Good afternoon. There's a famous... Well, first of all, welcome to day one of the two-week seminar of the Models of Awakening. But instead of the two weeks, we're going to squeeze it all into one hour. But we'll see how that goes. But I was thinking... You know, there's a famous passage in a koan about reaching for your pillow in the middle of the night, which I think of as an image of full functioning, something about full functioning. Our body knows where the pillow is, even though we're not using our conscious mind. And last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up recognizing that there's a funny way that I've noticed that whenever I'm going to do something like this, I can feel my body sort of preparing in some way.

[01:06]

And last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up thinking, I still don't know what I'm going to talk about. I'm not prepared. And then the next thought was, I've been preparing my entire life for this talk. I've been preparing my entire life for this talk. And in some way, there's something about... And when I had that thought, I felt like our lives are so much bigger than we usually make them. And that the thought of I'm not prepared was a kind of narrowing. And the thought of, oh... my whole life has been preparing for this, for this moment. You've all been, you all, your entire life has prepared you for this moment and every other moment as well.

[02:14]

Right? So something about this practice of opening, opening our hearts, opening our hearts and opening our minds. And After considering many, many topics, I think what I really want to talk about today are the seven factors of awakening, which apparently, I did a little quiz on the bridge last night, and even very studious people here were not familiar with these seven factors of awakening. But I want to start with a Suzuki Roshi quote, or it's kind of... It's not exactly what he said, but I've changed it a bit. But it's the spirit of what he said, where he said, the purpose of our lives is to cross the shore from confusion to waking up.

[03:16]

The purpose of our lives, right? So I find a lot of people seem to wonder what their life's purpose is. And I really like that, that the purpose of our lives is is to cross the shore from confusion to waking up. Confusion to freedom. But then, you know, in his very enigmatic way, he goes on. That doesn't stop there. Then the next sentence is, and the secret. And the secret is that we cross the shore with every step we take. The purpose of our lives is to cross the shore from confusion to awakening. And the secret is... that we cross the shore with every step we take. And I keep coming back to this apparent tension between acceptance. Acceptance and discernment.

[04:17]

Acceptance and discernment. And so it's a little bit like discernment is... The purpose of our lives is to cross the shore, and acceptance is we're already there. We're already there. Beings are numberless is like this acceptance. Beings are numberless, but I vow to save them is a kind of discernment. And to me, I always fill in the third part of that, which is never... although it's said over and over again, I believe, in the Diamond Sutra, beings are numberless, I vow to save them, and there are no beings. So there's this sense of acceptance, discernment, and then somehow cutting through the duality of acceptance and discernment.

[05:21]

I thought I should say a little bit. I mean, some of you... know me for many years, and many of you don't know anything at all about me or my path. So I was thinking that I first walked into Tassajara when I was 24, and I have this memory of walking into the courtyard by myself, kind of both, I think, excited and a bit frightened and and the first people i came into contact with were uh there were two men on the back door kitchen back door porch laughing just laughing like it just seemed um it it had such a feeling of lightness and um connection and it was steve and jordan thorne steve was the tenzo that summer and um

[06:27]

And I was the... And Jordan was the Fukutin. And then I got to work in the kitchen as the dishwasher back in the days when the dishes were all done by hand in the kitchen. And I used to have... I was the head dishwasher. It was a very high-status job. But I had some amazing assistants. Assistants would flow through the most... The most memorable assistant I had was Paul Disco. Some of you may know he's kind of this master builder. Part of the responsibility of being the dishwasher in the kitchen during guest season was you had to eat all of the student meals and all of the guest meals as well. And Paul rigged a food warmer underneath the sterilizer where when the food came back, we would put these beautiful guest dinners on. underneath the sterilizer, next to the flame, so that when the dishes were done, we would have guest meal.

[07:32]

That was a Paul Disco creation. But I just loved being here, and things were a little different then than they are now, in that a group of people used to meet, and this still happens to some degree, but people would meet regularly regularly, and look at all of the people and all of the physicians. And there was quite a bit of moving around from place to place, I think a lot more then than there is now. After I was here for a year and a half, I was approached by the director and said that it was time for me to leave Tassahara and go to Green Gulch. And I said I wasn't ready. And he said, we're not asking you. And... And then the second part of that, and we want you to be in charge of the draft horse farming project at Green Gulch.

[08:33]

And I often say this little joke, you know, that I thought they misread my resume. The fact that I was from the Garden State seemed to think that I knew something about farming and that I was pretty good in gymnastics, particularly the horse in high school and college. But I knew nothing. about farming or horses, but went to Green Gulch and found that I loved doing things with my hands and kind of remembered that my father was an electrician growing up in New Jersey, and he was always doing things with his hands, building things, and I think it was quite intentional that he didn't want me to do that. He had this image of me being a white collar worker, a doctor, a lawyer or something, I suppose. And there I was, you know, with horses and I learned to sew harness and, you know, and feeding horses and driving teams and I learned to weld.

[09:39]

And I was just like in, I felt in my element bodily there. But then of course, three years later, I got tapped on the shoulder. again, and said, we want you to come to Tazahara, and we'd like you to be the Fukutun, the assistant to the head cook. And that was, I spent a year with Tia Strozer as the Tenzo. And then the following year, I was the Tenzo, and Gil Fronsdale was my Fukutun. And to this day, whenever I see Gil, he calls me boss. And I mean, one of the... Yeah, I think there was something very moving for me being in the kitchen.

[10:39]

Always something very deep and powerful, a little bit like what Steve was talking about. And I felt that it was quite something for me to... to bake bread today. First time I've baked bread here in, I think, 44 years, 45 years. I was the baker for a summer when we used to make 100 loaves a day all by hand. And I can remember the first half of that summer, I was exhausted every day from getting up early and baking bread. But by the second half of the summer, my body figured out how to do it. And I feel like I spent most of that time drinking coffee and tea, waiting, letting the bread do its thing. So there was something about work, about using my body, and then especially I think being Tenzo

[11:50]

running up against my own mental models and habits and shortcomings as a leader, seeing how hard it was for me to ask people to do things and how much confusion that caused. And then the following year being director. And again, I felt like it was always this, I think, this interesting process of dealing with this tension between Acceptance, I keep forgetting, it's funny, that word, discernment, discernment. Acceptance and discernment. And this is one of those areas where I think it's, in many things in Zen and Buddhism, it's the middle way. But I think for discernment...

[12:51]

and acceptance, it's to be really good at both simultaneously. Similar to pain and possibility, I think is another, is another, it's my, I think it's my abbreviation of the Four Noble Truths, is pain and moving, moving from pain to possibility, to pain and possibility, so not avoiding pain, not, pain is not a bad thing, suffering is not a bad thing. but not getting caught, not getting caught by suffering, but not avoiding suffering through possibility. So acceptance, acceptance is this practice of open-heartedness and the reality that living, living with this sense of appreciating, appreciating our lives, appreciating everything, and yet discernment is being able to see to see distinctions and differences, which are also super important.

[13:56]

Anyhow, back to my story. One of the things that surprised me about being director and running the kitchen was feeling the possibility of leading. and building things or doing things. There was something that really grabbed my attention about the world of work and work as practice. And I wondered why isn't everyone in the world integrating the sense of practice, the sense of heartfulness, the sense of pain and possibility, the sense of acceptance and discernment into their day-to-day lives? It seems like It just made so much sense. And then I met a couple of really influential people that summer.

[15:01]

One was a man named Rudy Hurwitch, who was an engineer and inventor and was like the first businessman that I met who I felt like had incredible integrity and presence. And there was a sense of, wow, I think I had this mental model, business as bad. Rudy was the opposite of that. And then I also met a woman named Jennifer Fudernick, who had just been the editor of a book called In Search of Excellence. In Search of Excellence was the number one selling business book in the world at the time. And when I read that book, I thought it was actually taking a lot of the ideas from Zen practice and incorporating them into the business world. Things like listening.

[16:02]

Things like the importance of understanding one's mental models. And I ended up going to business school. And I've been since then in that world. And I was thinking as I was getting ready to do this talk that I spent the last 10 years kind of traveling around the world speaking to different groups and doing speaking and workshops. And it's interesting, my all-time favorite talk I didn't get to do Right before the pandemic, I got contacted by Homeland Security, saying that they were having a meeting in Connecticut at the Coast Guard Academy with the heads of Homeland Security, the Secret Service, the FBI, and that there was tremendous suffering there.

[17:12]

Homeland Security... 250,000 employees and the highest suicide rate that they've ever had under Donald Trump. I mean, imagine having to carry out those crazy orders. And I was really looking forward to meeting with those people and speaking with those people. I did once get to teach mindfulness at the CIA. which was super interesting. And actually, I was so impressed with the people there. And outside of the room where I was doing these trainings was a Thich Nhat Hanh quote. It said, the greatest gift you can give someone is your presence by Thich Nhat Hanh. And they were people, for the most part, who really believed in their hearts that they were devoting their lives to protect the United States.

[18:13]

from foreign invasions and so forth. And they seem like really good, smart people. So the seven factors of awakening. The first factor is mindfulness. The second is... God, why do I keep having trouble with that word? Discernment, discernment. Mindfulness, discernment. then diligence, joy, ease, concentration, and it's interesting. I really appreciate Thich Nhat Hanh's interpretations. He has the seventh as letting go. It's more regularly translated as equanimity. But I like letting go. So I think mostly I want to focus on just

[19:14]

a little bit on particularly the first, the third, and the last. Mindfulness. That word. That word. Discernment. Discernment. See, I think this is great because discernment is hard for me. I struggle with... I'd say that I struggled with discernment all of my life. Acceptance comes naturally to me. I'm great at accepting. It's one of my strengths and probably one of my weaknesses. But discernment, discernment is something that I've been working on much of my life. One of the things I learned from the school of hard knocks, as it were, without discernment and without really dealing... especially with conflict and difficulty as a leader, you can really get in trouble.

[20:19]

The only ways I've ever gotten in trouble have been through by avoiding conflict, through lack of discernment. And so sometimes complete acceptance of others is... inappropriate, can be really inappropriate and not effective. You know, there's an expression in Buddhism, skillful means. And all of this, I think, is around finding greater freedom, or as Suzuki Roshi says, right, moving from confusion to freedom. And for part of my own path, I feel like, is to really more and more become more skillful at discernment, at discernment.

[21:21]

Yeah. It's interesting. I'd say that I married someone who's great at discernment and can use a little more on the acceptance side. And I would say that that is a very healthy thing, that if... If you're really good at discernment, look for someone who's good at acceptance. And if you're really good at acceptance, hopefully you'll find someone who's really good at discernment. What if you're good at neither? Deep trouble. No, actually, we're going to do a little exercise around that at the end. Yeah, I mean... You know, in some way, we're all... That's a great question, and I shouldn't joke about that, because most of us are not good. You know, in some way, we're not good at either. And so, you know, in the scheme of things, I'm better at acceptance, but I have a lot of work to do there. It's not like I don't feel like I'm an expert at acceptance.

[22:24]

It's my natural tendency. You know, it's interesting. There's all these... there's all these wonderful models of psychology and models of growth and awakening. And one is the Yogacara, the eight types of consciousness. And there, the eighth is storehouse consciousness, is what are our deepest patterns and habits. So it's interesting, even... even zazen practice, I think there is a kind of discernment that brings us, I think, to practice, to sit practice. There's something that brings us to the cushion. We have some, I think it would be not real to say that there isn't something, there's something that brings us.

[23:25]

But then, when we sit on the cushion, or when we begin to practice, it's letting go of it, letting go of, like, not trying to be some certain way, trying to, yeah, this practice of acceptance, acceptance. I think, I was telling someone, I've been reading, one of my favorite authors is an American Indian author, Jhumpal Lahiri, Some of you have known her. She wrote The Namesake, Interpreter of Maladies, and one of her most recent books is called In Other Words. And it's a book that she wrote in Italian. Her native language is Bengali and English, but she decided she really wanted to learn this other language. She kind of fell in love with Italian.

[24:27]

And to me... It reminds me a lot of falling in love with practice. And she describes that in order to learn Italian, the image she paints is, it's as though she was walking into a pond and she walks out a little bit where she has trouble standing and she gets scared and she goes back. But then she goes out further and she finds herself... in the middle of the pond and it's too far to go back she could only go forward and this to me is a great image of zazen practice or of practice of little by little letting go of those safe mental models that we have so as i was this this is one of i'd say one of my practices is how can i not be caught by my my tendency toward acceptance and move more toward discernment?

[25:33]

What is my mental model that keeps me safe in acceptance and how can I move more toward this idea of discernment? So the seven factors of awakening. The first one is mindfulness. And, you know, Mindfulness is this enormous body of work. But basically, it started with the four foundations of mindfulness. It's one of the earliest texts in which mindfulness is mentioned. Mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of the mind, and mindfulness of objects of mind. It's often translated as... seeing patterns. So it's interesting that a lot of Buddhist practitioners forget how important feelings are.

[26:35]

So one of the seminars that I'd love to give is on emotional intelligence and the study of our emotions. And I think there's so much overlap between In some way, what else do we have to study other than our emotions, our emotions, our feelings? And our feelings are in the body and in the mind, right? So mindfulness. A CEO client of mine the other day said, I'm so tired. I don't want any about this mindfulness stuff. I just want to know the whole picture. And I said, great. That's a great definition of mindfulness. The whole picture. The whole picture. What you're feeling, what you're avoiding, your pain, your possibilities, what the people you're working with are feeling, avoiding their pain, their possibilities.

[27:42]

Let's really look at the whole picture. We don't have to look at mindfulness. So I actually think that's a great definition of mindfulness. The aspiration to know mindfulness. The whole picture. The whole picture. The second factor of awakening is discernment, which I think is really interesting. Mindfulness is first, and then discernment is the second. So discernment. And I think I've noticed that there's It's hard for a lot of people. I mean, Zen tends to, I'd say, really, it looks like Zen practice emphasizes acceptance. And the discernment piece tends to get short drift. It's, yeah, beings are numberless.

[28:45]

I vow to save them. Well, how many are you saving? What are you doing to save them? What does that actually mean? Or delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. I think the beings are numberless and delusions are inexhaustible. It can be a way out of what are we actually doing? What are we actually doing to help other people? And it doesn't have to be a lot of people. It can be 1%. and to really bring some discernment to what our own delusions are and how we are working with those delusions with some precision. So a little more precision in our practice for many of us. I'm talking to myself here. But what's interesting to me, underlying all of these practices, I'm more and more getting...

[29:51]

the feeling, it has to do with self-love. That all of these practices, I think the more we can love and accept ourselves and have some discernment about how we're doing, but with self-love being the container. And it's interesting. I notice this more and more in the world of leadership. and in the world of work, that the number one quality that I find people need to develop is self-love. So it's interesting, you know, in this tension between acceptance and discernment, if you notice that there's some discomfort there, this is good. I would also say that a really important quality of practicing is to not avoid discomfort.

[31:03]

Because there's some discomfort in this idea that I need to develop more discernment, or I need to develop more acceptance, or any of the things that I'm wanting to do better, or grow, or develop. staying with it, or that image of being out in the pond of Jinn Palahiri, it's uncomfortable, right? It's a little scary, it's a little uncomfortable. And I think this is why we need community, and I think this is why teachers are so valuable, that we have friends, we have support, we have other people that we're working with that we can... help each other through this sense of discomfort. There's a... Mindfulness, discernment, and the last, letting go.

[32:09]

Letting go, or equanimity. So in some way, all of these are meant to support our practice of self-love, but also I think it's important that we keep coming back to what can we do to influence the world in a positive way? What can we do to influence the world in a positive way? I'm really glad. I've been, during breaks, I've managed to read two of these books here. I read Earthland's book, which is phenomenal. And I also read Ruth King's book. There's a great library here about books on race. I'd like to suggest that we had another bookshelf for books about climate change. And there's a... I didn't write down the exact quote, but there's a beautiful quote by a man named

[33:19]

Maybe some of you are familiar with a man named John Seed, who is someone who was hanging out with Ram Dass. And he said something, this is kind of abbreviating a longer quote of his. He says, nothing but a miracle will be of any use. When you look at things like climate change and racism, there's nothing on the horizon that could help. What kind of miracle? would it take to change these things like climate change or gun violence or any of the other racism? What would it take? He said, it would be easy. All it would take is for human beings to wake up different, to decide to change. That's all it would take, is for human beings to wake up different and decide to change. But he said, but this isn't very likely. The miracle, he said, but the real miracle is that we are descended, we humans are descended from a fish that chose to walk on land.

[34:32]

With a pedigree like that, anything is possible. We are descended from a fish that chose to walk on land. With a pedigree like that, anything is possible. Yeah, so what I was thinking, I was thinking I could have used a little bit more discernment in describing discernment. So for example, I would say in Rinzai Zen, there is a program of koans that you have to work through. And there's a kind of discernment that the teacher makes of the student, did you penetrate that koan? It's a discernment practice, I would say. As is another example would be, I don't know if you're familiar with the ten oxherding pictures.

[35:37]

They're a path to awakening in ten particular steps. They're very particular. Each one is particular. Now... Soto Zen tends to put that down as, oh, that stepladder Zen, or that some... I personally think they both, you know, they both have their place. So again, I think Soto Zen tends to shy away from anything that... Now, again, it is one of... If I were really doing discernment justice, I'd go back and see... what the original word is and how it's unpacked. But I think it is a kind of seeing clearly, seeing difference. And I think application would be having some sense of path or progression or development.

[36:44]

I mean, I would... I would go as far as to say that one way that I look at Zen practice is that it's the practice of developing one's character. And that you do that by focusing on a variety of different things. Which, again, that's one school. The other school is I also love, you know, Suzuki Roshi says, just keep practicing and you'll be wet like the fog. But that's almost the non-discernment school. But discernment is, I think, being more precise in how we are practicing. You want to say anything about that? No, thank you. I'm appreciating what you're saying and what others are saying. Thank you. Yes? This is just in response to what you were just saying.

[37:44]

For me, acceptance is really not about the discernment of good or bad. It's just that something is. And not being, not grasping it, not pushing it away, not being at war with it. It just is. And the discernment is that, okay, now that I'm willing to actually see what is, how do I respond? And... Does it, you know, is it harmful? Does it lead to more suffering? Or does it, is it beneficial? Does it lead to freedom? And what you were saying about the teacher is like that's kind of on behalf of, that's discernment about another person's practice, but it's also about our own practice. Like when little children play like warm or colder, like are you getting, you know, like pick an object in the room And you move around the room, it's like you're getting warmer, you're getting colder.

[38:47]

Yeah. Kind of feeling your way in the dark. Yeah. Yeah. A phrase or practice that I like a lot, that I use a lot in the organizational world, but I actually think it works in terms of our own... It certainly works any place where we're working together, whether it's the kitchen or the garden. But I think it works even as a way to define our own practice as compassionate accountability. Compassionate accountability. Again, it's a little bit like radical acceptance, radical love. Everything is fine. And accountability is a kind of having this sense of that word that I... It's so funny, I can't keep it in my mind. That word is discernment. Discernment. Discernment. That block.

[39:51]

That word is disassociation. But accountability is a little bit more like that koan study or the ten oxen. There's some, like, how are you tracking? How are you doing? I think super important in any groups working together, super important in relationship, right? It's like, how are we doing? How's it going? What's working? What's not working? All those things are a kind of discernment practice. And at the same time, ideally, I think this held by compassion, held by love, by real love and real care. And to be really good, to aspire to do both really, really well. Well, it's past time.

[40:59]

We should stop. Will you do something to end? Yes. No shit.

[41:09]

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