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. Good morning. Sound good? Yeah. Welcome to the San Francisco Zen Center. I want to start with a story. So the topic, what I want to talk about, a topic that happens to be the name of a book that I've written, which I have right here, called Finding Clarity. But I'm not going to talk very much about this book, but I am going to try and talk about the topic of finding clarity. I think clarity maybe is... or a nice word for maybe what we hear in the Zen tradition, maybe use the word awakening or freedom or enlightenment.

[01:11]

But clarity, I think, is either you can think of it as a close cousin or part of the path, or maybe a more secular way of talking about this freedom. I want to start with a story. And... This is a story of not that long ago, I was asked to facilitate part of a three-day retreat that was happening actually out at Green Gulch. It was a group of 16 business people, 16 CEOs that were on the board of a nonprofit, and they were there. at Green Gulch for three days trying to come up with strategy. And I was asked to do a short, whatever I wanted to do for a few hours right in the middle of this retreat.

[02:12]

And as I was walking in, someone, one of these business people came out to greet me and said, this retreat is going really badly. People are frustrated, angry, unhappy. Welcome. And I walked in and I could feel the tension. And I was not sure what I was going to do, but I thought I would do what I like to do at the beginning of meetings. I said, why don't we do some meditation? And right away, about a third of these people leaped right to the front. interested in sitting meditation. A third were in the middle, kind of interested, and in the back were a group, I think mostly men, who were like, why are we doing this? And we sat for a short time. And then I suggested that they break into small groups and that they each have five minutes each to talk.

[03:26]

And the suggested topic was that each person would talk about why are you here on the planet? How's it going? And what changes might you make in your work or your life depending on how you've answered these first two questions? And there are groups of four. There are four different groups and they were spread out around different parts of Green Gulch. And I went around... And they really entered it. I could see there were even tears. People were going deep. Their hearts were opening as they were really taking on addressing these questions. And 10, 15 minutes later, they came back into the room. And you could feel, it just felt so different. There was more lightness. There was more connection. one of the women raised her hands and said, we should have done this at the beginning.

[04:32]

We tried to go right into problem solving, into strategy, and we hadn't really connected. We hadn't really gone deep, and now we can. And I heard that the rest of the retreat went quite well, and... I got a call from the woman who had invited me in who told me that one of the men who sat at the retreat, who was quite skeptical of me coming in, said to her, I was really concerned about Mark and the woo-woo factor. He said, if what Mark did was woo-woo, let's do more of that. And... In some way, this has been and continues to be, I feel like my life's work, my life's journey is to find how to bring Dharma into the world, into the world of work.

[05:38]

And I think we're all, whether we admit it or not, I think we're all on that path. How can we bring heart and depth into our work and to all parts of our lives? And I've been studying Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, a collection of talks by Shinryu Suzuki. I don't know how many times I've read it, many, many times, and every time I read it, I keep learning, I keep finding new things. And there was a sentence where he says, if you seek for freedom, you cannot find it. freedom itself is necessary before you can acquire or find freedom. And I would probably add to that, if you seek clarity, you cannot find it. Clarity itself is necessary before you can acquire or find clarity.

[06:40]

And I think, I'm hoping that you get, the connection for me was this group of CEOs they were trying to get something done. They were seeking something. But they hadn't gotten to a place where they could stop seeking and start kind of finding, start accessing their own hearts. And in some way, and maybe at least they were moving in the direction of kind of the core dharmic tenets of... I like how I've also been reading a book, a newish book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. Highly recommend it. And in the beginning, he's kind of talking about core Zen principles. And he suggests that in order to save the planet, you have to start by engaging in these core principles.

[07:52]

And he says there's four things that you need to throw away. And he says it's not just let go, but throw away. That you should throw away your idea of self, the view of self and who you think you are. That you should throw away your idea of human beings as being separate from life. That we should throw away our ideas of human beings as being separate from life. inanimate objects, and that we should throw away our ideas that we are temporal beings, that our lives are somehow limited to this particular time, and even I would add this particular time and space. And to some degree, I feel like I, in that meeting, without talking about these, what could seem like very difficult intellectual ideas of self and human beings, throwing out these ideas and throwing out the idea of us being temporal beings, just by asking people, why are you here on the planet, is a way to get people to let go.

[09:20]

of their usual sense of self, to come back to these larger, more heartfelt questions. And I think this is also our practice, our meditation practice, is to come back and have a way of letting go of self, letting go of our usual... ideas around greed, hate, and delusion, our usual ideas of scarcity. And this is, I think, the practice of Zen is about finding real freedom. And I noticed that I... There's a few models that really interest me and attract me as I'm... as I'm engaging with Zen practice and as I'm engaging with how to bring Dharma into the world of work in a way that has depth and yet is translating Dharma into language and ways of being that are not using the language of Zen or using the language of Buddhism.

[10:42]

And I find there's a very practical view there's a psychological view, and then there's a kind of dharmic view and how to blend these, how to bring these together. And that's what I attempted to do in this book, Finding Clarity. And I want to just name the kind of seven different practices of that I hope that answered the question, well, how do you bring dharma? How do you meld together the practical, the psychological, and the dharmic or spiritual views into something that is more actionable, something that anyone can practice with, can understand and engage with, whether they're a... a Zen practitioner or not.

[11:45]

And the seven practices that I came up with are, the first is to be curious. And I like the phrase, be curious, not furious. And I think we should all have that sewn in our clothing somewhere, especially, you know, at work or driving or any places that are challenging. So be curious, not furious is the first part Drop the story or loosen your own story is the second practice. The third practice is the practice of listening. And listening is really hard. It's really hard to actually let go of our own perspective and viewpoint and really listen. Mindfulness. Mind the gaps or be aware of the gaps is the next practice.

[12:48]

Cultivate a clear vision. Transform breakdowns into breakthroughs. And the last is don't wait. And I think I just want to say a little bit about a couple of these practices and then... We'll see what happens from there. I think it's an interesting... We human beings are so paradoxical. These statements that I mentioned, if you seek freedom, you can't find it. Freedom itself is necessary before... you can acquire or find real freedom. Very paradoxical. And yet, how to make that practical? How to find enough sense of confidence?

[13:57]

How to find enough sense of not living from a sense of security? How to bring a sense of self-compassion to ourselves? How to be more compassionate? with ourselves for many, many people. For most of us, this is an ongoing kind of lifetime practice. I like this practice that I call Mind the Gaps. Mind the Gaps. Very practical. This is noticing what we aspire to be in the world. How do we aspire to show up? And I think, you know, This practice, this finding freedom before you find freedom, is like an instruction for once you sit down on the cushion. Once you sit down on the cushion, once you do meditation, it's letting go of that there's any gap.

[15:00]

There's no gap. But before you sit down, there's some motivation. There's something that we... There's something that we want that gets us there. And I think it's useful to have a sense of, what is it I'm trying to cultivate? Am I trying to cultivate more self-love? Am I trying to cultivate more awareness, more curiosity? I'm always bringing these into the world of work, where to me the question is often, what does success look like in your workplace, both in Usually the focus when we think of success is outwardly about financial objectives or growth or creating new things. And I'm often surprised how rarely even that gets talked about and aligned with. But there's also, what does success look like in terms of how we're working together?

[16:03]

How are we doing with appreciating each other? Do we want to cultivate an environment of appreciation? And how's it going? Do we want to create a culture and environment that is healthy and effective? And the practice that I talk about, the subtitle of this book is how compassionate accountability builds vibrant relationships, thriving workplaces, and meaningful lives. And in some way, all of these practices that I named are ways of engaging in a combination of compassion and accountability. Or to have accountability as a way of aligning around what success looks like. And I think this is an important quality in our communities, in our practices,

[17:05]

And in our workplaces, what does to aspire to have a love relationship with practice, to aspire to have a love relationship with our families, to aspire to have a loving and healthy relationship with the people that we work with? And minding the gaps is being as... vulnerable, open, and clear about noticing what work needs to be done to close those gaps. Do I need to be better at having real conversations? Often those gaps are in the compassion realm and are in the accountability realm. So in our workplaces, a lot of accountability without compassion means that the workplace is going to be pretty cold and difficult. But a lot of compassion without accountability is not going to work out so well either.

[18:10]

It might feel good, but it's going to feel like people won't know what success looks like. It's hard to work together when you're not clear about what success looks like in your role. And I think this is true even... It's interesting how rarely these discussions happen in... communities in groups in families what what does success look like what is it what does what does a healthy relationship look like what work do we need to do to close uh to close those gaps and the one other practice that i want to just touch on is the um well maybe the last two one the the the The next to last one is turning or transforming breakdowns into breakthroughs.

[19:12]

There's always going to be difficulties, failures, pain, and this again is a core Buddhist practice, not turning away, not suppressing, not turning away, and having the courage and the skills to work with what's challenging, what's difficulty, what feels like failure. I did something this morning that I've never done before. I took an Uber in from Mill Valley, and I got to practice all this with my Uber driver, Young woman, two young kids, a lot of debt. Impossible, she said, to get out of her current situation.

[20:16]

And I said, well, why don't you try imagining what it would... Like, what could it be? What would... What does success look like in your life? Like, if you say it's impossible, then it's impossible. But why not... What's the... What's the risk of imagining what might be possible? And I think even given the state of the world today, it's hard to not be depressed, anxious, give up hope with the events that we read around us. I make the mistake of... I read the New York Times every day. Man, I don't really recommend it. I keep telling myself it's good for my practice. But I think it's important, actually, to, you know, in some way, to not turn away.

[21:30]

To not turn away from... the world, the many worlds, right? The world of our inner world, right? Our world of family, community, friends, our world at work. You know, cynicism is easy. It's, you know, I think, I don't know where this came from. It's funny when you look, like I look this up, you know, If you're not cultivating trust, you're cultivating cynicism. And when I Googled it, it said, Mark Lesser, not helpful. But I think it's good, despite that I couldn't find where it's from, that it's easy to be cynical on all fronts. And it takes work, it takes practice. And that's what I love about Zen. I'm completely...

[22:32]

I'm completely in love with Zen practice. And I have been... I realized it was... I think for me, it was probably around the same time that Paul walked in the door. I walked in this door 49 years ago. About the same time. And still... And still, I'm still working and struggling, but I completely love this. If you seek for freedom, you cannot find it. Freedom itself is necessary before you can acquire or find freedom. And in some way, this is the seventh practice. Don't wait. So it's don't wait. Don't wait to find freedom. Don't wait for things to get better. What can we do now?

[23:33]

What can we do now? And what we can do is we can imagine peace. We can talk about peace. We can aspire for peace. We can let go of our limited views about who's right and who's wrong, who's evil and who's good. Those are not going to get us to where we want to be. And I think the same is true in your workplace. You can go home and talk about your horrible boss or your horrible workplace, or your, you know, whatever it is. But don't wait. It's like, I love the rule of thumb that I think I've got from my therapist, who for many years was a broken record. Whatever you want from another person, you go first. You want more recognition? Recognize yourself and others first. You want more appreciation? You want more peace in the world? Make yourself peaceful. Make yourself peaceful. I think this is the real work.

[24:38]

And it's hard. It's really hard. I was thinking how I was living at Tassajara. I had been living there for a year and a half when I got tapped on the shoulder and was told that my next job was going to be figuring out how to work with horses, how to farm with horses at Green Gulch Farm. I knew nothing about horses or farming. But the reason I bring that in is that what I learned, horses are really skittish. You have to approach horses with a clear mind and a clear heart, or they will know. And I think humans are very similar to horses in that way. I think we are all... extremely skittish, and that we need these practices to calm the skittish nervous system, to calm the brain, so that we can enter, so that we can keep coming back and entering these practices.

[25:45]

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, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[26:11]

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