Speaker 1: We think we have more control than we do. We
Speaker 1: tend to create problems where they don't exist, and we
Speaker 1: think we can fix problems that we can't fix.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Paul Agostinelli,
Speaker 2: a Zen Buddhist sense and founder of zenant Work. He
Speaker 2: co founded three startups and led strategy for several others.
Speaker 2: In addition to leadership at Zenwork and eon Zen, Paul
Speaker 2: currently serves on the faculty and board of Willow Farm
Speaker 2: Contemplative Caregiving Center, and since twenty nineteen, has led the
Speaker 2: Mindfulness program at Red Mountain, Colorado, Residential Treatment Center for teens.
Speaker 3: Hi Paul, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eric, it's good to be here with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am happy to have you on. I don't
Speaker 3: ever know whether to call you Paul or what I
Speaker 3: used to call you, sense because you were my zen
Speaker 3: teacher for several years. So this is a conversation that's
Speaker 3: long overdue, and I am really happy to be happy.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be here too, chatting in this way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are sitting in your zendo in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 3: I love to do interviews in person, so it's great
Speaker 3: to be here. Let's start like we always do with
Speaker 3: the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking
Speaker 3: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 3: two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second,
Speaker 3: and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins, and the grandparent says the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this parable is a very vivid illustration of
Speaker 1: what in Zen Buddhism we understand is karma. Right, is
Speaker 1: that everything that we do say or even think has consequences,
Speaker 1: and everything we do say or think kind of supports
Speaker 1: seeds in a certain way. We have this collection of
Speaker 1: things in one wolf that we're labeling good and another
Speaker 1: that we're labeling bad. And there's some interesting questions kind
Speaker 1: of embedded in the parable itself too, Right, It's like,
Speaker 1: are they really good? Are they really bad? What does
Speaker 1: it mean to be good and bad? Or what does
Speaker 1: it mean to feed? You know, each of these wolves?
Speaker 1: And then the deepest one is well, who is doing
Speaker 1: the watering? Right? That's the core kind of question. So
Speaker 1: just to say a little bit about those aspects too.
Speaker 1: The good and bad part is something that we understand
Speaker 1: and Buddhism that I understand from myself more as wholesome
Speaker 1: and unwholesome, okay, or self centered and less self centered okay.
Speaker 1: The bad is more self centered, less wholesome. These are
Speaker 1: words that I find more resonant.
Speaker 3: Today's skillful and unskillful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean in a way more in alignment with reality.
Speaker 1: I think that's where the wholesomeness comes in. It's not
Speaker 1: wholesome in a moral sense, you know that that's good,
Speaker 1: but it's wholesome that it includes more of reality. It's
Speaker 1: a whole or actually picture of reality. And that's why
Speaker 1: self centeredness is actually less in a chord with reality,
Speaker 1: because while we do have individual selves, we're also intimately
Speaker 1: connected with everybody else. And when we're acting or speaking
Speaker 1: or thinking in ways that reinforce an independent self that
Speaker 1: tends to be out of a chord with reality and
Speaker 1: tends to have deleterious effects for ourselves and other it
Speaker 1: causes suffering. It's a really nice kind of template, right
Speaker 1: to look at. It's like, what are the tendencies? Okay,
Speaker 1: I like that too, this word to look at tendencies
Speaker 1: instead of qualities. We all have more or less wholesome tendencies,
Speaker 1: more or less self centered tendencies. We all have them.
Speaker 1: And what do we do with these tendencies? How do
Speaker 1: we feed them? This is the question of feeding it, right,
Speaker 1: so when we speak in a certain way, when we
Speaker 1: act in a certain way, and when we give a
Speaker 1: certain quality of attention to certain of the tendencies, it
Speaker 1: tends to reinforce them, and it tends to have deleterious
Speaker 1: effects down the line and other and likewise, you know,
Speaker 1: likewise with the more wholesome ones. So it really sets
Speaker 1: us up with a really nice landscape for how karma
Speaker 1: works and how every moment of every day, thinking, speaking,
Speaker 1: and acting, we are watering certain seeds, certain tendencies or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that interpretation and it's the one that
Speaker 3: makes sense to me in that Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 3: where we put our attention, is kind of what tends
Speaker 3: to grow or flourish. And I also love that word tendencies.
Speaker 3: And like you, I've done a lot of one on
Speaker 3: one coaching work with people, and I find tendency a
Speaker 3: really useful word because if we go stronger than tendency
Speaker 3: to quality or personality or traits, we're reinforcing a sense
Speaker 3: of stuckness.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: But if we don't acknowledge that there are tendencies in
Speaker 3: a certain direction, we overlook what are and sort of
Speaker 3: stumbling blocks. And so that's also a word I've sort
Speaker 3: of independently arrived at as a really useful one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And it takes away the duality the right
Speaker 1: of the situation that we need to eliminate something and
Speaker 1: have the other one be the victor. You do have
Speaker 1: the language and the parable which one.
Speaker 3: Wins, yes, right, yes, and neither of.
Speaker 1: Them really win. It's just supporting certain tendencies and diminishing others.
Speaker 1: You may know, Eric, there's a very famous en coon
Speaker 1: which is its own kind of Buddhist parable in a
Speaker 1: way around cause and effect, which is the co on
Speaker 1: of Yakujo's Fox. An old man appears in the Dharma
Speaker 1: hall from Master Hyaka Joe, and he's in the back
Speaker 1: and he listens to dharmatags and Yaka Joe goes up.
Speaker 1: This is an ancient Chinese master from the Golden age
Speaker 1: of Zen. Right, and he goes and he says, well,
Speaker 1: who are you? And he says, well, many years ago,
Speaker 1: I was a teacher and I was asked if an
Speaker 1: enlightened being is beyond the law of cause and effect.
Speaker 1: And I told this person that he is, or they are.
Speaker 1: An enlightened person transcends cause and effect, and for that
Speaker 1: error I was condemned to be a fox for five
Speaker 1: hundred lifetimes. This parable also has a four legged in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a wolf of fox. So the man says, please
Speaker 1: say a turning word to me so that I can
Speaker 1: be released from this curse, if you will, and Yakuju says,
Speaker 1: you cannot ignore cause and effect, and then he's released
Speaker 1: from this bondage. Right, So we can't say, you know
Speaker 1: good and bad. We can't separate those. We can't say
Speaker 1: enlightened is beyond cause and effect and deluded is not
Speaker 1: beyond cause and effect. We're always in the thick of things, right.
Speaker 3: I've been working on a project around The Dowday Ching,
Speaker 3: which is a book I love, and I know that
Speaker 3: part of the reason I think I was drawn to
Speaker 3: Zen without even knowing it is it tends to be
Speaker 3: a little bit of a marriage between Taoism and Buddhism,
Speaker 3: and The dowd Ay Ching has been a book I've
Speaker 3: loved since I was eighteen years old. But I was
Speaker 3: reading a philosophical interpretation of it and they used a
Speaker 3: phrase in there. They called it consume umatory relatedness, and
Speaker 3: I love that idea that, like our relatedness to every
Speaker 3: other thing, consumes everything. It is the true nature of reality.
Speaker 3: So how could you in any case be beyond that?
Speaker 3: How could you be beyond you know, cause and effect? Now,
Speaker 3: cause and effect is a very complicated thing, right, It
Speaker 3: reaches back to the beginning of time in some ways, right,
Speaker 3: which I find a fascinating thing to contemplate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And it really it opens it up to
Speaker 1: the great mystery, right, because there's so many interconnections of dependencies,
Speaker 1: multiple causes from multiple effects, all of them intertwined in
Speaker 1: a very complex way. And then when you add in,
Speaker 1: you know, even your thoughts or creating effects, right, what
Speaker 1: subtlety is involved in that? Yeah, it's nothing you can
Speaker 1: ever really conceptually grasp. It's nothing you can even fully
Speaker 1: be aware of, right, even it's some kind of a
Speaker 1: neutral witness, it's just impossible to do that. So we're
Speaker 1: kind of thrown back upon ourselves in a posture of humility,
Speaker 1: in a posture of wonder, in a posture of really
Speaker 1: recognizing the mystery of all this, but also recognizing the
Speaker 1: power of our intention when we put it towards what
Speaker 1: we want to nourish with our feeding, with our watering,
Speaker 1: what we want to nurture.
Speaker 3: So I want to explore karma a little bit more
Speaker 3: because we don't talk about it often on the show
Speaker 3: using that word, and it's a word that's made its
Speaker 3: way into the popular parlance. Right, and we have different things,
Speaker 3: but you use the phrase all our thoughts, behaviors, actions
Speaker 3: have consequences. Now, if we're oriented in a Western religion,
Speaker 3: idea consequence is being imposed by someone who is setting
Speaker 3: the rules and imposing consequence. That's not what we mean
Speaker 3: in this case. Say more about what that word consequence
Speaker 3: means in this context in the Buddhist context.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, consequences has this almost kind of punitive or reward,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of quality to it. But effects is
Speaker 1: probably a better word. You know, cause and effect, the
Speaker 1: law of cause and effect. So karma literally means action,
Speaker 1: and we understand the law of karma to apply to
Speaker 1: volitional action. So it's something where where the self or
Speaker 1: the being right makes some kind of a volition or
Speaker 1: a willful action speech or thought. Okay, that is what
Speaker 1: then creates a consequence. It is a law of consequence
Speaker 1: that things unfold from that in the same way that
Speaker 1: certain chemical combinations produce their effects. That the laws of
Speaker 1: physics apply. It just happens. It's not any person or
Speaker 1: any you know, even consciousness in a sense that has
Speaker 1: written these down. Although I'm not one to say whether
Speaker 1: that's true or not. Perhaps you know, it's just as
Speaker 1: true as and as observable as the laws of physics.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And then when we look into the subtlety of what
Speaker 1: these volitional actions are, I think this is where we
Speaker 1: can get into, well, what do we mean by good
Speaker 1: or bad? Or positive or negative? And I think the
Speaker 1: more subtle really discernments are wholesome or unwholesome, and selfish
Speaker 1: or unselfish. And when we see that when we're acting
Speaker 1: in a selfish way, or we've acted in a selfish way,
Speaker 1: the effects of that on other people and even on
Speaker 1: ourselves tend to have some kind of a distorted quality
Speaker 1: to them. They don't open up into harmony, into peace,
Speaker 1: into connection, into alignment, into these things into peace that
Speaker 1: we know and we feel in our bodies are kind
Speaker 1: of are in accord with a deeper, more benevolent nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I often think of karma too, in a sense
Speaker 3: that any thought or behavior that I do makes it
Speaker 3: more likely that thought or behavior will happen again yeah, right,
Speaker 3: almost as if I'm, like you said, I'm planting the
Speaker 3: seeds of my future right there in that thing. I
Speaker 3: think the question of volitional is really interest though, and
Speaker 3: I talk on the show sometimes I'm really interested in
Speaker 3: how much choice do people have? Do we all have
Speaker 3: equal amounts of choice? And I'm throwing away the debate
Speaker 3: about whether we have free will or not at all
Speaker 3: because I just don't find it useful framing. But you
Speaker 3: might say that the decision for me to do a
Speaker 3: certain thing, say, something that we would regard as unwholesome,
Speaker 3: and somebody who suffered severe trauma and their response to
Speaker 3: that trauma is the same action. We may have different
Speaker 3: levels of volition in that behavior, you know. I think
Speaker 3: about it with addiction a lot, right, because the amount
Speaker 3: of choice I feel like I have now around drugs
Speaker 3: and alcohol feels radically different than fifteen years ago, you know.
Speaker 3: And so how do you think of volition in that way?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think you put your finger on it that
Speaker 1: there are more or less degrees of volition. But as
Speaker 1: you know, being a teacher of spiritual habit development, you
Speaker 1: know that there are always these choice points. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So when those choice points come in and then with
Speaker 1: the choice that you make, that's the one that is
Speaker 1: going to be the most say, karmically impactful. Yep. Right,
Speaker 1: it's kind of when people start meditation, you know, and
Speaker 1: you probably teach this too. There's that moment when you
Speaker 1: know you've lost the count of your breath. Right, there's
Speaker 1: that moment, and that's a choice point right there. You
Speaker 1: can choose to go back to your practice, or you
Speaker 1: can choose to go off into that fantasy right because
Speaker 1: it's so good, or you really need to resolve the
Speaker 1: problem that you've been fretting about. Right. Oftentimes it's a
Speaker 1: very subtle choice point, but it does come. Karma is
Speaker 1: created from that choice right there. And those choices are
Speaker 1: available no matter how traumatized you are, no matter how
Speaker 1: much in addiction you are, those choices are certainly available.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I agree. I think there is always some
Speaker 3: degree of choice, you know, and believing you don't have
Speaker 3: it is not a very good recipe for future success
Speaker 3: in any endeavor. Right, You have to believe that you
Speaker 3: have choice.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes when I think about that, every thought I have,
Speaker 3: every action I do is producing karmic effect or consequence.
Speaker 3: I can get a little freaked out.
Speaker 1: It's daunting, isn't right. Yeah, it's intimidating.
Speaker 3: So how do you position that so that that's an
Speaker 3: empowering idea or an idea that leads to better choices
Speaker 3: and not to like chronic neurosis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an excellent question. It's an excellent question. And
Speaker 1: here's what I've observed and how I take this on
Speaker 1: in my life, because this is a path for me
Speaker 1: as well. Is taking full responsibility is the path to
Speaker 1: the life of deepest meaning and purpose. Really to take
Speaker 1: it on. One teacher in my lineage goes so far
Speaker 1: as to say, really awakening is to see everything that
Speaker 1: happens as the same as what you do. What you
Speaker 1: do and what happens to you are the same thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now that's a pretty powerful statement, right. You can kind
Speaker 1: of misunderstand that in a way and say, well, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you caused this aggression to happen to you. It isn't that.
Speaker 1: It isn't that. It's that if you take on full
Speaker 1: responsibility for your life, not in a moral sense, you
Speaker 1: know that this thing that happened was good or bad,
Speaker 1: and I'm blameworthy for that, but that I am intrinsically
Speaker 1: fully participating in this thing that I call my life,
Speaker 1: whether I'm conscious of that or not, and I try
Speaker 1: to actually raise my consciousness of that participation. You just
Speaker 1: are left with a sense of profound responsibility to know
Speaker 1: that everything you do, say, or think has these consequences,
Speaker 1: and there's such a great fruit of that. The fruit
Speaker 1: of that is this amazing empowerment, and it's this amazing
Speaker 1: sense of meaning and significance, even enchantment. It's something that
Speaker 1: I've come more and more these days to connect with
Speaker 1: in terms of my practice and the work that I
Speaker 1: do with my coaching clients is to bring the inherent mystery, magic,
Speaker 1: enchantment of human life alive. And when when we take
Speaker 1: a responsibility for our lives, we come into great contact
Speaker 1: with that. As long as we are putting the responsibility elsewhere,
Speaker 1: putting the agency elsewhere, we lose that contact and we
Speaker 1: get up all in our heads about planning things or
Speaker 1: pushing responsibility off. So I don't know if that answers
Speaker 1: your question. It is daunting, it is intimidating, but it
Speaker 1: is it's the path of a great empowerment and joyful life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We'll talk maybe in a little bit about right view.
Speaker 3: But it strikes me as that's a form of right view,
Speaker 3: because I think the thing that gets in that statement
Speaker 3: by the Bizen teacher you just gave sounds a little
Speaker 3: bit like the law of attraction, which means I attract
Speaker 3: these things to myself, which I don't have a problem with.
Speaker 3: I have the problem with the reverse of it, which
Speaker 3: would be thinking that somebody in Israel right now or
Speaker 3: Gaza right now attracted that right. That seems cruel and
Speaker 3: in any circumstance, though, I do think the truth is,
Speaker 3: like you said, we are responsible for what we do
Speaker 3: in response to what occurs to us in our life.
Speaker 3: We may say that what occurs isn't fair or right
Speaker 3: or should be different, but it isn't. Yeah, and we
Speaker 3: do have choice of response. And I think it's why
Speaker 3: you know, people like Victor Frankel have become so admired
Speaker 3: is because he's showing, in the direst of circumstances, this
Speaker 3: responsibility for his own choices. Talk about somebody who has
Speaker 3: very little choice right in a concentration camp. Your choices
Speaker 3: are extraordinarily limited, but within the ones he had, he
Speaker 3: took responsibility for them.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, exactly. I've been rereading Victor Frankel recently as well,
Speaker 1: and he's impacted me a lot. The other dimension that
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring out with that statement is what
Speaker 1: happens to you and what you do are the same? Well,
Speaker 1: who is the you here? We can get into that
Speaker 1: deeper level, Well, who's doing the feeding? You know from
Speaker 1: the beginning, So what's happening to you and what you're
Speaker 1: doing or the same? Now that isn't necessarily just the
Speaker 1: limited you that you identify with. That is the bigger
Speaker 1: you that includes all beings. Okay. It's an invitation to
Speaker 1: kind of open up into the fact that we're affecting
Speaker 1: each other all the time. We're all a part of
Speaker 1: this interdependent hole. So the spiritual path is one to
Speaker 1: recognize more and more that we're not limited to this egoic,
Speaker 1: individualistic self right, that we are intrinsically our nature is
Speaker 1: one with this awakened consciousness that we are this, this
Speaker 1: is us as well. So what happens to that and
Speaker 1: what that does you are the same.
Speaker 3: The term right comes from the Buddhists Eightfold Path, which
Speaker 3: is part of the foreknoble Truths, and I don't want
Speaker 3: to unpack all of that. Some of our listeners will
Speaker 3: be very familiar others that's a whole world for you
Speaker 3: to dive into. But one of the parts of the
Speaker 3: eight full path is right view. And you recently did
Speaker 3: a podcast conversation. You have a podcast called The Game
Speaker 3: of Zen, and a recent one was sort of talking
Speaker 3: about right view. And I think this is a really
Speaker 3: important one because what we're talking about is how we
Speaker 3: see reality. Right. What could be more crucial than that? Right,
Speaker 3: what I see directly impacts everything else that comes after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does. It affects our actions, our speech,
Speaker 1: and our thoughts. Right is how we can say, it's
Speaker 1: a frame, so how we're taking things in. If we
Speaker 1: have a limited, self centered view of the world and say,
Speaker 1: other people, then we're going to interpret them in a
Speaker 1: certain way. This is just an example. Right, they do
Speaker 1: something perhaps aggressive, you know, towards yourself, and if we
Speaker 1: only see them as separate beings, who are you know,
Speaker 1: acting in a certain way with a certain amount out
Speaker 1: of agency, then we're going to say, well, I need
Speaker 1: to punish them perhaps, or I need to seek revenge
Speaker 1: to that. It's just absolutely going to condition what you
Speaker 1: do because of that worldview. But if you have a
Speaker 1: view that is larger, you know, perhaps it includes an
Speaker 1: understanding of trauma, It includes an understanding of the conditions
Speaker 1: that may have created that behavior from that person. It
Speaker 1: might even extend to the understanding that you're more intimately
Speaker 1: connected than either of you know. You know, then you
Speaker 1: issue were in some mysterious way. You know, perhaps you
Speaker 1: have a view you know that that kind of encompasses
Speaker 1: a certain magical unfolding of the universe and a mind
Speaker 1: of not knowing towards why that might have happened and
Speaker 1: how it could actually help you. You're obviously look at
Speaker 1: things very differently, and then you're actually you're going to
Speaker 1: respond to it differently as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mentioned at the beginning, we're here in Bolder
Speaker 3: and we've got some snow out here, and you know,
Speaker 3: I was driving the other day and it was snowing,
Speaker 3: and I just thought about, like the difference between if
Speaker 3: I go and take the minute to clean all the
Speaker 3: windows you know that are available to me, versus drive
Speaker 3: with them covered with snow, right or you know, you
Speaker 3: have to use your windshield wipe or fluid like every
Speaker 3: thirty seconds to see out the window. But when if
Speaker 3: you don't, all of a sudden you realize like you're
Speaker 3: still seeing I mean it's a dangerous view.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a great image, and then life becomes
Speaker 1: very difficult and challenging and fearful.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, But the more expensive your view is, then it
Speaker 1: actually it's more easeful and you really understand to negotiate
Speaker 1: your life.
Speaker 3: And would it be safe to say that a right
Speaker 3: view is a more back to a word you used earlier,
Speaker 3: wholesome view. It's a view that includes more.
Speaker 1: It includes more.
Speaker 3: That seems like a pretty common sense. I think everybody
Speaker 3: listening can understand that. And then the next question would be, well,
Speaker 3: how do I know if I have a right view?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Because we only tend to see what we can see. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so are there any sort of questions we can
Speaker 3: be asking ourselves or certain things that if we're engaging
Speaker 3: Cognitive biases are interesting because there are ways of actually
Speaker 3: going am I not seeing something right? I might try
Speaker 3: and go, well, am I seeing accurately? I think so?
Speaker 3: And then I learn about a cognitive bias and I
Speaker 3: look at it through that lens and I go, oh, no,
Speaker 3: I wasn't right. Are there things like that that we
Speaker 3: could say are helpful for us in starting to establish
Speaker 3: a view that has more of the whole of reality
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. And I'm chuckling a bit because
Speaker 1: Scott my partner in the podcast Game of Zeny, and
Speaker 1: he went right there as well. He's like, well, how
Speaker 1: do I know if I have right yeah view. It's
Speaker 1: a very urgent kind of question for us. So a
Speaker 1: couple of dimensions to the answer to that. First off,
Speaker 1: that metaphor you just gave is really great. Right, your
Speaker 1: windshield's clearer, you know, if your windshield is clear versus
Speaker 1: it's covered with snow, You see the landscape ahead, you
Speaker 1: see where you need to negotiate. You can drive a
Speaker 1: lot faster, you're functioning at a higher level. Okay, you're
Speaker 1: crashing obviously a lot less. So in a very just
Speaker 1: prove it out kind of way, it's right there. The
Speaker 1: other thing to say, because it's not always clear, it's
Speaker 1: not always clear, is you get reflections back from say
Speaker 1: a teacher or a mentor or the people that you're
Speaker 1: actually engaging with. Right, this is what life is actually,
Speaker 1: it's developing the discerning and deeper views of the world
Speaker 1: as we go through it, make mistakes, realize the blind
Speaker 1: spots we had. Even as a zen teacher, you know,
Speaker 1: I can come upon Holy Cow, I'd like miss that
Speaker 1: whole area, you know, I guess that whole part of
Speaker 1: that person or of that situation. There's always more to
Speaker 1: learn about a person or a situation. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at something like say the conflict in Gaza or in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: There's so many dimensions to it, so many dimensions obviously,
Speaker 1: but if we just circumscribe around a certain few and say, well,
Speaker 1: this is the whole picture, and then we get all
Speaker 1: ideological and you know, heavy handed about which way to go,
Speaker 1: it's very limited and other things, you know, always always
Speaker 1: come out. So in our personal life there's a certain
Speaker 1: kind of trial and error, you know, with our attunement
Speaker 1: to write view, our vision, our view.
Speaker 3: And I think it's worth that recognition that, you know,
Speaker 3: in my Spiritual Habits program, I say, you know, it's
Speaker 3: not a phrase I came up with. I don't know
Speaker 3: who originally said it, but we don't see the world
Speaker 3: as it is. We see it as we are. And
Speaker 3: even that if we really take that seriously and realize
Speaker 3: that means all the time in every situation I'm seeing
Speaker 3: it based on my conditioning and my filters. That opens
Speaker 3: up a curiosity to say, what might I be missing
Speaker 3: and what you just said about, like the conflict in
Speaker 3: either Ukraine or Gaza. I'm amazed by how quickly I
Speaker 3: will read I don't know one article and suddenly think
Speaker 3: I understand that situation and now I have an opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I have gotten a lot better at that, which maybe
Speaker 3: I'm at the opposite extreme now, which is where I'm like,
Speaker 3: why do you think I would have any idea? Yeah,
Speaker 3: like I've spent thirty minutes or an hour or two
Speaker 3: hours of my life learning about something that is this
Speaker 3: vast and complicated. But we all have these I think
Speaker 3: the word they use on social media today, I'm probably
Speaker 3: out of date. It's probably old term is hot take. Right,
Speaker 3: we have this hot take immediately right on things that
Speaker 3: we just don't know much of anything about. And you
Speaker 3: said at one point about right view, and this is
Speaker 3: similar to kind of what I think I'm pointing at,
Speaker 3: which is that a right view is that you recognize
Speaker 3: that all your opinions and beliefs are provisional. Yes, right,
Speaker 3: Say more about what that means? What do you mean
Speaker 3: by they're provisional.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they're not the whole picture. They're not the
Speaker 1: whole picture. And even if they're a really big picture,
Speaker 1: everything changes all the time, as we know, so they
Speaker 1: might not be anymore the full picture ten minutes later,
Speaker 1: or ten months later, whatever the case may be. So
Speaker 1: always always provisional. Nothing is ever definitive in terms of
Speaker 1: an absolute sense or in terms of a temporal sense, right,
Speaker 1: so we always have to be mindful of that. Just
Speaker 1: always mindful of that is how much we don't know.
Speaker 1: But I do like this phrase relative to kind of
Speaker 1: how you were holding your own opinions, because I'm the
Speaker 1: same way too. I'll read a really well informed or
Speaker 1: what sounds like a really well informed account of some
Speaker 1: of these complex, you know, situations, and I'll go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on, you know, so we should do
Speaker 1: this right. But just a few minutes later, you know,
Speaker 1: I will rest into the complexity of the situation and
Speaker 1: just say, well, maybe not so much. But we do
Speaker 1: have opinions, right, We can't deny that we have opinions,
Speaker 1: And we also have situations that we want to do
Speaker 1: something right in. So this is not a prescription for passivity.
Speaker 1: Right of doing nothing and saying I don't know anything,
Speaker 1: it's to just really hold a weight. I like the
Speaker 1: phrase strong opinions lightly held yes, okay, or clear opinions
Speaker 1: lightly held okay. I know where this opinion is coming from, right,
Speaker 1: I know the source data that I'm taking in and
Speaker 1: is it true or not, and weigh that and then
Speaker 1: still if it looks like it's all credible stuff, I
Speaker 1: can have a opinion about something but still hold that
Speaker 1: lightly because everything changes and you ultimately don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's why I was saying, I think sometimes
Speaker 3: I swing to the opposite extreme, which is I don't
Speaker 3: know anything about anything, so I can't have an opinion
Speaker 3: about anything and I can't do anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things about Zen that I liked, and
Speaker 3: it's really embedded in Taoism too, is that if you
Speaker 3: do have right view and you're more connected with you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to use a phrase without defining it well,
Speaker 3: but true nature that spontaneously the quote unquote right response emerges,
Speaker 3: you know. And I've always used an example in my
Speaker 3: own life of that of like, if I tried to
Speaker 3: argue to you the value of a single dog's life.
Speaker 3: It would be hard to do because we'd say, there's
Speaker 3: been a billion dogs, and there's how many of them
Speaker 3: are now, and there's too many dogs, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, like it would be hard to make a
Speaker 3: good intellectual argument for the value of one dog's life.
Speaker 3: If I walked outside and I saw a dog that
Speaker 3: had gotten hit by a car, laying by the side
Speaker 3: of the road, that was suffering, you couldn't argue me
Speaker 3: out of wanting to take care of that dog, you know.
Speaker 3: And to me, that's that response emerging naturally, even though
Speaker 3: intellectually a situation doesn't make a lot of sense, but
Speaker 3: viscerally it does. Meaning emerges that way for me. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, zen doesn't have much to do with intellectual arguments,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, this is related to right view too.
Speaker 1: We say, compassion is the natural functioning of wisdom, and
Speaker 1: perhaps you've heard that, right, So wisdom is right view.
Speaker 1: Wisdom is a really deep seeing into the nature of reality,
Speaker 1: the nature of the self. That's what wisdom is. And
Speaker 1: we do say, like you say, compassionate action actually is
Speaker 1: the functioning of that view. That's just a wonderful way
Speaker 1: to look at it. So we have to practice actually
Speaker 1: both the wisdom part and the compassion part.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's the clear seeing, which is the right view,
Speaker 1: clear seeing the nature of reality, the nature of the self,
Speaker 1: the nature of cause and effect, how that all works.
Speaker 1: Then we have to not be passive, not be just
Speaker 1: kind of rest in that clear seeing. Which is a
Speaker 1: risk on the spiritual path, is that we kind of
Speaker 1: hang out there. It's like, oh, wow, I see, Oh,
Speaker 1: I see what's going on. But it's inert, right, that's
Speaker 1: the word. It's passive or inert. And people can hang
Speaker 1: out there for a long time, they can spend their
Speaker 1: whole lives there, right. But no, if you choose to
Speaker 1: really develop your spiritual identity, your spiritual personality, if you will,
Speaker 1: then you are going to put yourself out there into
Speaker 1: situations where you can engage with people, you feel their pain,
Speaker 1: you feel your own pain, and then you work to
Speaker 1: better that whole situation. That's compassionate action, and it comes
Speaker 1: from a clear seeing of what's going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think this might be a good time
Speaker 3: to pivot to the next area. Broadly, I wanted to
Speaker 3: go into in addition to be a transmitted Zen teacher
Speaker 3: and having a Zen songa. You also have a business
Speaker 3: it's called Zen at Work, and you do a lot
Speaker 3: of coaching work with people. And there's a phrase that
Speaker 3: you use that I wanted to shepherd us into this
Speaker 3: area with and it's you talk about the often overlooked
Speaker 3: ways in which professional, personal and spiritual growth are interrelated.
Speaker 3: Say more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we have these areas of our lives, right,
Speaker 1: our professional life, our personal life, and our relational life. Okay,
Speaker 1: that we I think intrinsically we kind of compartmentalize those
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. And that compartmentalization has really
Speaker 1: bad effects, really discordant on harmonious effects. So all sorts
Speaker 1: of bypassing results. If for example, you know, you know
Speaker 1: the term spiritual bypassing. That's when you just try to
Speaker 1: become an enlightened being and you don't take care of
Speaker 1: your personal development, right, your relational intelligence, emotional intelligence if
Speaker 1: you will, and you might even you know, bail on
Speaker 1: your professional career if you're just going to go join
Speaker 1: an ashram for decades. Right. You can also make the
Speaker 1: case that you know, monks of old who didn't have
Speaker 1: a family and didn't have a profession, we're basically professional bypassers.
Speaker 1: You know, that's actually what they did by design, and
Speaker 1: it is what they did by design, right, that they
Speaker 1: actually did. But in our society, you know, there's hugely
Speaker 1: terrible effects you know, to doing that. So they are related,
Speaker 1: but in ways that we really have to acknowledge. We
Speaker 1: have to recognize that when we're having difficulties, for example,
Speaker 1: dealing with our work environment, Okay, it may show up
Speaker 1: in our personal work. We may need to do some
Speaker 1: personal work around that in order to make that a
Speaker 1: more harmonious situation. Problems within our relationship are going to
Speaker 1: show up. You know, in our personal work. They're all connected.
Speaker 1: I guess I would say it's usually overlooked, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that they're all intimately related.
Speaker 3: Yep. And so professional work makes sense. I think personal
Speaker 3: we can say that's our relationships with other people. And
Speaker 3: then spiritual growth. That's a term that a lot of
Speaker 3: people don't resonate with. You know, we've done some audience
Speaker 3: research that shows even within our audience, which is a
Speaker 3: pretty te audience, that term doesn't work for a lot
Speaker 3: of people. What's another way of putting that that people
Speaker 3: who don't like that term might resonate with, might have
Speaker 3: some value to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say, so spiritual growth is a shifting
Speaker 1: sense of yourself. Maybe this is more resonant. It's a
Speaker 1: shifting sense of yourself into an identification with a larger beingness.
Speaker 1: Do you think that would be more resonant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeahh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So spiritual you know, I remember reading I think it
Speaker 1: was Ken Wilber years back he said, well, there's actually
Speaker 1: nine formal definitions of the word spiritual, okay.
Speaker 3: And there's at least probably fifty other permutations that you know,
Speaker 3: it's one of those words that when it pops into
Speaker 3: people's minds, it has vastly different meanings exactly.
Speaker 1: So they have something that there is connoted by that,
Speaker 1: and then they have a response to that. So I
Speaker 1: think perhaps this is helpful. Spiritual development is about shifting
Speaker 1: your sense of yourself into something higher, a higher consciousness,
Speaker 1: a higher awareness, a high connectedness. That's what spiritual development
Speaker 1: is all about, or.
Speaker 3: A broader view, you know, seeing our place in things. Yes,
Speaker 3: more accurately, it would be another sort of rephrasing of that.
Speaker 1: What is the nature of that hour, what is the
Speaker 1: nature of the eye, What is the nature of the me?
Speaker 1: That's what spiritual inquiry is. It's the inner inquiry into well,
Speaker 1: who is this person that is apparently having these experiences? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: now we're getting into you know, deep dharma here. That
Speaker 1: is what the spiritual path is about. There's a quote
Speaker 1: from the Genjo co on Zen Master Dogan's famous piece,
Speaker 1: I think perhaps I've talked with you about it somewhere
Speaker 1: down the line, but he says, to carry the self
Speaker 1: forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things
Speaker 1: come forth and experience themselves is enlightenment. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: only difference between what we call enlightenment and what we
Speaker 1: call delusion is that in one there's a person having
Speaker 1: an experience and in the other there's just experiences having themselves.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an interesting, really way to look at it,
Speaker 1: and it's very it's very stark. So it's been well
Speaker 1: understood over the millennia that there is a path of
Speaker 1: learning who we are, who we are, that we're not
Speaker 1: just selves having experiences. And this is our default mode
Speaker 1: is to think that we're selves having experiences. But when
Speaker 1: we actually notice, well, oh boy, when I was like
Speaker 1: right in the middle of that ecstatic experience where was
Speaker 1: I there was no me there right when I'm in
Speaker 1: the middle of you know, playing that athletic game or
Speaker 1: having a peak experience in some way, we've all had
Speaker 1: experiences deep flow states where it self disappears. So that
Speaker 1: is touching into a higher consciousness which is present all
Speaker 1: the time. It's always here. You know this, you know
Speaker 1: you're a student of these things. So that's what spiritual
Speaker 1: development is. It's learning to internalize and see and bring
Speaker 1: to life this way of carrying yourself forward in the
Speaker 1: world that isn't limited to your self identification.
Speaker 3: And so how how does that inform our professional world?
Speaker 3: Let's start there excellently, Like, so you work with people
Speaker 3: who are high performers who are coming to you for something. Generally,
Speaker 3: what are they looking for that you are going to bring?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it usually manifests some sort of discordancy. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a they lose a job where they're looking for more
Speaker 1: impact in their job, or there's a disconnect you know,
Speaker 1: in the environment that they're in, or there's a question,
Speaker 1: right they want to perhaps explore a more entrepreneurial direction
Speaker 1: than another direction. So what comes to us there is, well,
Speaker 1: how do I make that decision? How do I proceed
Speaker 1: forward in the midst of this, and the spiritual you know,
Speaker 1: framework changes everything if you try to answer that question,
Speaker 1: those questions, those deep questions about your life from an
Speaker 1: understanding of yourself of well, this is what normal career
Speaker 1: looks like, this is what success looks like, This is
Speaker 1: what failure looks like. This is what a bad decision
Speaker 1: looks like. This is what a good decision looks like. You're,
Speaker 1: in a sense, you're kind of prescribed according to a
Speaker 1: very conventional way of what all those things look like,
Speaker 1: and you're not really necessarily getting in close contact with yourself,
Speaker 1: which is really where your deepest meaning and purpose and
Speaker 1: joy and happiness and flow are ultimately going to come
Speaker 1: if you're going to base it on external standards, and
Speaker 1: we've all internalized these external standards a lot. So I
Speaker 1: help people to kind of reframe their professional challenges in
Speaker 1: terms of what they're manifesting and what they want to manifest.
Speaker 1: It makes all the difference. As they turn inward, they
Speaker 1: can see that what they used to consider to be,
Speaker 1: say a setback or a bad turn of events, actually
Speaker 1: is a very beneficial turn of events. So I've worked
Speaker 1: with people who, you know, out of work, got a
Speaker 1: year severance from their high paying job, and now they're
Speaker 1: getting close and the fear starts to come up. I
Speaker 1: really need a job. And I start working with them,
Speaker 1: and they start to enter into a place which is
Speaker 1: much more excited, much more creative, much more options wide open,
Speaker 1: to the point where two months in they're turning down
Speaker 1: jobs that they tell me they would have taken before
Speaker 1: they started working with me, because their orientation and they're
Speaker 1: focused is now based on a deeper place within themselves.
Speaker 3: You know, when we were talking about spiritual I think
Speaker 3: that sort of recognizing that you are more than a
Speaker 3: limit itself. To me, it seems a little bit like
Speaker 3: the deep end of the pool, right, and a way
Speaker 3: in there, to me, is always about what you said.
Speaker 3: It's about meaning, it's about connection. It's about recognizing who
Speaker 3: am I, even on a relative level, right, not even
Speaker 3: in an absolute sense, but a greater clarity of who
Speaker 3: I am based in the circumstances of my life, you know,
Speaker 3: and I think you know that idea of framing problems
Speaker 3: as potential opportunities is a real big thing, right, Like
Speaker 3: the transitions in my life have been hugely beneficial to me,
Speaker 3: but I didn't see it at the time. Of course,
Speaker 3: transitions are very difficult.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The story I tell most often here is, you know,
Speaker 3: I had formed a solar energy company and poured five
Speaker 3: years of my life into it, and it was like
Speaker 3: my baby, my dream, you know, and I had to
Speaker 3: shut it down and I was devastated. But out of
Speaker 3: that came this podcast. And I am so much more
Speaker 3: suited to do this than I was doing that, right,
Speaker 3: and so at the time I had to have that
Speaker 3: openness to what's next. And I think you do a
Speaker 3: lot of work with people who are in transitions. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And there's a Buddhist term for transition, which is called
Speaker 3: the Bardo. And so you talk about the Bardo of
Speaker 3: transition or the Bardo of work, and you talk about
Speaker 3: some key things that can help us navigate these transitions
Speaker 3: in a deeper way. Do you want to share what
Speaker 3: some of those key ideas are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So a little background on that, because I
Speaker 1: think it's a really rich sort of template. But the
Speaker 1: Bardo comes from the Tibetan word for this interstitial zone
Speaker 1: in between death and life. So person dies and then
Speaker 1: they're in this in between zone and then they get reincarnated.
Speaker 1: So that's the description of the Bardo, and certain things,
Speaker 1: according to this Tibetan Buddhists belief, happen, you know, in
Speaker 1: that zone. Okay, So you know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: believe in all that, and frankly I don't necessarily believe
Speaker 1: in all that either, But there is a landscape of
Speaker 1: being in between one place and being another and moving
Speaker 1: for it. There's a way which the self responds to
Speaker 1: that dynamic, right to that landscape. If you will, I'll
Speaker 1: boil the keys down a little bit. I have five
Speaker 1: in my Barter of workbook, and I'll kind of boil
Speaker 1: it down to three. The first phase is really dealing
Speaker 1: with the previous place you were in, Okay. So the
Speaker 1: primary emotion is going to be grief and potentially anger. Okay.
Speaker 1: So there's loss, and then there could be anger based
Speaker 1: on how that happened, or even that had happened at all, right,
Speaker 1: because we don't like change. So you might not be
Speaker 1: angry at anybody in particular, but you're just angry that
Speaker 1: the universe threw this at you. Okay. So you have
Speaker 1: to honor those emotions. You always have to embody and
Speaker 1: feel emotions in order for them not to be trapped
Speaker 1: in your body and then have those drive your behaviors
Speaker 1: later on, which is, you know, frankly, what most of
Speaker 1: us do with these things. So my first key is
Speaker 1: to really recognize the anger, recognize the grief, and give
Speaker 1: that proper you know, ritual, the proper time in order
Speaker 1: to do that. Then we enter the next phase, which
Speaker 1: is the really rich part of the bart. This is
Speaker 1: the chaotic zone. This is the place where things are
Speaker 1: happening left and right. We don't know which one is meaningful,
Speaker 1: which one is going to lead somewhere, which one you're
Speaker 1: even interested in? Right, all of these things coming up.
Speaker 1: So once again there's an art and a skill which
Speaker 1: can be supported from help from a guide to really
Speaker 1: be in this place and to look at as a
Speaker 1: time of opportunity, as a time of interest, is a
Speaker 1: time of new things emerging, but without having that problem
Speaker 1: fixing mind to clamp down on it, or that fear
Speaker 1: mind that doesn't want this to continue, right, this mind
Speaker 1: of uncertainty.
Speaker 3: I mean, I went through what looked to be a
Speaker 3: big transition a while ago, and I had the grieving
Speaker 3: part pretty well down. You know, that second part sort
Speaker 3: of being in the in the change. I knew it
Speaker 3: was going to lead to new things. I've just had it.
Speaker 3: I've had it happen enough, I've got the experience, and
Speaker 3: yet to your point, I just kept going. But I
Speaker 3: don't know what it is, and you know, I want
Speaker 3: to have something like what is it going to be?
Speaker 3: I don't know yet, And that uncertainty is really a
Speaker 3: challenging place to stay in.
Speaker 1: It's a really challenging place, and it's being more and
Speaker 1: more recognized as the source of the greatest richness for
Speaker 1: moving forward. There's just a piece in the New York
Speaker 1: Times just like four or five days ago about the
Speaker 1: Wisdom of uncertainty or something like that, and people are
Speaker 1: doing these studies about how really working with uncertainty and
Speaker 1: welcoming it in and learning how to work with it
Speaker 1: what we and Zen call don't know mind, right, not
Speaker 1: knowing mind produces positivity, positive outcomes, obviously, resilience, great flexibility,
Speaker 1: and actually great happiness down the line. Yeah right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the secret Sauce here, is to be able to
Speaker 1: learn to be with that uncertainty. It was an interesting
Speaker 1: thing about that. Chaos too. Chaos is a natural, say,
Speaker 1: rhythm of creation, you know, things are in a certain
Speaker 1: state and then they get completely jumbled and chaotic. You
Speaker 1: had I Guess recently on your podcast talking about order, disorder, reorder.
Speaker 1: So it's that disorder phase. I mean that disorder phase
Speaker 1: is an intrinsic part of the universe, of the way
Speaker 1: nature unfolds and develops, right, and we're no different. So
Speaker 1: to really embrace that uncertainty, that disorder with positivity and
Speaker 1: good spirit, that's going to yield, you know, really good outcomes.
Speaker 1: Our posture with respect to these states is everything, right,
Speaker 1: we're talking about karma. So we can respond to the
Speaker 1: grief and the anger in a way that we're trying
Speaker 1: to fix it or push it away, and that's going
Speaker 1: to perpetuate it. We can respond to this uncertainty and
Speaker 1: the chaos in a way that tries to minimize it
Speaker 1: or resist it, or push it or make it, make
Speaker 1: it go away, and that's actually going to distort it.
Speaker 1: All right, But when we embrace it, then it moves forward.
Speaker 1: And what does it move forward towards? It moves forward
Speaker 1: closer to the next incarnation. And now this is my
Speaker 1: kind of third phase. As we get sort of something happening,
Speaker 1: we just apply a kind of a discipline to our
Speaker 1: life and we open our ears. We open our eyes,
Speaker 1: we open our minds, and we start to pay attention
Speaker 1: to serendipities and affinities and people that we meet, and
Speaker 1: we start to get in touch with this magic of
Speaker 1: the universe that is going to start to resonate with
Speaker 1: what you really want to happen in your life, what
Speaker 1: you really want to be. I know this sounds a
Speaker 1: little bit like that law of attraction you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: There are resonant frequencies that we put out, and there
Speaker 1: are filters that we put on ourselves to keep us
Speaker 1: from seeing opportunities. So this is just the way it works.
Speaker 1: And to cultivate the mind that's really open to those things, magical,
Speaker 1: mysterious things start to happen and connections start to unfold.
Speaker 1: So then we move into that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think the thing that's worth saying through
Speaker 3: all of that, and again having sort of been there
Speaker 3: recently and been through it in the past, is even
Speaker 3: those different things that you're talking about, embrace seeing the
Speaker 3: grief and opening to it and letting the uncertainty be
Speaker 3: The uncertainty doesn't mean that it's not still deeply uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, points all right, So some of this I
Speaker 3: think is like you said, it's learning to just say, yeah,
Speaker 3: this is really uncomfortable. Yeah, and it's okay, I don't
Speaker 3: have to fix that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And as you know from impermanence,
Speaker 1: you know, everything changes. As my teacher used to joke, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're in a rough spot, Okay, one of two
Speaker 1: things is going to happen. It's going to get better
Speaker 1: or it's going to get worse.
Speaker 3: Sounds like an exact sort of Zen teacher thing that
Speaker 3: you get. You're like, why do I study Zen again?
Speaker 3: Why did I sign up for this?
Speaker 1: And but but it's true, is it it? And things
Speaker 1: always change? Is going to get better, it is going
Speaker 1: to and then one of those things happens and then
Speaker 1: guess what.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's going to get better, it's.
Speaker 1: Going to get worse. But what do we do actually,
Speaker 1: our resistance to that truth keeps it static. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: As you know, you know, if you do this in
Speaker 1: meditation or if you've got some good emotional intelligence, you know,
Speaker 1: if you kind of contract around a feeling, it perpetuates it. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So you can't do that with the uncertainty. You can't
Speaker 1: kind of resist it, you just have to feel. And
Speaker 1: then I guess this is the way to put it.
Speaker 1: Everything is bearable. There are very few things that are
Speaker 1: not bearable, you know, in this amazing human capacity that
Speaker 1: we have, there really is. And you know, you work
Speaker 1: with the cravings of addicts. You know those can be
Speaker 1: at the extreme of bearability. But moment by moment, everything
Speaker 1: is bearable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I actually think that idea and that recognition
Speaker 3: was a key to me out of addiction.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, because addiction is sort of the end point, the
Speaker 3: logical conclusion when you don't think you can bear much
Speaker 3: of anything. Right, every situation needs to be altered. I
Speaker 3: can't take it. I can't take it. I don't like it,
Speaker 3: I don't want it to And it's this constant altering
Speaker 3: of reality in ways that become extraordinarily destructive. And so
Speaker 3: for me, a big part of it was realizing, like,
Speaker 3: I can go through any emotion, no matter how unpleasant
Speaker 3: it is, and I don't have to fix it. Doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that I don't try to respond to it wisely,
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that I don't seek help, but it means
Speaker 3: that I don't have to directly alter it and in
Speaker 3: my case via chemicals. That's when I felt like, oh,
Speaker 3: I can do this. Is that idea that everything is bearable,
Speaker 3: even though God knows there's lots of things we sure
Speaker 3: wish we didn't have to bear, and the people around us,
Speaker 3: we wish they didn't have to bear. But it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, And that's all that meditation is
Speaker 1: really too. It's just being fully, fully present with your body, mind, right,
Speaker 1: just being there, and these amazing things result from that.
Speaker 1: You know. It isn't oh I managed to gut that
Speaker 1: out right, That's not what's happening right here. What's happening
Speaker 1: is that you're actually opening up a capacity and a
Speaker 1: new identification, a new empowerment around you know, where does
Speaker 1: that even come from? Right? Your your ability to be
Speaker 1: with those things, Where does this consciousness come from? It's
Speaker 1: completely vast and unknowable, right right, So as you deepen
Speaker 1: into your experience of that being this wow, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: While we're on work, let's hit a couple other things
Speaker 3: related to work. We've done a couple episodes in the
Speaker 3: past about burnout, and you say, burnout does not come
Speaker 3: from busyness. It comes from being overly attached to outcomes.
Speaker 3: Say more about what you understand burnout to be and
Speaker 3: what causes it and how we can work with it skillfully.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, And there's there's a few, you know, real
Speaker 1: valuable understandings of burnout. And this is this is mine.
Speaker 1: I'm in the faculty of a Cause to Pause contemplative
Speaker 1: caregiving course that's done, you know, every year or twice
Speaker 1: a year. We do it sometimes to help people who
Speaker 1: are working with end of life care, you know, hospice volunteers,
Speaker 1: and also people who have loss you know, coming in
Speaker 1: their lives or present in their lives in terms of
Speaker 1: elderly or ill family members. So burnout is really prevalent.
Speaker 3: Right in in caregivers.
Speaker 1: Right. So here we've got a kind of archetype you know,
Speaker 1: of intensity with respect to burnout. Many of us feel it,
Speaker 1: but this kind of really helps us look at it.
Speaker 1: There is a way in which we want an outcome
Speaker 1: from the work that we're doing. Obviously, we want people
Speaker 1: to get better, We want people to feel better, right,
Speaker 1: we probably don't want them to die, okay, but we're
Speaker 1: not in control of that, Okay, But very naturally we
Speaker 1: have an attachment to those things happening. Right, When our
Speaker 1: energy is attached to the outcome, our emotions get very
Speaker 1: much wrapped up in that and we really find ourselves
Speaker 1: depleting our stores of emotional energy because of that attachment. Now,
Speaker 1: when we're able to apply ourselves with full heart and
Speaker 1: we know what we want, okay, but we have to
Speaker 1: be clear about what we want too, Because we may
Speaker 1: want the person with the terminal illness to get better,
Speaker 1: it's not going to happen. We want the person to
Speaker 1: not die, that's not going to happen. Right, These things
Speaker 1: are happening, So we have to be very clear that
Speaker 1: we're not attached to an unreal outcome, But we have
Speaker 1: to be clear that we would like a certain outcome. Okay.
Speaker 1: Now that's easy when you're in the caregiving profession, right,
Speaker 1: But it might not be as clear actually in another
Speaker 1: professional setting. Right. So we actually should be clear about, well,
Speaker 1: what is our desired outcome from what I'm doing here?
Speaker 1: Am I doing this to check off a box for
Speaker 1: my boss? Am I doing this to help the group work? Okay?
Speaker 1: What am I really doing this for?
Speaker 3: It?
Speaker 1: It very much helped to really clarify what you would
Speaker 1: like the outcome of something to be in a very
Speaker 1: kind of somewhat pedestrian example. You know, sometimes I say, well,
Speaker 1: the purpose of this meeting is to have a meeting, okay,
Speaker 1: And that sounds ridiculous to a certain extent, but it isn't.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, this team actually needs to come together
Speaker 1: once a week or once a month and actually see
Speaker 1: each other and talk to each other. Okay. Now that
Speaker 1: kind of goes against you know, certain kinds of efficiency.
Speaker 1: You know, recommendations is like everything should have this kind
Speaker 1: of agenda, and it's like and that's mostly true, but
Speaker 1: you can also have these subtle, you know, perhaps other
Speaker 1: softer intentions for something that are very important I have
Speaker 1: to happen. So if you're clear about those things, then
Speaker 1: you've got a sense of what the outcome you want
Speaker 1: to be. So you want to be really clear about
Speaker 1: your outcomes. But then the key is not to be
Speaker 1: attached to it happening or not, cause sometimes it's going
Speaker 1: to work out, and sometimes it isn't. And if it
Speaker 1: doesn't or it doesn't work out exactly the way you want,
Speaker 1: and we want things to work out exactly the way
Speaker 1: we want again, so much emotional energy is going to
Speaker 1: go into managing your reaction to that that's no longer available.
Speaker 3: And that falls into the category of things that are
Speaker 3: extraordinarily easy to say and extraordinarily difficult to do, which
Speaker 3: is to say, I care about the outcome, but I'm
Speaker 3: not attached to it. That's a nuance that people have
Speaker 3: to learn, you know. And that's why programs like the
Speaker 3: one you're talking about are so helpful, is because that's
Speaker 3: a balance that can be really, really, really tricky. But
Speaker 3: I know from my caregiving experience is that what you're
Speaker 3: saying is really true. When I think I should be
Speaker 3: able to fix it, I burn out. I get frustrated,
Speaker 3: I get frustrated with the person, I get frustrated with myself,
Speaker 3: I get all that. When I'm better able to say, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to show up here and be the best
Speaker 3: version of myself in this situation and do what I can.
Speaker 3: Knowing that, as we said, a lot of this is
Speaker 3: out of control, it makes care giving easier. I still
Speaker 3: think taking care of a parent who has dementia, there's
Speaker 3: no way that that becomes an easy thing. So I'm
Speaker 3: not trying to ever say that, but boy, there is
Speaker 3: a way of orienting towards it. And You've said this
Speaker 3: a couple times that our orientation to our intention around
Speaker 3: can make a really big difference. And you know, I've
Speaker 3: just seen this over the last seven or eight years,
Speaker 3: as Ginny and I've gone through a lot of caregiving.
Speaker 3: I have to kind of let go of thinking things
Speaker 3: will be better. And in some ways I found terminal
Speaker 3: illness something like dementia to be a helpful thing because,
Speaker 3: like I looked at her level of cognition and I went,
Speaker 3: it's never going to be better than it is today.
Speaker 3: I know where it's going. I don't know the pace
Speaker 3: it's going. But there was a certain freedom in that,
Speaker 3: Whereas my mother has been dealing with chronic pain and
Speaker 3: so you keep trying to fix it, and that's been
Speaker 3: harder for me because you think there is a way
Speaker 3: perhaps to fix it. I just noticed that distinction when
Speaker 3: I know I can't fix it. It's sort of like
Speaker 3: that old, you know, serenity prayer idea, you know what
Speaker 3: can you change? What can you accept? Some things are
Speaker 3: really easy to see they fall into one of those
Speaker 3: two camps. A lot of things don't, and that is
Speaker 3: what makes that ambiguity of them so challenging.
Speaker 1: It is very challenging. You put it very well, and
Speaker 1: you mentioned the word control, right, the word control, and
Speaker 1: then the fix it mentality, and that's what is often
Speaker 1: cultivated in professional settings. You know, it's like, here are
Speaker 1: the things that you're in control of. These are your KPIs,
Speaker 1: here's your problems that you have to fix, and our
Speaker 1: minds go there. It's like we think we have more
Speaker 1: control that than we do. We tend to create problems
Speaker 1: where they don't exist, and we think we can fix
Speaker 1: problems that we can't fix. Okay, So those three related
Speaker 1: kind of delusions, you could say, really are at the
Speaker 1: heart of this orientation, right that you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so to really recognize we have so little control, we
Speaker 1: have so little control. And I've been working with one
Speaker 1: you know fellow who's above a large digital organization, and
Speaker 1: this shift from control to influence has just completely changed,
Speaker 1: you know, his working style. He's less burned out, he's
Speaker 1: less stressed. Right to go from, well, you're not in
Speaker 1: control of these things. You're not in control of how
Speaker 1: these people are going to respond to what you do.
Speaker 1: But you have an immense influence, yes, you know, with
Speaker 1: the way you speak and the way you look and
Speaker 1: the look on your face and all of these, you know,
Speaker 1: subtle things, you have influence, and over the course of
Speaker 1: a few weeks, you know, he was able to have
Speaker 1: this big aha moment of the influence he had versus
Speaker 1: the control, and he has much less burnout and much
Speaker 1: more joy, happiness, and lightness in his work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right in the professional sense. That's really where
Speaker 3: it gets so tricky, because we are given goals, we
Speaker 3: are measured on an outcome, so of course we're attached
Speaker 3: to it and to your point, recognizing the extent to
Speaker 3: which we can't control, but we can influence. And I've
Speaker 3: always thought that's a useful word because we'll say to
Speaker 3: someone like, you have no control over what someone else does.
Speaker 3: That is true, but you do have influence. That's right, right,
Speaker 3: that's right. You know, I don't have ultimate control of
Speaker 3: what my son chooses to do, but I do have influence. Right.
Speaker 3: It's an ambiguous state. There's a great book by Andrew
Speaker 3: Solomon called Far from the Tree about neurodiverse people, and
Speaker 3: he talks in there about for some people, if you
Speaker 3: have like a degenitive eye disease, that's going to cause
Speaker 3: you to be blind and there's no known cure. You
Speaker 3: just can accept being blind. Right. I'm not saying it's easy,
Speaker 3: but you know where your work is, and if it's
Speaker 3: something you know, you know you can fix, it's easy
Speaker 3: to direct all your energy there. But when it's ambiguous,
Speaker 3: that's where I think life gets so challenging. I've talked
Speaker 3: to a lot of people over the years who go,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'm in the right place my job,
Speaker 3: and they alternate between I should accept the way this
Speaker 3: is and make it better, like this is good enough,
Speaker 3: I can make it better, and then they on the
Speaker 3: other side flip over to this is the wrong place.
Speaker 3: I got to get out of here, and they stay
Speaker 3: moving between those two poles forever.
Speaker 1: That's right, So.
Speaker 3: What's a way if you're sort of there? What are
Speaker 3: some questions that might help you start to think your way?
Speaker 3: I guess maybe thinking your way out of it isn't
Speaker 3: the answer. But where would you start? What sort of
Speaker 3: questions would you start asking? Somebody who described that very
Speaker 3: common dilemma.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a common dilemma. And I have several
Speaker 1: people I'm working with right now, right there who's right there.
Speaker 1: So it's a discernment process. You know. That's what I say,
Speaker 1: if you set yourself up with a framework for discerning
Speaker 1: what's happening, because people can go years bopping back and
Speaker 1: forth the way you just said, so all that is,
Speaker 1: they're great questions, right, it's a great consideration. In some ways,
Speaker 1: it's like it's already the second step. You've actually recognized
Speaker 1: that you have a co on in our zen language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a co on in my life because this job
Speaker 1: isn't working and I think I want something else, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It's beautiful that you're brought to this place.
Speaker 1: That's a great place to be now. But now you
Speaker 1: have to take the next step, which is to really
Speaker 1: this is to answer your question. In more specificity, I
Speaker 1: coach people to really embody and feel into with discernment
Speaker 1: both paths. Okay, this is how I've done co on
Speaker 1: work with you. This is how we work with coons
Speaker 1: is we actually allow our intuitive intelligence to arise from
Speaker 1: our body around prospective paths or perspective answers or perspective
Speaker 1: resolutions to life path questions. So really specifically, I would say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: envision what is the situation in your current job that
Speaker 1: brings you more joy. Okay, can you envision something again,
Speaker 1: if this is not an intellectual exercise, can you envision
Speaker 1: something that actually brings you joy? If the situation was
Speaker 1: set up in a certain way, and usually there's there's
Speaker 1: something there. It's like, yeah, if I had more authority,
Speaker 1: or if I got a promotion, or if I were
Speaker 1: working with this team, you know, something very specific can
Speaker 1: come in. It might take a day, it might take
Speaker 1: a week, but something specific may come in. If nothing
Speaker 1: comes in, well there's some great information, right, Okay, So
Speaker 1: then you go, well, why are you doing this? And
Speaker 1: then it's oh, well I'm doing it for the money.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right, well that's not good enough. We
Speaker 1: want you to get to a place that's really serving
Speaker 1: your soul and your deepest intention. Then I do the
Speaker 1: same thing with the other side of things, right, what
Speaker 1: might be these other paths that light you up that
Speaker 1: you might want to do? Okay, everybody has their own karma,
Speaker 1: everybody has their own interests. You know, we go deep
Speaker 1: into whatever that person might be interested in, and this
Speaker 1: is where those kind of magical serendipities and affinities kind
Speaker 1: of come in. So I'll have people keep a journal
Speaker 1: over on that side of things, and what are the
Speaker 1: things that you know, A magazine they read, a person
Speaker 1: they met at a networking event, a business idea they
Speaker 1: had that came across a LinkedIn job description that they saw.
Speaker 1: It was like, WHOA, I didn't think I'd be interested
Speaker 1: in that, but there's something about that, right that intrigues me.
Speaker 1: Throw those things down into the journal. Okay, just get
Speaker 1: it out, take a step, take another step towards these
Speaker 1: serendipitous affinities I call them, and explore those. That's the
Speaker 1: way out of that paralysis of back and forth is
Speaker 1: you just make movement down those paths and then something
Speaker 1: happened sooner or later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, movement is always a generally good idea, you know,
Speaker 3: because it's that staces where where we just think about it, Yeah,
Speaker 3: over and over, right, And to your point, I think
Speaker 3: it's that being willing to take that energy that you're
Speaker 3: ruminating and think in different ways. And that's often what
Speaker 3: like a coach or somebody can work with, you know,
Speaker 3: because I think that discernment does not happen alone. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are elements of discernment that only happen alone. But
Speaker 3: for me, true good discernment always involves other people, absolutely right,
Speaker 3: It's essential for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's like, I mean, you need a mirror to
Speaker 1: see your face, right, So the coach or the mentor
Speaker 1: spiritual teacher is a mirror to you to help you
Speaker 1: see yourself. That's that's all. It's one of the ways, yeah,
Speaker 1: in which they were.
Speaker 3: Well, I think we are suddenly and quickly at the
Speaker 3: end of our time. You and I are going to
Speaker 3: continue a little bit longer in a post show conversation
Speaker 3: where we're going to explore some of these issues a
Speaker 3: little bit more listeners, If you'd like access to the
Speaker 3: post show conversation, ad free episodes, a special episode I
Speaker 3: do called Teaching Song and a poem, you can go
Speaker 3: to one feed dot net slash join and we'd love
Speaker 3: to have you as part of the community. And we
Speaker 3: will have links in the show notes Paul to where
Speaker 3: people can find the Eon Zen Sanga, which is a
Speaker 3: great zen soga and has options for people who want
Speaker 3: to participate remotely, which is what I did for quite
Speaker 3: some time. We'll also have links to your zenit work
Speaker 3: and people can book introductory free sessions with you to
Speaker 3: see if you might be a good fit for them
Speaker 3: and we'll have links to all that stuff, and so
Speaker 3: thank you so much for coming on. I'm so glad
Speaker 3: we got to actually have one of the conversations you
Speaker 3: and I often have outside of this forum in this forum.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Eric, I've really enjoyed it.
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