're washing dishes or taking care of children or fighting a war. You had a question? Yeah. Well, this has been a real particular important question in my own life. And I think I've talked about this publicly before.

[36:46]

When I first... When I first started practicing Zen, when I was in my early 20s, a teacher of mine looked me in the eye and said, Mark, you have a way of pissing away your power. And I didn't think this could be a good thing. And yet it was a real gift in that I didn't know that I had any power to piss away. And I think... I think, for me, power is how we can be responsive and show up completely in different situations. And even maybe how we can find our own effectiveness. What does it mean to be able to be an effective human being? And again, that just might mean a kind of meeting, a kind of showing up, a kind of... And I think power... Power can mean a lot of different things.

[37:47]

There's power in money, role, position. But again, this power within the hero's journey, I think, is the power to how we meet difficulty, how we respond in difficult situations. I think it's time to go to sleep, or at least to... leave the Zendo. Thank you all. Thank you all very much. 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, Visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[38:49]

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