This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everybody. My name is Robert Thomas. Do... Do on path of kindness. Lion mountain path of kindness. She's on Do on. I'm the president of Zen Center, and I am the last speaker in a series of what at Zen Center we call administrative positions. So for a few months now, we've had a series on Wednesday night of people who are in administrative leadership positions coming and talking about their work and their practice and their work.

[01:14]

So I think I'm the last one. And I'm really happy to be talking about this topic. It's... especially kind of meaningful to me at this point because I am ending my position somewhat soon. So I was thinking even today as I was thinking about this talk, I thought, well, this is a really nice thing to do. At the end of a term, you know, you can actually have a chance to think about your job and say something about it and reflect and offer some thoughts and Advice to the next person, maybe, or something? Is Chuck Gould here tonight? No. Okay. Many of you know Chuck Gould. He's a member of the Sangha. When I first became president, he had a party over at his house.

[02:17]

This was like seven years ago. And for some reason, he was very excited that I came, and his daughter was visiting... from college, and she was like a sophomore in college. And Chuck was like, oh, Robert, Robert, come over here. You have to meet my daughter. And he made this big deal out of introducing me to his daughter as the president of Zen Center. And it was just like, for me, he didn't need to do it for me, but I think he was, I don't know, whatever was going on. But his daughter, like she looked at me like this, and She was totally unimpressed. She was like, well, that doesn't make any sense. A president of a Zen center? I said, I know, it doesn't make any sense. Abbot of Zen center, right? So I'm going to talk a little bit about a little bit about

[03:28]

a little bit about what I do, but mostly about how I approach what I do, how I practice in this job and what that means to me, how I approach a job, which is something like an executive director. People often ask me, what does the president of Zen Center do? And it's something like an executive director of a non-profit We have to run certain aspects of the organization, like functionally, like a business. We have an accounting office, and we take care of facilities, and we have people come and stay in all kinds of different ways, programs as guests. There's a lot of details, especially with three centers, a lot of things to pay attention to.

[04:33]

I'll talk a little bit about how I do that as I talk tonight. I always wanted to be an artist growing up I had an aunt, my aunt Astrid, who never had children, but she paid a lot of attention to me, and I was very close to her. She was my father's aunt, actually, so she was a great aunt of mine. And by the time I was, by the time I was like, 18 years old, she was about 75 years old, but extremely vibrant, and she was very much into the arts, and when she was young, her husband had invented the couch that rolls out into the bed in Chicago, and so they made a bunch of money, and they traveled the world and collected art and did all these amazing, wonderful things that were very different from what my parents, who are from

[05:57]

small town in Iowa were interested in doing. So at some point in college, I decided that I was going to be an artist, and I wanted to tell my Aunt Astrid. So I went to her, and I said, Aunt Astrid, and she was the head of a... As a volunteer, she was the head of the art museum bookstore. She was like a docent in the art museum bookstore manager at the university I went to. So I went there and I said, and Astrid, I'm going to be an artist when I grow up. I mean, I was like, I was sure. And she looked at me and she said, why would you want to do that? I said, what do you mean? She said, the world doesn't need any more artists.

[06:58]

I thought she was going to be all happy for me and proud of me or it would make her happy. I said, really? She said, yeah, the world doesn't need any more artists. There's plenty of artists out there. The world needs People who can make it a better place. The world needs people who are going to take care of each other and make the world better. I think at that point in her life, maybe she was a little disillusioned with artists or something like that. I don't know. She didn't say much more than that. But I left. I was just kind of like, you know, I think I just remember just like in a cloud, just like leaving. Oh, my gosh. So I eventually came to San Francisco in 1983 when I was 24 years old.

[08:11]

And I never really worked for anybody else. I mean, in college I had a job and I was like a waiter in a restaurant. Then I got a job here as a waiter in a restaurant. It was kind of a disaster. But very soon, I got hooked up with some other artist types, and we formed a recording studio and a film. I ended up studying filmmaking, and we made a film production company and did that for about four years. And that was really fun. It was like 1980, 84 to 88. And we did videos and films and all kinds of commercials and music videos. And we were all over the Bay Area and Los Angeles and were really having a great time.

[09:14]

In the process, I developed a really bad drug habit. And... About 1988, everything kind of fell apart for me and I left my buddies to their own devices and decided it was not a lifestyle that was going to work for me. And so one of my friends knew of a guy who who had a magazine in the South of Market, and he asked me if I wanted to be the editor of this magazine. So I became the editor and creative director of a kind of a nightlife-style magazine in South of Market. And that was kind of fun for a while. And then through that, I met somebody else who had started some magazines, and he wanted to start a magazine that would... be a city, you know, slick city magazine. So I became a partner with him in that. And that lasted a little while.

[10:15]

So I did magazine work for a couple of years. And then, but this drug habit thing. kept coming back. So a lot of substance abuse in the late 80s. And then a friend of mine, my best friend from college, moved to San Francisco and made a bunch of money. And he wanted to open up a restaurant and bar. So he asked me if I would do that with him. And I said, sure. So we built this small place. And for three years, I was at this restaurant. And for the first year, nobody came. And then the second year, the word got out and everybody started coming. David's nodding his head over there. So then the party would just show up every night. And for me, that was not so good. So I still remember... I still remember I was standing in the bar and I said, this is not sustainable.

[11:20]

I would think I was on my third margarita. It was like only 7.30 at night. And so I said, I'm leaving to my friend. I just turned to him and within a month I was in Asia and completely doing something different. That's my work history. That's my resume, kind of coming to Zen Center. Actually, at some point, I showed somebody my resume here at Zen Center. I was a new student. And like two years ago, somebody found it and gave it to me. It was like in the Abbott's office or something. I think they were cleaning out Paul's stuff or something. It was up in his office. So I was not really into work, you know? I was like... I didn't understand work. I didn't really have a feel for it.

[12:21]

And I was in a monastery practicing in Thailand in a forest monastery. And I was doing, we only had to work there for like an hour a day. And the work that I was doing there was delivering water to these places, these jugs around the forest. And it was really primitive. There was a well, and we would drop the bucket in. We'd put the bucket on this pole that had a rope, and one person would put the pole on their shoulder, and the person in front would put the pole on their shoulder. And then we'd go around to these other places, and we'd dump some water out. So I was doing this with this guy, this really... This guy who'd been ordained as a monk there at this monastery. And as we were pouring it out in one place, he looked at me, and he was kind of like whispered to me, and he said, I'm going to go to Japan. I said, oh, really?

[13:25]

He says, I said, why? He said, they have bodhisattvas there, and they have mind-to-mind transmission. And it's like, oh. Interesting. And so then we just started, you know, I didn't know what he was talking about. So we go and deliver more water. So then I was in the library and I saw a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And I saw the back of it. I looked at Suzuki Roshi and I thought... All I can think about was bodhisattva and mind-to-mind transmission. And I was looking at Suzuki Roshi's picture, you know. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what it looks. So eventually I made it back here to San Francisco. I made it back to San Francisco. And soon after that, this was like 1993, September of 93, I went to Tassajara.

[14:33]

And through some weird circumstance, I ended up having to walk in over the road because the office here said that there would be a ride over the road, but there really wasn't. So I got there, and all they said, I missed dinner. There was no dinner. And there was no bathhouse because they'd torn the bathhouse down that day. So somebody came by and said, you need to come to the work circle at 8.30 tomorrow. Don't be late. So I went to bed and went to the work circle the next day. And... I saw a Wind Bell magazine recently, and there's a picture in the Wind Bell magazine of some people dismantling.

[15:38]

They hadn't completely dismantled the bathhouse, so I was on this crew the next day dismantling the old bathhouse and taking big pieces of wood and lifting it off and taking it somewhere else with all these guys. There's a picture in the wind bell, and some of these guys you can kind of see, and the picture of me is faint and kind of washed out, and there's like a cloud around me or something, and it's exactly how I felt there. I was like, what am I doing here? It's like I'm working on some kind of construction crew, and... I did that for a couple of days, and then I went to Galen, and I said, I don't want to do that kind of work. Galen was the work leader. Galen Godwin, at the time, she was there as the work leader.

[16:39]

And I said, I kind of have a sore back. I don't want to do that kind of work. And she said, do you have a sore back? I said, yeah, I think so. And she said, well, I have the perfect job for you. So then I became like, she took me to the back of the shop and I cleaned lanterns for like the next few days. And then lit lanterns, I was like on the Benji crew for the rest of the time. And that was so much fun. But I left. I left after like 10 days thinking, Zen Center is not the place for me, is it? I worked way too hard, and I said, I didn't come to practice to work like this. So, some things happened that I ended up staying at Zen Center. Actually, maybe I'll tell the rest of the story.

[17:42]

I was walking out the gate, and I ran into Mel Weitzman, and he thanked me for coming, and it made a huge difference to me in my life. that somebody thanked me and stopped and saw me. So I ended up, I came to City Center, and immediately I just did not really understand what work was all about. I remember being in the kitchen like my first day, and I was washing dishes but not really paying attention, and I cut myself really bad on a knife in the sink in the back of the kitchen, and Lou Hartman came running over, and he took this thing and like, held on my finger like this and smashed it together really hard and said, just hold on to this. So I held on to it and he said, you're going to be okay. And a series of things like that happened. I just didn't understand what it was like to work. So I know this is kind of like a long preamble, but eventually I went back to Tassajara and I was like on the shop crew

[18:52]

And then I was on the kitchen crew. And I was Fukuten in the kitchen, which is kind of like a manager of the kitchen. I was a Doan. Then I was Tenzo in the kitchen. I was the Eno, head of the meditation hall. And then I was the Sheikah. Then I came here to City Center. I was the director. here at City Center for a couple of years, and then became the corporate secretary, which is a Zen Center officer position, and then I think I became president about seven, almost seven years ago. And in February of this year, I stopped being president. It will be about seven and a half years total as president. And it's been a tremendous tremendous experience for me. Amazing and wonderful and so, so positive.

[19:58]

I've met so many wonderful people. So as I was working, I really had this, you know, this opportunity to start to understand. As I started doing these positions at Zen Center, I had a chance to understand, well, actually, what is a bodhisattva? We say it's somebody who dedicates their life to engaging with the circumstances of the world to benefit all beings, and that they commit to that, they make a vow, So I started to see myself as a bodhisattva.

[21:13]

If I was a bodhisattva, what would I do now? How would I approach this situation? Vowing to benefit all beings right now, myself included. It's a benefiting all beings with a lack of duality there In benefiting myself, I'm benefiting others. In benefiting others, I'm benefiting myself. So there's a simultaneity there. There's a non-separation there between the two. So then I started looking around me, watching the older people, the older students, the teachers. Blanche and Paul. Mel and Reb.

[22:15]

And I was lay ordained with Reb in 1994 and became a priest with Norman in 2000. And so Norman and... Christina and Linda. And I just watched them. And I just watched, well, how did they... how do they engage in this situation? How do they start to... And so I saw that, and of course I read with Suzuki Roshi and other teachers, that it's not about going and doing our practice over here on the cushion and then going and doing something else so that we can practice on the cushion. It's like one continuous thing throughout the day, one continuous practice life. That vow is manifesting itself to benefit all beings in every moment of the day. How could it be any different than that?

[23:18]

So I started to kind of try that on as a person. And actually doing something that, you know, like at Tassajara, like... like serving guest meals for people who pay a lot of money and come down and want to get a good meal. So actually having to do something is really kind of important there and really makes that vow real and work on so many levels at once. And then... So I wasn't very used to making commitments in my life before I came to Zen Center, but I saw once I came to Zen Center that really nothing important is going to happen in my life without a commitment. It just wasn't happening before, and it just wasn't going to happen without some kind of commitment.

[24:27]

So I committed to practice and I committed to practice in each moment to try as hard as I could at least. You know, I'm not perfect and nobody is. So I make mistakes. Have to apologize. So the great thing about my job now is that my job is very kind of close to being in the real world. I relate to the wider sangha quite a bit. and I look at financial spreadsheets and I have to talk to engineers and architects and I have to go out to lunch or dinner with donors and meet them right where they're at and have conversations with them that make sense to them.

[25:45]

You know? We live in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. And there are many people in this world at Zen Center and in the wider Sangha. Because of that, you know, They're afraid. They're suffering in various ways. They're angry. So the bodhisattva has to meet all of these situations in a skillful way, in a helpful way.

[27:04]

And that's been a great... I'm grateful for my teachers and for my sitting practice. But to actually have to engage in the world with a kind of shaping vision about how I do it totally transformed my life. Changed everything. So the volatility gets met with vow. You know, things can change so rapidly. Our situations, one day, everything is good and we're set. And to take a Zen Center example, we've got the staffing covered over here. And the next day, it falls apart. You know, this person decides to go back to school. This person is going to become an RBT student now.

[28:17]

Okay. Okay. So we meet that with our vow. Okay, well, that's good. We meet that with a vow to be present. And the uncertainty gets met with a wisdom. which understands that nothing is permanent anyways. Things are always changing. And ultimately, we don't know. We can try this, but will it work?

[29:23]

We don't know. And for the bodhisattva, the complexity gets met with compassion and clarity. Amidst the 100 things to do, still there's this thing in front of us that needs attention, needs its attention. So let's have some clarity about how we're approaching this situation. And then when we're done with that, we'll move on to this. Treating things with respect and compassion. No matter how complex and intertangled they are. And then with ambiguity, You know, is it this or is it this?

[30:25]

I don't know. We meet that with an agility and flexibility of the mind, which can actually understand the ambiguity and work with it until maybe it resolves itself, maybe it doesn't. So there have only been so, I don't know how many presidents in the 50-year history of Zen Center, but not so many. Vicki was president before I was president. She was a wonderful president. And then Susan will be president after me, Susan O'Connell.

[31:28]

But I always tell people, I hope you all get a chance to be president of Zen Center. Even you, Chris. You know, when I became president of Zen Center, it was like my bodhisattva path. It's like Somebody turned the dial up, you know? It was like I was... Then I was really on the path. So the bodhisattva path, once we make this kind of commitment, it allows us to access a part of ourself that the challenge... You know, I think it's a difficult job. I think it's so great that it's so difficult. And I wish it was harder because the bodhisattva needs that kind of challenge.

[32:37]

I try to make it as hard as I can. I try to take on as much as I can. But it could be harder. Because in the process, I have to access parts of myself that call into question my vow at the deepest level of myself, of my being. Well, this is difficult. What is my vow now? To be present, available, ready... be helpful. Taking on that kind of bodhisattva commitment transformed how I perceive myself and perceive the world. It required me to be bigger.

[33:53]

than I was before. I couldn't be this small person on the sidelines anymore saying, oh, I don't think that's a good idea. I actually had to be bigger. I had to include myself and other beings. I had to be... As Dogen says, the entire universe is the true human body. I had to be that big if I could be. That commitment asked me to be connected to other people and stay connected to other people. on a deep level, on a deep, meaningful level, at the level of vow, at the level of I vow to be a benefit to you completely.

[35:03]

And it required me to stay connected with people from that place. And sometimes it's not so easy. Living in community is pretty intense sometimes. And we have disagreements. And sometimes it feels like we're at odds or we're on opposite ends of an issue or something. So how to stay in relationship and stay connected even then. And then making that kind of commitment also connected me back with something very, very important for me, at least. And this was that, you know, I wouldn't have just gone to my Auntie Astrid and said, I want to be an artist just to make her happy.

[36:11]

It was actually, there was a part of me that wanted to have a creative life. I have very active imagination, and I wanted to explore creativity in my life and learn how to express myself as an artist might. So making the bodhisattva, making their commitment, actually asks... ask that each person makes a request, that each person relate to their life, the past, the present, and the future, as a creative process. Not as a destination or a goal, but actually a creative process, as if our life itself is becoming our art form. Our life itself is becoming the deepest expression of my creativity is my response to this moment.

[37:25]

How could I possibly be helpful now? And then we try something. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. So anyways, that's how I think about my work and the great opportunity that I've had at Zen Center to serve so many people and to serve you all and to serve the Sangha people And, you know, when I first came here, they put me on this. John Lombardi, I was John Lombardi's assistant for a little while, and he decided that I was going to repaint the kitchen. And I'd never done anything like that before in my life.

[38:31]

And Vicki was the director at the time, and I'm in there painting the kitchen. It's like going on for like three days, and they didn't know what to do, and I'd only made like three feet of progress. And it was like everybody, it was obvious this was not going to work. So I could tell that everybody was getting real agitated around me, that I was just like, I'm just going to paint. And they assigned Paul to come and talk to me and says, this isn't working, Robert. And I was so grateful that I wasn't going to paint the kitchen anymore because it was going to be like a three-year project at the rate that I was going... They hired professionals and they came in and did it in like a few days. Anyway, I don't know where that fits in. But, oh, I was thinking, well, I'll probably go back, you know, after I'm president, then maybe I'll get back on the painting duty or something like that.

[39:33]

Benji. Become a Benji. I'd love to do that. Anyways, thank you all very much for your attention tonight. How are we doing time-wise? Is this the time to stop? Yeah? We can take two questions? Okay, great. Any questions? So, I guess I'm going to say that You say yes to as many things as possible. You want to take everything off as part of the challenge. And so I'm wondering, how do you make the decision to say no or to ask for help? Good question. Thank you for that. That's a really important question.

[40:40]

And I'll tell you how I do it. And it's not necessarily that I'm saying this is like a really great way to do it or how you should do it. So I'll tell you how I do it. I say yes. And then the no's just kind of happen because I've said yes and I can't say yes to. I say yes as much as I can. So I'm not a practice leader here at City Center as an example. And they... And occasionally they ask me, and I think about it, but I've said yes to all these other things, almost like before, and I can't say yes to that and say yes to this other thing, continue to say yes. So I try to keep things from my side pretty simple and not strategize too much. Like, I don't want to say yes too much because there may be a yes or a no.

[41:47]

I'll say no to something because I might want to do a yes. I don't strategize like that at all. I say yes, yes, yes, yes, and then somebody comes and eventually there's a, well, no, I can't do that because I'm doing this other thing. And for the most part, and this is kind of in the complexity of all the possible yeses and nos, it helps me have clarity. Okay, well, I'm sorry. And a clear response to the person. I'm really sorry. I can't say yes to that because I've said yes to this. So yes is my reference point there. And then the other part of your question was, being able to ask for help. And that can be pretty challenging for me sometimes.

[42:56]

I've always been pretty self-sufficient and kind of self-contained. But I try to stay... One thing I learned coming to Zen Center that I had no idea about myself was actually that I like to be around people. And I like to collaborate. And I like to cooperate. And that's part of this creative... Because then things happen that I could never have imagined for myself. And so... The best way that I've found to kind of be in a position to ask for help, and actually I rarely have to ask for help, but sometimes I do, is to, from the beginning, to be connected to a lot of people, to be connected to the people I'm around, and so that then naturally we understand as the situation evolves that I can't do this or...

[44:15]

I'm in over my head or I'm, I don't know how to do this. So it kind of, when we stay in kind of a connection with the people around us and some kind of, you know, co-operation and we see it that way, then we kind of naturally start to develop a feeling that, oh, this person, this needs help or I need help now. And then the structure, the The support is there. And it's not so much like I'm off doing this and suddenly I need to go get some people to help me do my thing. It's like a different kind of concept. We are working together and the help is available. So it turns out that, like I said, I don't have to ask for help so much. As long as I stay...

[45:17]

connected to people around me and stay in relationship with people. Thank you for the question. Is there another one? When you're talking about brain-to-brain transmission or resignation, mind-to-mind transmission, how do you know when to do that or when that's happening. It's like meeting your teachers as a teacher to the students driving to receive a transmission. I don't know anything about mind-to-mind transmission. I'm sure it's happened.

[46:26]

I still enjoy looking at the back of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind face. Yeah. Maybe that's enough for tonight. Thank you all very much. Have a good evening. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:19]

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