Speaker 1: How we look for that space around situations. The possibility
Speaker 1: that it could be different is a very important way
Speaker 1: of turning away from whatever we're hung up with into
Speaker 1: the possibility of change.
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.
Speaker 3: How they feed their good wolf. We hope you'll enjoy
Speaker 3: this episode from the archive.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 2: Grace Sheerson, president of the Shogaku Zen Institute and a
Speaker 2: clinical psychologist. Grace received her or doctorate in clinical psychology
Speaker 2: at the Right Institute in Berkeley, California, and founded two
Speaker 2: practice centers and a retreat center under the Central Valley
Speaker 2: Zen Foundation. Today, Grace and Eric discuss her book Naked
Speaker 2: in the Zendo Stories of uptide Zen, Wild ass Zen,
Speaker 2: and Enlightenment Wherever you are.
Speaker 4: Hi, Grace, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: It is a real pleasure to have you on. We're
Speaker 4: going to be discussing your book, which is called Naked
Speaker 4: in the Zendo of uptight Zen, Wild ass Zen, and
Speaker 4: Enlightenment Wherever you are. But before we do that, we're
Speaker 4: going to start, like we always do, with a parable.
Speaker 4: In the parable, there's a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 4: granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 4: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 4: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 4: and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents
Speaker 4: things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter
Speaker 4: stops and she thinks about it for a second, and
Speaker 4: she looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 4: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 4: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 4: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 4: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I think the most important part of that parable is
Speaker 1: feeling or seeing or being in touch with what actually
Speaker 1: is going on in your mind. My teacher in Japan
Speaker 1: used to say, what's the most important thing. It's watching
Speaker 1: your mind and or the emotions in your body. So,
Speaker 1: for example, anger can be very exciting in your body,
Speaker 1: and if you don't recognize that wolf for one that
Speaker 1: needs to calm down a bit, then it's impossible not
Speaker 1: to feed it because you need to know it when
Speaker 1: it arises. So for me, the most important step in
Speaker 1: knowing which wolf to feed is knowing yourself and being
Speaker 1: honest with yourself and watching your own mind.
Speaker 4: That's a great way to start. You've got a bunch
Speaker 4: of lines in this book that I thought were so great,
Speaker 4: But the one where I wanted to start was you
Speaker 4: say that exposing the egos cover up is the task
Speaker 4: of spiritual practice. Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: Right, So, the book Naked in the Zendo really isn't
Speaker 1: so much about taking off your clothes, although we do
Speaker 1: have one example of that in a chapter accidental pants
Speaker 1: falling off in the Zendo, which made me think about it.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that we notice as we're
Speaker 1: watching these wolves is that we want to get good
Speaker 1: at doing meditation. We want to be good at practice.
Speaker 1: We want to be the best one in the zendo. Actually,
Speaker 1: and if that's a wolf, we need to watch because
Speaker 1: it has its disguises and it can look like sitting
Speaker 1: in a perfect posture or learning the chance perfectly correcting
Speaker 1: other people. But really it's about the ego, and we
Speaker 1: need to be able to use practice to see even
Speaker 1: how the ego gets in there to steal our spiritual practice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that listener. As you're listening, what resonated
Speaker 4: with you in that? I think a lot of us
Speaker 4: have some ideas of things that we can do to
Speaker 4: feed our good wolf. And here's a good tip to
Speaker 4: make it more likely that you do it. It can
Speaker 4: be really helpful to reflect right before you do that
Speaker 4: thing on why you want to do it. Our brains
Speaker 4: are always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call
Speaker 4: reward value. Basically, is this thing worth doing? And so
Speaker 4: when you're getting ready to do this thing that you
Speaker 4: want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on
Speaker 4: why actually helps to make the reward value on that
Speaker 4: higher and makes it more likely that you're going to
Speaker 4: do that. For example, if what you're trying to do
Speaker 4: is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it
Speaker 4: can be useful to remind yourself of why, for example,
Speaker 4: I want to exercise because it makes my mental and
Speaker 4: emotional health better today. If you'd like a step by
Speaker 4: step guide for how you can easily build new habits
Speaker 4: that feed your good Wolf, go to Goodwolf dot me,
Speaker 4: slash change and join the free masterclass. It is astounding
Speaker 4: the way it shows up everywhere, isn't it? And you
Speaker 4: talk a lot about that in the book, and I
Speaker 4: really appreciated that about how much we are trying to
Speaker 4: do it right. You make a nice job of showing
Speaker 4: this because I think that trying to do it right
Speaker 4: comes from two motivations. Right, there is a genuine motivation
Speaker 4: of like my spiritual practice matters, the world matters. I
Speaker 4: want to show up and I want to contribute the
Speaker 4: best I can. And then there's the ego side of it.
Speaker 4: I want to be seen as being good. I want
Speaker 4: to be seen as doing.
Speaker 5: It right right.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are those two sides to most everything we do.
Speaker 1: Like the two wolves you speak of and when people
Speaker 1: ask me, for example, when they're getting ready to give
Speaker 1: us one of their first spiritual talks in the Zendo
Speaker 1: away seeking mind talk, they ask me, you know what
Speaker 1: they should say or how should it be? And I say,
Speaker 1: be helpful, don't be good at it. Do something that's
Speaker 1: helpful to other people. Give them something that will help them.
Speaker 1: But if you try to be good at it, that's
Speaker 1: what's going to show up your selfishness.
Speaker 4: That's really good advice. There's another line that you use
Speaker 4: where you're also talking about spiritual practice. You say, spiritual practice,
Speaker 4: however it develops, provides ways to see ourselves in a
Speaker 4: larger context.
Speaker 1: Right. So, one of the things I realize, because I'm
Speaker 1: tall and because I have a lot to say, is
Speaker 1: that I can be rather dominant in a situation. And
Speaker 1: at some point when I was practicing, I realized, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I am just a vegetable in this soup
Speaker 1: that's offering some flavoring. I don't want to overwhelm it.
Speaker 1: How can I keep practicing to be that vegetable in
Speaker 1: the soup and be aware of being in the soup
Speaker 1: of all these people and be useful and not stand
Speaker 1: out as outstanding.
Speaker 4: Right, This idea of seeing ourselves in a larger context
Speaker 4: is really so important. It's this ability to take some
Speaker 4: perspective that is bigger than our our own. I've got
Speaker 4: a program I teach called spiritual habits, and we talk
Speaker 4: about that in this we talk about you know, perspective,
Speaker 4: and the idea is that the bigger our perspective is
Speaker 4: generally the better.
Speaker 1: Yes, Because in that perspective, if we can only see
Speaker 1: ourselves and not the surrounding environment that we're in, we
Speaker 1: are stuck with ourselves in a particular way. There's no
Speaker 1: room to turn, so to speak. So for example, if
Speaker 1: we say pride is arising, there's a context around which
Speaker 1: this emotion, this negative feature is arising. But if we
Speaker 1: say I am proud, that takes up the whole context,
Speaker 1: and we don't see the movement that we are within
Speaker 1: awareness and something is arising within that awareness, but it
Speaker 1: isn't me. I am the awareness, I am the context.
Speaker 1: And these things arise and they fall away. But if
Speaker 1: we keep emphasizing I am proud or I am smart,
Speaker 1: rather than my pride is arising, there's no room for
Speaker 1: it to move. We're only reinforcing these feelings of pride. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I like the way of thinking of that as that
Speaker 4: bigger perspective gives us room to move, to turn around,
Speaker 4: to look to see it from different angles. You've got
Speaker 4: a balloon that's filling up the entire box.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 4: I don't know why I chose a balloon in a box, but.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not you. Whatever it is, it's not you.
Speaker 1: It's a balloon in a box and it's filling it up.
Speaker 1: And that's what we need to see. So it's really
Speaker 1: important to see our existence within this large space of awareness.
Speaker 1: And this is something that Joke go Back emphasized in
Speaker 1: her teaching a bigger content. Otherwise our ego just keeps
Speaker 1: growing to fill that space like the balloon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you mentioned that teaching from her, and you also
Speaker 4: mentioned one of my favorite sort of spiritual analogies ever,
Speaker 4: which is this idea of you know, if we take
Speaker 4: a tablespoon of salt and we drop it in this
Speaker 4: little eight ounce glass of water I have, it's gonna
Speaker 4: taste pretty bad. But if we drop that same tablespoon
Speaker 4: of salt in a gallon of water, well, okay, it's
Speaker 4: not gonna be great. But okay, if I dump it
Speaker 4: in a fifty five gallon drum, I'm not gonna taste it, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know. And it's that idea of the same amount
Speaker 4: of pain, the same amount of salt, the same amount
Speaker 4: of problem. If it's in a bigger container, doesn't feel
Speaker 4: the same way, doesn't taste the same way, right.
Speaker 1: You know. There's a toy that I used to get
Speaker 1: in Chinatown, and you would put your finger in a
Speaker 1: woven tube, one finger in each end, and if you
Speaker 1: pulled it, it would become tighter and tighter. And it's
Speaker 1: like that that as we pull and struggle with whatever
Speaker 1: is on our minds, it becomes tighter, and if we relax,
Speaker 1: it's easy to remove it from the fingers, you know,
Speaker 1: it becomes looser, and we want that spaciousness, that looseness
Speaker 1: so we can actually see we don't have to do
Speaker 1: this right right.
Speaker 4: That always reminds me of the story of I've never
Speaker 4: verified if this is true, but sooner or later somebody's
Speaker 4: be like, that is not true. But the way that
Speaker 4: they used to capture monkeys, they would put sweets inside
Speaker 4: a coconut. The monkey would put his hand in and
Speaker 4: then he would grab the sweets and once he made
Speaker 4: that fist, he couldn't get his fist back out, you know.
Speaker 4: And if the monkey just let go, yeah, the hand
Speaker 4: comes out, you know. Same thing with those Chinese finger traps.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, both of those are lessons in how we
Speaker 1: make ourselves miserable by grabbing onto something and insisting that
Speaker 1: has to be this way. How we look for that
Speaker 1: space around situations. The possibility that it could be different,
Speaker 1: that there's something else is a very important way of
Speaker 1: turning away from whatever we're hung up with into the
Speaker 1: possibility of change.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have a phrase that you use in the
Speaker 4: book that is really good and that you say is
Speaker 4: really the root cause of suffering or a you know,
Speaker 4: one of the big root causes of suffering, which is
Speaker 4: wishing it to be otherwise or witbo. We could probably
Speaker 4: spend the rest of the episode on witbo and dealing
Speaker 4: with it, but share a little bit more about what
Speaker 4: that is, and then let's maybe talk about some strategies
Speaker 4: for working with it.
Speaker 1: Right, So, when something happens, we wanted to come out
Speaker 1: the way we wanted to come out, and unfortunately the
Speaker 1: universe doesn't work that way. Sometimes it comes out the
Speaker 1: way we wanted to and sometimes it doesn't. But if
Speaker 1: we set our mind when something happens on this idea, No,
Speaker 1: I wanted the other thing. I wanted it to be
Speaker 1: this way. If we set our mind on that, it
Speaker 1: is a formula for suffering. Because I often would say
Speaker 1: to my students, now, let's examine the situation. Is your
Speaker 1: wish true or is reality true? And reality always trumps
Speaker 1: whatever it is you want, So we have to go
Speaker 1: with reality and not wish it to be another way. First,
Speaker 1: what way is it? And let's try to take that in.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean we are going to try to change it,
Speaker 1: but we need to start there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this, I think is such a profound teaching. We
Speaker 4: can all recognize this fairly intellectually that like, okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's me resisting the way things are that causes me
Speaker 4: to suffer. Right, it's sort of a rephrasing of the
Speaker 4: second Noble Truth in some way. And yet boy, it's
Speaker 4: so wired into us, and it's really easy to say, well, okay,
Speaker 4: I get it intellectually until I'm not getting what I
Speaker 4: really want right, even in some cases what I think
Speaker 4: I need, And so it isn't fair. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 4: not right.
Speaker 1: No, it's not fair.
Speaker 4: It's clearly not.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So again this is like the two walls,
Speaker 1: and it's a survival tool, right, I mean, it has
Speaker 1: to be part of the equipment we have is how
Speaker 1: do we survive. We need to get the food, and
Speaker 1: then it turns out to be it's food that I
Speaker 1: find delicious, and then the ego puts it all the
Speaker 1: way up. There has to be a special you know,
Speaker 1: gluten free da da da da da kind of food
Speaker 1: before it's good or vegan food is good. And as
Speaker 1: we keep saying this is what I need, there's something
Speaker 1: true in it, there's some survival in it, and yet
Speaker 1: when the ego gets its hand on it, it becomes
Speaker 1: a kind of fixation and I want it the way
Speaker 1: I want it, like Burger king Well, make it your way.
Speaker 1: So it's this wishing to have it my way, which
Speaker 1: comes from initially a need to survive. We have to
Speaker 1: get some of what we need, but as we turn
Speaker 1: what we need into status, it becomes a kind of
Speaker 1: obsessive trait where only certain things will do. So I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that being a benion is obsessive or needing
Speaker 1: to be gluten free. I'm just saying, as we take
Speaker 1: survival drives and work with them, and we can manufacture
Speaker 1: higher and higher standards for me, I need this to
Speaker 1: be the way I want it to be.
Speaker 4: And yet it's the most natural thing in the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is natural, just like not wanting to be
Speaker 1: killed walking across the street is natural. You want to survive,
Speaker 1: And so how do you recognize a difference between a
Speaker 1: need and a want.
Speaker 4: Let's say we recognize it and we go okay, here
Speaker 4: I am insisting that the world be the way I
Speaker 4: want it to be, and it's not, and I'm suffering
Speaker 4: because of it, and yet I can't seem to let go.
Speaker 1: Well, the first thing to do is to feel the
Speaker 1: suffering wherever you are. Feel that first, so that takes
Speaker 1: you back to their suffering, a rising within this space,
Speaker 1: rather than I'm grasping for this thing, because when it's
Speaker 1: me grasping, that takes up the whole space. But when
Speaker 1: we say, oh, they're suffering arising, now we can feel
Speaker 1: that there's a part of us that can recognize suffering,
Speaker 1: and there's a part of us that is suffering. But
Speaker 1: we need to turn to what actually is first of all,
Speaker 1: even if we don't like it, and that's where we
Speaker 1: encounter our suffering and are grasping and are wishing it
Speaker 1: to be otherwise. Well, I would say also that that's
Speaker 1: kind of the first step if we want to make
Speaker 1: change in the world. The first step is recognizing how
Speaker 1: we're suffering with it. And so what is a genuine
Speaker 1: need for justice, for example, and what is just our
Speaker 1: having a tantrum about things the way.
Speaker 4: They are right? And I think this gets more complicated.
Speaker 4: It's easier to see through when we go, oh, that's
Speaker 4: just me one in another set of golf clubs. I
Speaker 4: don't play golf. You know where these analogies are coming from.
Speaker 4: It's just me one in another set of golf clubs,
Speaker 4: versus saying something like, oh, I want to see justice done.
Speaker 4: You know, you and I were talking about the trial
Speaker 4: that was happening just before we came on right.
Speaker 1: Now, Yes, the verdict.
Speaker 4: A lot of us have this deep desire for justice
Speaker 4: to be done, you know. So it's easier to It's
Speaker 4: easy for me to go, Okay, that's just me being
Speaker 4: selfish when it's just me wanting the other thing I want.
Speaker 4: But this gets harder when we see something out in
Speaker 4: the world and yet the principle is still true, right
Speaker 4: that me insisting that the world be the way I
Speaker 4: think it should be is a cause of suffering.
Speaker 1: It's true that the insisting is and that's where we
Speaker 1: have to see that our suffering is arising based on
Speaker 1: this situation. Just before COVID, my suffering was for these
Speaker 1: children who were in these border facilities, and there was
Speaker 1: only so much I could do before COVID. During COVID,
Speaker 1: I couldn't go there, but I could go there. I
Speaker 1: could go there. I could bring my body there to
Speaker 1: make a statement, which I did four or five times,
Speaker 1: to go to these different facilities and to experience it
Speaker 1: and to be making a statement. But I couldn't make
Speaker 1: it stop. And so I had to recognize that as
Speaker 1: part of the suffering, there was something for me to do,
Speaker 1: and unless I wanted to sacrifice my life for this cause,
Speaker 1: I could not find a way to do more. It
Speaker 1: really came to me in terms of social justice when
Speaker 1: I was in Spain, and when I was in Spain
Speaker 1: was about the time that Trump was elected, and I
Speaker 1: was talking to some of the old timers there about
Speaker 1: their experience during Franco. It's like, how do you get
Speaker 1: through this injustice. The Spanish Man said to me, you
Speaker 1: need to survive it. So that took on a kind
Speaker 1: of meaning to me that wherever I saw injustice, I
Speaker 1: had to make it consistent with my ability to survive.
Speaker 1: I couldn't just throw myself at it. I couldn't just
Speaker 1: wish it away. But it's like, how do I live
Speaker 1: my life and continue to live my life so I
Speaker 1: can stand up for this injustice.
Speaker 4: This reminds me of another part of your book that
Speaker 4: I loved, And you're quoting a Japanese philosopher and Buddhist
Speaker 4: scholar whose name I'm not going to be able to pronounce. He'samatsusu,
Speaker 4: all right, I did, who said there is one essential
Speaker 4: co on in human life. When nothing will do, what
Speaker 4: will you do?
Speaker 1: Right? So, we spend a lot of time in the
Speaker 1: philosophy and the history of Buddhism, but I think this
Speaker 1: statement encapsulates the life struggle we have, which is when
Speaker 1: we can make a decision and when we can affect things,
Speaker 1: that's not so hard. Let's just move on and let's
Speaker 1: not feed the wrong wolf. However, when we don't know
Speaker 1: what to do, then we're stuck and that's when we
Speaker 1: have to spend some time allowing our awareness to grow
Speaker 1: in a way until it guides us into the direction
Speaker 1: we need to be in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just love that phrase that you know, when
Speaker 4: nothing will do, what will you do? That really is
Speaker 4: a great it's a great on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It is, as he said, the essential
Speaker 1: co on. It's like all coons come from this experience
Speaker 1: of I don't know what to do, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to answer this, and I just have to go
Speaker 1: to a deep place. And that was a very interesting
Speaker 1: experience in Japan when I did co on practice in Japan,
Speaker 1: because you had to fail, and of course that wasn't
Speaker 1: very good. I'm used to being a good student, a
Speaker 1: good zen student, and in order to do con work
Speaker 1: you have to go in and face the teacher and
Speaker 1: not know and fail over and over again. Now, some
Speaker 1: of the time I was there, I see the teacher
Speaker 1: five or more times a day with what I had,
Speaker 1: and I remember one time going to him and I
Speaker 1: was really tired. I mean, your retreat schedule is something
Speaker 1: like three in the morning till ten at night, and
Speaker 1: you're doing your meditation and your co on there, so
Speaker 1: you're tired and you're cold and you're hungry, and you
Speaker 1: don't have any of your comforts, and so how do
Speaker 1: you keep working on the nothing nothing will do? What
Speaker 1: do I do now? So I sat waiting to go
Speaker 1: see the teacher and have my interview, and I had nothing.
Speaker 1: And I came in and I thought to myself, you know,
Speaker 1: I am a bad sotos En student. And that was
Speaker 1: my thought. It's like, oh, Rind's eye's where you do
Speaker 1: the co on? So I thought to myself, I am
Speaker 1: a bad sotos En student. And I went in to
Speaker 1: him and I just bowed. And he looked at me
Speaker 1: as if there was a bad smell in the room,
Speaker 1: and he said, is that your answer? And I said yes.
Speaker 1: He said no, good, and no, I was right. I'm
Speaker 1: no good at this good moving right along and being
Speaker 1: able to sustain oneself and not the self of I'm
Speaker 1: good at this, but be able to continue to go
Speaker 1: into the depth of when nothing will do? What will
Speaker 1: I do? To continue with that? It takes something. And
Speaker 1: I think that was the essential of the training that
Speaker 1: I had in Japan, was no, you don't just bow,
Speaker 1: you don't give up. You come up with an answer,
Speaker 1: even though it might not be the right one do it,
Speaker 1: So that was very powerful for me.
Speaker 4: My teacher is slightly more diplomatic. His usual thing is
Speaker 4: he'll say, I think you need to sit with that
Speaker 4: some more, which is a nice way of saying, Nope,
Speaker 4: that's not it. You did not get it right.
Speaker 1: There are many ways to say no, that's not it.
Speaker 1: And in Japan that kind of slap no good or
Speaker 1: just ringing the bell is like putting the wall there
Speaker 1: and you have to throw yourself against it. So it
Speaker 1: requires a different kind of energy. And I tried doing
Speaker 1: co on practice with some of my students here in
Speaker 1: the West, and they became very anxious. And I realized
Speaker 1: that the kind of environment that I had been in
Speaker 1: in Japan was so intense I really didn't have any
Speaker 1: energy left over to think or be anxious, and that
Speaker 1: I just had to use everything I had to survive
Speaker 1: and come up with an answer. So it's a lot
Speaker 1: harder to translate the co on practice to our Western
Speaker 1: style for the teachers. But your teach, you're restrained most
Speaker 1: likely in the West.
Speaker 4: I want to pause for a quick good wolf reminder.
Speaker 4: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 4: see people making and that's really that we don't think
Speaker 4: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 4: the context of our entire life. Right, habits don't happen
Speaker 4: in a vacuum. They have to fit in the life
Speaker 4: that we have. So when we just keep adding I
Speaker 4: should do this, I should do that, I should do this,
Speaker 4: we get discouraged because we haven't really thought about what
Speaker 4: we're not going to do in order to make that happen.
Speaker 4: So it's really helpful for you to think about where
Speaker 4: is this going to fit and what in my life
Speaker 4: might I need to remove. If you want to step
Speaker 4: by step guide for how you can easily build new
Speaker 4: habits that feed your good Wolf, go to good Wolf
Speaker 4: dot me, slash change and join the free masterclass. I've
Speaker 4: worked with another Zen teacher who is a little more perfunctory.
Speaker 4: Give the answer and he just he just rings the
Speaker 4: bell like Nope, that's not it.
Speaker 1: So since I didn't have that experience, it was a
Speaker 1: little hard for me to translate it for my own students.
Speaker 1: And I also recognized in the West, the kind of
Speaker 1: environment I was providing at my Zen center was comforting,
Speaker 1: even though it was spare, and that left a lot
Speaker 1: of room for people to think and to become anxious.
Speaker 1: So it was a different environment, and so I actually
Speaker 1: stopped teaching the coins. My teacher in Japan wanted me
Speaker 1: to teach the cons that I had practiced with him,
Speaker 1: but I didn't find a way to do it.
Speaker 4: So let's talk a little bit about awareness. You talk
Speaker 4: a lot about awareness throughout the book, and I want
Speaker 4: to start by having you just share a little bit
Speaker 4: about two aspects of awareness, or maybe let me back
Speaker 4: up from that and allow you to sort of just
Speaker 4: say a little bit about when you're using the word awareness,
Speaker 4: what do you mean.
Speaker 1: Actually, for me, awareness is the true self, and so
Speaker 1: I don't remember what aspects I described of it, other
Speaker 1: than you know, there's an aspect of light, there's an
Speaker 1: aspect of penetration. But for example, I was just talking
Speaker 1: to some women in a zen group I teach now,
Speaker 1: and I said, you can see yourself as the entire universe.
Speaker 1: And one woman said, I don't see that. I don't
Speaker 1: get there. And I said, but you can with your
Speaker 1: mind reach out to see the entire limits as far
Speaker 1: as your mind will go of the universe. And if
Speaker 1: you recognize that your breath is coming from there, the
Speaker 1: furthest reaches of the universe, and you are made of
Speaker 1: this breath, then you are the entire universe, and your
Speaker 1: awareness of it is what really helps you to see that.
Speaker 1: So the awareness is your connection to the entire universe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the two aspects that you're talking about. You say
Speaker 4: that there is the essence of the mind and the
Speaker 4: contents of the mind. And I love this basic idea
Speaker 4: because usually when we're talking about mindfulness, we're talking about
Speaker 4: being present, and the place that we usually start is
Speaker 4: with what is around right, like present to what, oh,
Speaker 4: present to a sound, oh, present to a site. We
Speaker 4: see the contents of our minds. Yes, and I love
Speaker 4: the way you describe that. This essence is when we
Speaker 4: shift from the contents of the mind, it's into what
Speaker 4: it is that's seeing the contents. Would that be a
Speaker 4: way of saying it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, what I said. What I said, So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: much of mindfulness is this kind of awareness, moment to moment.
Speaker 1: Now I'm taking a bite of food. This is the
Speaker 1: way they eat in a mindful retreat. Right, I'm taking
Speaker 1: a bite now, I'm chewing it this many times. But
Speaker 1: what is it that's aware? What is it that is aware?
Speaker 1: Not only of what's in your mouth and you're chewing,
Speaker 1: but of some other connections to the universe. What is
Speaker 1: it that is aware? And I really experience awareness as
Speaker 1: something that's not just part of the brain, but is,
Speaker 1: as I was describing, part of the entire universe. So
Speaker 1: awareness exists. That's the essence of awareness exists both inside
Speaker 1: and outside and in a certain way. The mind is
Speaker 1: an antenna for this awareness, and then the antenna this
Speaker 1: information and we see it as content. But something is watching,
Speaker 1: and that's something is very interesting. People do usually discover
Speaker 1: that something the first time they're meditating all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's not just that they're having thoughts, it's that they're
Speaker 1: aware of having thoughts. So you don't have two brains,
Speaker 1: so you have only one mind, and the mind has
Speaker 1: this quality of observing itself. The essence of mind can
Speaker 1: see and the contents are what it's seeing. So oftentimes
Speaker 1: I think when describing mindfulness, we don't go far enough
Speaker 1: into the other aspect, which is mindlessness, an essence of
Speaker 1: awareness without content. Mindlessness.
Speaker 4: Say more about that last part mindlessness.
Speaker 1: Well, mindlessness is I think one of the aspects of
Speaker 1: a Samadi experience or an enlightenment experience where there's no ownership,
Speaker 1: there's just pure awareness, and we've lost that identification with
Speaker 1: the content of who we are, which we're usually watching
Speaker 1: and it can be rather brief, but it's what happens
Speaker 1: if we're very lucky with a meditation experience. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, we're just aware and we're not stuck with
Speaker 1: this particular vision of who we are or what we're experiencing.
Speaker 4: You talk about four stages in developing awareness, discovery, amplification,
Speaker 4: circulating awareness, and then finally awareness arising spontaneously. So maybe
Speaker 4: we could walk through each of those four stages.
Speaker 1: So the first one is what I described for sitting
Speaker 1: down to meditate. We never knew that there was a
Speaker 1: quality of the mind that wasn't thinking. We thought thinking
Speaker 1: was our entire mind, And all of a sudden, we
Speaker 1: sit down to meditate and we're watching the thoughts arising
Speaker 1: and it's like, whoa, there's something that is aware of
Speaker 1: the content of the thoughts. And then the amplification is
Speaker 1: how we practice, whether it be yoga, taij or zazen,
Speaker 1: how do we practice the exercise of relating to awareness,
Speaker 1: you know, focusing on the breath, for example. And then
Speaker 1: in the next stage in circulation is about how do
Speaker 1: we bring it into our activities. So it's not just
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here and I'm aware of being aware, but
Speaker 1: as I'm moving through my life, my awareness is actually active.
Speaker 1: I remember when I used to cook at Berkeley's End Center.
Speaker 1: I was a head cook for a while, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, my body would turn around and I
Speaker 1: would see somebody about to put soy sauce in the coalslaw.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, you don't put soy sauce in the coleslaw.
Speaker 1: But something in my awareness warned me because that was
Speaker 1: my job. Now we turn around and we look and see, oh,
Speaker 1: what is he doing over there? He's putting soy sauce
Speaker 1: in the coal slice. That was a good idea, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't in the recipe anyway. That is how we notice.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I would talk to my students about when you're
Speaker 1: walking outside, take the position of the gravel that your
Speaker 1: foot is on, so that you're not just hearing the
Speaker 1: sound of your foot on the gravel, but the gravel
Speaker 1: itself is part of your awareness. And so that's a
Speaker 1: way of kind of changing position and circulating that awareness.
Speaker 4: What you just said there reminds me of co on
Speaker 4: practice so much, taking that different position.
Speaker 1: Yes, letting go of thinking it through. So then, obviously
Speaker 1: or maybe not so obvious. Obvious to me anyway, is
Speaker 1: that when awareness is spontaneously arising in a certain way.
Speaker 1: When I was trying to use awareness in my work
Speaker 1: of cooking, it spontaneously arose to save the coal saw
Speaker 1: from the soy sauce. It just came up and my
Speaker 1: body turned, you know, I remember it very vividly, and
Speaker 1: that I was standing in the opposite direction, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden my body turned and I saw this
Speaker 1: horrible possibility.
Speaker 4: You're very opposed to soy sauce in the cult law.
Speaker 1: I have my opinions, yes, but people loved my Coleslaw.
Speaker 1: So one of the things about Coleslaws it has to
Speaker 1: be fresh. It has to have a fresh flavor. So
Speaker 1: it's garlic, mayonnaise and mustard and whatever sal you need
Speaker 1: to balance it, that's all. And then all those flavors,
Speaker 1: especially during sesshin, are just very vibrant. A soy sauce
Speaker 1: not so much.
Speaker 4: This gentleman was wishing it to be otherwise.
Speaker 1: Well, he was a cook helper who generally, I guess,
Speaker 1: used soy sauce in his food and thought it was
Speaker 1: a good addition. But anyway, I was famous for my coleslaw,
Speaker 1: so I must say I have a big ego attachment
Speaker 1: there as well.
Speaker 4: So I guess we've sort of stumbled into stories about cooks.
Speaker 4: And the title of the book, Naked in the Zendo
Speaker 4: comes from a story that occurred to a cook. I
Speaker 4: don't know if it was a cook at the Berkeley's end,
Speaker 4: I think it was right, Yeah, you want to share
Speaker 4: that story?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, then this was a great way to circulate awareness.
Speaker 1: You might think you were the best cook in the
Speaker 1: world and your coalslaw was the best coal slaw. But
Speaker 1: then what happened when you tried to serve the food
Speaker 1: when you had the position of being a server in
Speaker 1: the zendo, and you had to be present for each person,
Speaker 1: So each job required a different kind of awareness. And
Speaker 1: in that particular case, I was a server assigned to
Speaker 1: take the bowls that had come from the kitchen and
Speaker 1: offer them and scoop or use tongs to serve the food.
Speaker 1: And as I was standing there in the back of
Speaker 1: the zendo, the room where we were all meditating, and
Speaker 1: there must have been at least fifty people in there.
Speaker 1: The cook came in, and in Berkeley, the cook would
Speaker 1: make bows before the food was served, so the food
Speaker 1: would be delivered and then the cook would step in
Speaker 1: make his bows, as this is my offering to the community.
Speaker 1: And this cook, when he made his third bow, his
Speaker 1: pants fell off, and too much to his credit, he
Speaker 1: was wearing underwear, because some things can go by the
Speaker 1: bye during a long retreat, but he hadn't managed to
Speaker 1: get underwear on that day, and so his pants fell off.
Speaker 1: And I was standing very close to him, watching, and
Speaker 1: so I said to myself, I didn't see that that
Speaker 1: didn't happen, wishing it to be otherwise because I had
Speaker 1: to serve the food and I didn't want to destroy
Speaker 1: the meal ceremony. However, when I looked up at my teacher,
Speaker 1: Sojoan mel Weizmann, he was laughing hysterically. So then I
Speaker 1: couldn't hold it back, because Sojoan was across the room
Speaker 1: from the man who's George whose pants fell off, so
Speaker 1: he couldn't help but see. And anyway, that's his job
Speaker 1: is to watch all of us. So then I started
Speaker 1: laughing as I'm carrying the bulls, and I laughed so
Speaker 1: hard everything is running down my face, my nose, my eyes.
Speaker 1: But at some point during this I noticed that George
Speaker 1: had left the zendo. I mean, it was kind of embarrassing,
Speaker 1: so he didn't stay for the meal. He went outside.
Speaker 1: And so when it was time for me to take
Speaker 1: the bulls back after I'd finished my job of serving,
Speaker 1: I saw George sitting on a bench and I said, George,
Speaker 1: how was it for you? And what happened? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: my pants were loose, so I took a big breath
Speaker 1: so that my belly filled out my pants and they
Speaker 1: were on snugly. But when I bowed the last time,
Speaker 1: I exhaled, so that left room for my pants to
Speaker 1: fall off. But I said, well, how did it feel?
Speaker 1: He said, well, I really wanted to go up to
Speaker 1: our teacher and say, Master, I have been enlightened. And
Speaker 1: I realized, yes, of course, you're enlightened. I just did
Speaker 1: one of the most embarrassing things you could do in
Speaker 1: a group of people, and you live through it. And
Speaker 1: that's when I began to understand the notion of how
Speaker 1: much we try to look good in doing this practice.
Speaker 1: And how important it is to make mistakes in front
Speaker 1: of everyone. So then this became a teaching that I
Speaker 1: had for my own students, which is, make your mistakes
Speaker 1: often and publicly, and don't let your need to be
Speaker 1: good at this constrain your freedom. Your freedom to make
Speaker 1: mistakes and understand you just continue. Your life continues, and
Speaker 1: your ego isn't growing because you just got it slapped
Speaker 1: a little bit. So I think it's a very important
Speaker 1: practice for those of us doing a spiritual practice in
Speaker 1: a community. We automatically compete to be good at it
Speaker 1: and to get it right, and so there's a point
Speaker 1: where that crosses over into ego versus just I really
Speaker 1: want to learn how to practice as a way of
Speaker 1: amplifying my awareness.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, that's a funny story.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is.
Speaker 4: As I was reading this story, I was waiting to
Speaker 4: hear about how mortified George was and what a lovely man.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 1: A lovely man. In fact, before I included this story
Speaker 1: in the book, he had deceased, and I contacted his
Speaker 1: widow to make sure it was okay with her to
Speaker 1: include this story in the book. Because he was such
Speaker 1: a sweet person and a quiet person. So this wisdom
Speaker 1: was not something we all were exposed to by his
Speaker 1: blathering about it. He just sat there quietly understanding that
Speaker 1: his ego had just been exposed and he had dropped
Speaker 1: it with his pants. So this was a form of an.
Speaker 4: Let's have you tell another story for us here, and
Speaker 4: I'm going to let you pick the story. But you
Speaker 4: wrote a book that really was to expose we're talking
Speaker 4: about exposing, to expose the stories of Zen women, and Buddhism,
Speaker 4: for all its wonderful things, is a very patriarchal culture
Speaker 4: and Zen is no different better or worse, I don't know,
Speaker 4: than other aspects of Buddhism. But you wrote a book
Speaker 4: that was really about bringing out some of the wonderful
Speaker 4: stories of some of the women throughout Zen who have
Speaker 4: played an important role in the tradition. And so I
Speaker 4: was wondering if you would tell us one of their stories.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will, because there was one woman in particular
Speaker 1: who's a favorite among Zen students now that we've gotten
Speaker 1: her story out, and her name was meunce On. That
Speaker 1: was her practice name, and she was practicing at a
Speaker 1: temple called Hinshan and Qinshaan actually is in the ancestral
Speaker 1: lineage of Tofu, where I ended up practicing. So this
Speaker 1: when I uncovered her story through one of the Buddhist scholars,
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was going to be affected by
Speaker 1: her behavior. At Qingshaun. So she was one of the
Speaker 1: senior students of a teacher named Dohway, and at that
Speaker 1: time it was common for women to be excluded from monasteries,
Speaker 1: and so the head monk was very upset with Dohuay,
Speaker 1: his teacher, for allowing this woman to be in the
Speaker 1: monastery with the monks. And there's all kinds of reasons.
Speaker 1: He wasn't out of the question because the teacher who
Speaker 1: uh was Dophway's teacher, actually had relationships with some of
Speaker 1: his women's students, So this was quite some time ago. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the monk who was upset one none, he was upset
Speaker 1: by having a woman in the monasteries. So Dohuay said,
Speaker 1: why don't you go talk to her rather than complain
Speaker 1: to me, go complain to her. So this senior monk
Speaker 1: went to her, and she was in her quarters, her
Speaker 1: little retrieve room in Qingshan, and she asked him if
Speaker 1: it was to be a dharma interview or a personal interview.
Speaker 1: So was this going to be about Buddhist practice or
Speaker 1: was it going to be something between the two of them?
Speaker 1: And he said it was going to be an interview
Speaker 1: about Buddhism, a dharma interview. So she said, well, because
Speaker 1: it's a dharma interview, I'm going to send my attendance
Speaker 1: away my helpers, and you send yours away, and we'll
Speaker 1: just face each other one to one. And so when
Speaker 1: he entered her room, he found Mensong naked and spread
Speaker 1: eagle on her bed, and he said, what kind of
Speaker 1: a place is this, probably pointing to her genitals with
Speaker 1: great composure. Unzong replied, this is the place where all
Speaker 1: Buddhas and ancestors enter the world, possibly contemplating his own
Speaker 1: sexual advances. Wanan asked, and may I enter it or not?
Speaker 1: And she said, very calmly, horses cross, asses do not.
Speaker 1: This is a very famous phrase from another earlier teacher,
Speaker 1: which she turned around and used on her own. This
Speaker 1: was Joshu's response when someone came to him and said,
Speaker 1: I've heard about this great bridge of Joshu, but all
Speaker 1: I see is an O long bridge, and Joshu said,
Speaker 1: horses cross and ass's cross. So she used Joshu's famous
Speaker 1: zen expression for her own purpose. And then when she
Speaker 1: said horses cross, but asses do not, she closed her
Speaker 1: legs and turned her backside to him and said this
Speaker 1: interview is over. And he left and he went to
Speaker 1: the teacher to tell the teacher what had happened. And
Speaker 1: the teacher said, you can't say that she lacks wisdom.
Speaker 1: So it was a very awakened teacher. But what really
Speaker 1: struck me, as I had studied this story for years
Speaker 1: before I practiced in Japan, was that actually my teacher
Speaker 1: was a descendant of Dahue. So the temple I was
Speaker 1: in was part of that lineage Tofukuji in Japan. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was built on the plans of Qingshan in China.
Speaker 1: And when Miaotsong stayed at Qingshan in China, she stayed
Speaker 1: in the abbots quarters, some section of the temple that
Speaker 1: was a little restricted, so the monks didn't come and
Speaker 1: go all the time, so she had some privacy. And
Speaker 1: when I stayed at Tofukuji, I stayed in the abbots quarters,
Speaker 1: so I could see the direct connection to her insisting
Speaker 1: that she had a place there to my being able
Speaker 1: to practice in a male monastery in Japan because of
Speaker 1: what she had done historically, and this was a very
Speaker 1: profound experience for me to recognize that what I was
Speaker 1: doing by being in Japan would possibly open doors for
Speaker 1: other women, and that this was very important. That what
Speaker 1: we do for each other to conserve the practice and
Speaker 1: make it available for others is very important, and we
Speaker 1: do that with our own courage and our own heart
Speaker 1: and our own intent practice.
Speaker 4: That's a great story. So speaking of what we do
Speaker 4: for others and carrying this practice forward, tell me a
Speaker 4: little bit about the Shugaku Zen Institute that you have founded.
Speaker 1: Suzuki Roshi's name was Shogaku shunn'ri use Suzuki, so Shogaku
Speaker 1: is auspicious peace. I think I can't remember assuming you
Speaker 1: something about the dragon. So what bothered me and why
Speaker 1: I started at Showgakuzen Institute was that Zen students might
Speaker 1: spend twenty or thirty or more years practicing in a
Speaker 1: Zen monastery, and sometimes an American Zen temple would say, okay,
Speaker 1: well now it's time for you to go, and they
Speaker 1: had no skills. I know one story of a young
Speaker 1: man who later went back to school and was one
Speaker 1: of our graduates of Shogakuzin Institute who start out by
Speaker 1: refinishing floors, and while certainly using awareness to do tasks
Speaker 1: is an important part of Zen, all those hours of
Speaker 1: meditation which could be used to listen to with a
Speaker 1: full heart, to listen to other people and to counsel
Speaker 1: them and to be a chaplain for example, that's the
Speaker 1: kind of work that would also be beneficial. So in
Speaker 1: Shogakuzen Institute we offer with as little cost as possible
Speaker 1: because we do things online and don't have a brick
Speaker 1: and mortar institute to support, and we pay the teachers
Speaker 1: according to how many students come into the class. We
Speaker 1: are offering classes foreign Masters of Divinity, so it's a
Speaker 1: graduate degree. And with that and with other training, Zen
Speaker 1: students can become chaplains or spiritual advisors, something that makes
Speaker 1: a direct use of the awareness and attention that they've
Speaker 1: developed during their practice of Zen.
Speaker 4: So you're basically trying to give them some sort of
Speaker 4: credit for all the work they've done on meditating.
Speaker 1: Yes, so what we can do for a certain number
Speaker 1: of units, as most universities can, is say, tell us
Speaker 1: what classes you've had, what practice periods you've gone to.
Speaker 1: Let the teacher who we know is an authorized in teachers,
Speaker 1: sign up off on that class and we can give
Speaker 1: you some credit for that, some credit for your hours
Speaker 1: of meditation. And you need to take the classes you
Speaker 1: know in Buddhist history and philosophy and so on. But
Speaker 1: we're also trying to make the classes, for example, Buddhist history,
Speaker 1: like the history of races in Buddhism. How has Buddhist
Speaker 1: practice been discriminatory? Right now, we're offering a course in
Speaker 1: psychological first aid, which we think people are going to
Speaker 1: need to use. We've all been traumatized by this pandemic,
Speaker 1: So how can we help people? If people don't have
Speaker 1: time to go into therapy, how can we be helpful
Speaker 1: to people? So these are the kinds of skills that
Speaker 1: we're trying to develop so people can use the time
Speaker 1: they've spent meditating to help in the world.
Speaker 4: So listener and thinking about that and all the other
Speaker 4: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 4: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 4: would it be remember or little by little, a little
Speaker 4: becomes a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action.
Speaker 4: And I want to give you a tip on that,
Speaker 4: and it's to start small. It's really important when we're
Speaker 4: trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than
Speaker 4: we think we need to because what that does is
Speaker 4: it allows us to get victories. And victories are really
Speaker 4: important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good
Speaker 4: about ourselves, and we become less motivated when we're feeling
Speaker 4: bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure
Speaker 4: that you succeed, you build your motivation for further change
Speaker 4: down the road. If you'd like a step by step
Speaker 4: guide for how you can easily build new habits that
Speaker 4: feed your good Wolf, go to Goodwolf dot me, slash
Speaker 4: change and join the free masterclass. Well, Grace, thank you
Speaker 4: so much for taking the time to come on the show.
Speaker 4: It has been a real pleasure to chat with you,
Speaker 4: and I really appreciate everything you shared with us. We'll
Speaker 4: have links in the show notes to your website and
Speaker 4: to your books and other ways that people can find
Speaker 4: you terrific.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, and it's been great to
Speaker 1: talk to you. I'm going to see someone who has
Speaker 1: read my book and actually understood some things that I'd forgotten.
Speaker 4: I did read it and I loved it. Thank you
Speaker 4: so much.
Speaker 5: Okay, bye bye.
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