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. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: Throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true, and yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Grace Shearson, president of the show, gaku Zen
Speaker 1: Institute and a clinical psychologist. Grace received her doctorate in
Speaker 1: clinical psychology at the Right Institute in Berkeley, California, and
Speaker 1: founded to practice centers and a retreat center under the
Speaker 1: Central Valley End Foundation. Today, Grace and Eric discussed her
Speaker 1: book Naked in the Zendo Stories of uptight Zen, Wild
Speaker 1: ass Zen and Enlightenment Wherever you are. Hi, Grace, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Well, thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: It is a real pleasure to have you on. We're
Speaker 1: going to be discussing your book, which is called Naked
Speaker 1: in the Zendo Stories of uptight Zen, Wild ass Zen,
Speaker 1: and Enlightenment Wherever you Are. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: we're going to start, like we always do, with a parable.
Speaker 1: In the parable, there's a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandmother and she said, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I think the most important
Speaker 1: part of that parable is feeling or seeing or being
Speaker 1: in touch with what actually is going on in your mind.
Speaker 1: My teacher in Japan used to say, what's the most
Speaker 1: important thing. It's watching your mind or and or the
Speaker 1: emotions in your body. So, for example, anger can be
Speaker 1: very exciting in your body, and if you don't recognize
Speaker 1: that wolf for one that needs to calm down a bit,
Speaker 1: then it's impossible not to feed it because you need
Speaker 1: to know it when it arises. So for me, the
Speaker 1: most important step in knowing which wolf to feed is
Speaker 1: knowing yourself and being honest with yourself and watching your
Speaker 1: own mind. That's a great way to start. You've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of lines in this book that I thought
Speaker 1: were so great, But the one where I wanted to
Speaker 1: start was you say that exposing the egos cover up
Speaker 1: is the task of spiritual practice. Say a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that, right, So the book Naked in the
Speaker 1: Zendo really isn't so much about taking off your clothes,
Speaker 1: although we do have one example of that in a
Speaker 1: chapter accidental pants falling off in the zendo, which made
Speaker 1: me think about it. But one of the things things
Speaker 1: that we notice as we're watching these wolves. Is that
Speaker 1: we want to get good at doing meditation. We want
Speaker 1: to be good at practice. We want to be the
Speaker 1: best one in this endo. Actually, and if that's a wolf,
Speaker 1: we need to watch because it has its disguises and
Speaker 1: it could look like sitting in a perfect posture or
Speaker 1: learning the chance perfectly correcting other people. But really it's
Speaker 1: about the ego, and we need to be able to
Speaker 1: use practice to see even how the ego gets in
Speaker 1: there to steal our spiritual practice. Yeah, it is astounding
Speaker 1: the way it shows up everywhere, isn't it. And and
Speaker 1: you talk a lot about that in the book, and
Speaker 1: I really appreciated that, about how much we are trying
Speaker 1: to do it right. You make a nice job of
Speaker 1: showing this because I think that trying to do it
Speaker 1: right comes from two motivations, right, there is a genuine
Speaker 1: motivation sation of like, my spiritual practice matters, the world matters.
Speaker 1: I want to show up and I want to contribute
Speaker 1: the best I can. And then there's the ego side
Speaker 1: of it. I want to be seen as being good.
Speaker 1: I want to be seen as doing it right right. Yes,
Speaker 1: 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 this and
Speaker 1: a away seeking mind talk, they asked me, you know
Speaker 1: what they should say or how should it be? And
Speaker 1: I say, be helpful, don't be good at it. Do
Speaker 1: something that's helpful to other people. Give them something that
Speaker 1: will help them. But if you try to be good
Speaker 1: at it, that's what's going to show up your selfishness.
Speaker 1: That's really good advice. There's another line that you use
Speaker 1: where you're also talking about spiritual practice. You say, spiritual practice, however,
Speaker 1: it develops vides ways to see ourselves in a larger context. Right. So,
Speaker 1: one of the things I realized, because I'm tall and
Speaker 1: because I have a lot to say, is that I
Speaker 1: can be rather dominant in a situation. And at some
Speaker 1: point when I was practicing, I realized, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I am just a vegetable in this soup that's offering
Speaker 1: some flavoring. I don't want to overwhelm it. How can
Speaker 1: I keep practicing to be that vegetable in the soup
Speaker 1: and be aware of being in the soup of all
Speaker 1: these people and be useful and not stand out as outstanding. Right,
Speaker 1: This idea of seeing ourselves in a larger context is
Speaker 1: really so important. It's this ability to take some perspective
Speaker 1: that is bigger than our own. I've got a program
Speaker 1: I teach called spiritual habits, and we talk about that
Speaker 1: in this we talk about you know, perspective, and the
Speaker 1: idea is that the bigger our perspective is generally the better. Yes,
Speaker 1: Because in that perspective, if we can only see ourselves
Speaker 1: and not the surrounding environment that we're in, we are
Speaker 1: stuck with ourselves in a particular way. There's no room
Speaker 1: to turn, so to speak. So for example, if we
Speaker 1: say pride is arising, there's a context around which this emotion,
Speaker 1: this negative feature is arising. But if we say I
Speaker 1: am proud, that takes up the whole context, and we
Speaker 1: don't see the movement that we are within awareness and
Speaker 1: something is arising within that awareness, but it isn't me.
Speaker 1: I am the awareness, I am the context. And these
Speaker 1: things arrise and they fall away. But if we keep
Speaker 1: a sizing I am proud or I am smart, rather
Speaker 1: than my pride is arising, there's no room for it
Speaker 1: to move. We're only reinforcing these feelings of pride. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like the way of thinking of that as that
Speaker 1: bigger perspective gives us room to move, to turn around,
Speaker 1: to look to see it from different angles. You've got
Speaker 1: a balloon that's filling up the entire box. You can't.
Speaker 1: I don't know why it chose a balloon in a box,
Speaker 1: but 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 Joco Beck emphasized in her
Speaker 1: teaching a bigger container. Otherwise our ego just keeps growing
Speaker 1: to fill that space like the balloon. Yeah, you mentioned
Speaker 1: that teaching from her, and you also mentioned one of
Speaker 1: my favorite sort of spiritual analogies ever, which is this
Speaker 1: idea of you know, if we take a tablespoon of
Speaker 1: salt and we drop it in this little eight ounce
Speaker 1: glass of water I have, it's gonna taste pretty bad.
Speaker 1: But if we dropped that same tablespoon of salt in
Speaker 1: a gallon of water, well, okay, it's not gonna be great,
Speaker 1: but okay, if I dump it in a gallon drum,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to taste it, you know. And it's
Speaker 1: that idea of the same amount of pain, the same
Speaker 1: amount of salt, the same amount of problem. If it's
Speaker 1: in a bigger container, doesn't feel the same way, doesn't
Speaker 1: taste the same way. Right. You know. There's a toy
Speaker 1: that I used to get in Chinatown, and you would
Speaker 1: put your finger in a woven tube, one finger in
Speaker 1: each end, and if you pulled it, it would become
Speaker 1: tighter and tighter. And it's like that that as we
Speaker 1: pull ole and struggle with whatever is on our minds,
Speaker 1: it becomes tighter, and if we relax, it's easy to
Speaker 1: remove it from the fingers, you know, it becomes looser,
Speaker 1: and we want that spaciousness, that looseness so we can
Speaker 1: actually see we don't have to do this right right.
Speaker 1: That always reminds me of the story of I've never
Speaker 1: verified if this is true, but sooner or later somebody
Speaker 1: like that is not true. But the way that they
Speaker 1: used to capture monkeys, they would put sweets inside a
Speaker 1: coconut and the monkey would put his hand in and
Speaker 1: then he would grab the sweets and once he made
Speaker 1: that fist. He couldn't get his fist back out, you know.
Speaker 1: And if the monkey just let go, the hand comes out.
Speaker 1: You know, the same thing with those Chinese finger traps. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: both of those are lessons in how we make ourselves
Speaker 1: miserable by grabbing onto something and insisting that has to
Speaker 1: be this way. How we look for that space around situations.
Speaker 1: The possibility that it could be different, that there's something
Speaker 1: else is a very important way of turning away from
Speaker 1: whatever we're hung up with into the possibility of change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a phrase that you use in the book
Speaker 1: that is really good and that you say is really
Speaker 1: the root cause of suffering or a you know, one
Speaker 1: of the big root causes of suffering, which is wishing
Speaker 1: it to be otherwise or wit bow. We could probably
Speaker 1: spend the rest of the episode on with Bow and
Speaker 1: dealing with it, but share a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what that is, and then let's maybe talk about some
Speaker 1: strategies for working with it. Right. So, when something happens,
Speaker 1: we wanted to come out the way we wanted to
Speaker 1: come out, and unfortunately the universe doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it comes out the way we wanted to, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't. But if we set our mind when
Speaker 1: something happens on this I didn't know I wanted the
Speaker 1: other thing. I wanted it to be this way. If
Speaker 1: we set our mind on that, it is a formula
Speaker 1: for suffering. Because I often would say to my students, now,
Speaker 1: let's examine this situation. Is your wish true or is
Speaker 1: reality true? And reality always trumps whatever it is you want,
Speaker 1: So we have to go with reality and not wish
Speaker 1: it to be another way. First, what way is it?
Speaker 1: And let's try to take that in. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we are going to try to change it, but we
Speaker 1: need to start there. Yeah, this, I think is such
Speaker 1: a profound teaching. We can all recognize this fairly intellectually
Speaker 1: that like, okay, well, yeah, it's me resisting the way
Speaker 1: things are that causes me to suffer. Right, it's sort
Speaker 1: of a rephrasing of the second Noble Truth in some ways.
Speaker 1: And yet boy, it's so wired into us, and it's
Speaker 1: really easy to say, well, okay, I get it intellectually
Speaker 1: until I'm not getting what I really want, even in
Speaker 1: some cases what I think I need, And so it
Speaker 1: isn't fair. Yeah, yeah, it's not right. It's not fair.
Speaker 1: It's not. Yeah. So again this is like the two Wolves,
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 hands on it, it becomes
Speaker 1: a kind of fixation and I want it the way
Speaker 1: I want it, like Burger King will make it your way.
Speaker 1: So it's this wishing UH to have it my way,
Speaker 1: which comes from initially a need to survive. We have
Speaker 1: to get some of what we need, but as we
Speaker 1: turn what we need into status, it becomes a kind
Speaker 1: of obsessive trait where only certain things will do. So
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that being a Vegian is obsessive or
Speaker 1: needing to be gluten free. I'm just saying, as we
Speaker 1: take survival drives and work with them, and we can
Speaker 1: manufacture higher and higher standards for me. I need this
Speaker 1: to be the way I wanted to be, and yet
Speaker 1: it's the most natural thing in the world. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is natural, just like not wanting to be killed walking
Speaker 1: across the street. It's natural. You want to survive. And
Speaker 1: so how do you recognize the difference between a need
Speaker 1: and a want. Let's say we recognize it and we
Speaker 1: go Okay, here I am insisting that the world be
Speaker 1: the way I want it to be, and it's not,
Speaker 1: and I'm suffering because of it, and yet I can't
Speaker 1: seem to let go. Well, the first thing to do
Speaker 1: is to feel the suffering wherever you are. Feel that first,
Speaker 1: so that takes you back to their suffering arising within
Speaker 1: this space, rather than I'm grasping for this thing, because
Speaker 1: when it's me grasping, that takes up the whole space.
Speaker 1: But when we say, oh, they're suffering arising, now we
Speaker 1: can feel that there's a part of us that can
Speaker 1: recognize suffering, and there's a part of us that is suffering.
Speaker 1: But we need to turn to what actually is first
Speaker 1: of all, even if we don't like it. And that's
Speaker 1: where we encounter our suffering and our grasp being and
Speaker 1: are wishing it to be otherwise. Well, I would say
Speaker 1: also that that's kind of the first step if we
Speaker 1: want to make change in the world. The first step
Speaker 1: is recognizing how we're suffering with it. And so what
Speaker 1: is a genuine need for justice, for example, and what
Speaker 1: is just are having a tantrum about things the way
Speaker 1: they are right? And I think this gets more complicated.
Speaker 1: It's easier to see through when we go, oh, that's
Speaker 1: just me wanting another set of golf clubs. I don't
Speaker 1: play golf. I don't know where these analogies are coming from.
Speaker 1: It's just me one in another set of golf clubs,
Speaker 1: versus saying something like, oh, I want to see justice done.
Speaker 1: You know, you and I were talking about the trial
Speaker 1: that was happening just before we came on right now, Yes,
Speaker 1: the verdict. A lot of us have this deep desire
Speaker 1: for justice to be done, you know. So it's easier
Speaker 1: to It's easier for me to go, Okay, that's just
Speaker 1: me being selfish when it's just me wanting the other
Speaker 1: thing I want. But this gets harder when we see
Speaker 1: something out in the world and yet the principle is
Speaker 1: still true, right that me insisting that the world be
Speaker 1: the way I think it should be as a cause
Speaker 1: of suffering. It's true that the insisting is and that's
Speaker 1: where we have to see that our suffering is arising
Speaker 1: based on this situation. Just before COVID, my suffering was
Speaker 1: for these children who were in these border facilities, and
Speaker 1: there was only so much I could do before COVID.
Speaker 1: During COVID, I couldn't go there, but I could go there.
Speaker 1: I could go there. I could bring my body there
Speaker 1: to 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 sack faced my life for
Speaker 1: this cause, I could not find a way to do more.
Speaker 1: It really came to me in terms of social justice
Speaker 1: when I was in Spain, and when I was in
Speaker 1: Spain was about the time that Trump was elected, and
Speaker 1: I was talking to some of the old timers there
Speaker 1: about their experience during Franco. It's like, how do you
Speaker 1: get through this injustice, and the Spanish man said to me,
Speaker 1: you need to survive it. So that took on a
Speaker 1: kind of meaning to me that wherever I saw injustice,
Speaker 1: I 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? Hm? Hm hm. This
Speaker 1: reminds me of another part of your book that I loved.
Speaker 1: And you're quoting a Japanese philosopher and Buddhist scholar whose
Speaker 1: name I'm not going to be able to pronounce. He's Amatsu, alright,
Speaker 1: I did, who said there is one essential coon in
Speaker 1: human life. When nothing will do, what will you do? Right? So,
Speaker 1: we spent a lot of time in the philosophy and
Speaker 1: the history of Buddhism, but I think this statement encapsulates
Speaker 1: the life struggle we have, which is, when we can
Speaker 1: make a decision and when we can affect things, that's
Speaker 1: not so hard. Let's just move on and let's not
Speaker 1: feed the wrong wolf. However, when we don't know what
Speaker 1: to do, then we're stuck, and that's when we have
Speaker 1: to spend some time allowing our awareness to grow in
Speaker 1: a way until it guides us into the direction we
Speaker 1: need to be in. Yeah, I just love that phrase
Speaker 1: that you know, when nothing will do, what will you do?
Speaker 1: That really is a great it's a great coon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It is he as he said, the essential coon.
Speaker 1: It's like all coons come from this experience of I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do, I don't know how to
Speaker 1: answer this, and I just have to go to a
Speaker 1: deep place. And that was very interesting experience in Japan
Speaker 1: when I did co on practice in Japan, because you
Speaker 1: had to fail, and of course that wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: I'm used to being a good student, a good sense
Speaker 1: to and in order to do can work, you have
Speaker 1: to go in and face the teacher and not know
Speaker 1: and fail over and over again. Now, some of the
Speaker 1: time I was there was see the teacher five or
Speaker 1: more times a day with what I had, and I
Speaker 1: remember one time going to him and I was really tired.
Speaker 1: I mean, your retreat schedule is something like three in
Speaker 1: the morning till ten at night, and you're doing your
Speaker 1: meditation and your co on there, so you're tired and
Speaker 1: you're cold, and you're hungry and you don't have any
Speaker 1: of your comforts, and so how do you keep working
Speaker 1: on the nothing nothing will do? What do I do now?
Speaker 1: So I I sat waiting to go see the teacher
Speaker 1: and have my interview, and I had nothing. And I
Speaker 1: came in and I thought to myself, you know, I
Speaker 1: am a bad sotos And student. And that was my thought.
Speaker 1: It's like Rin's eyes where you do the cod So
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, I am a bad soto Zen student.
Speaker 1: And I went into him and I just bowed. And
Speaker 1: he looked at me as if there was a bad
Speaker 1: smell in the room, and he said, is that your answer?
Speaker 1: And he and I said yes. He said no good?
Speaker 1: And I was right, No good at this? Good moving
Speaker 1: right along and being able to sustain oneself and not
Speaker 1: the self of I'm good at this, but be able
Speaker 1: to continue to go into the depth of when nothing
Speaker 1: will do? What will I do? To continue with that?
Speaker 1: It takes something. And I think that was the essential
Speaker 1: of the training that I had in Japan, was no,
Speaker 1: you don't just bow, you don't give up. You come
Speaker 1: up with an answer, even though it might not be
Speaker 1: the right one. Do it. So that was very powerful
Speaker 1: for me. My teacher is slightly more diplomatic. His usual
Speaker 1: thing is I'll say I think you need to sit
Speaker 1: with that some more, which is a nice way of
Speaker 1: saying Nope, that's not it. You did not get it right.
Speaker 1: But 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: con practice with some of my students here in the West,
Speaker 1: and they became very anxious. And I realized that the
Speaker 1: kind of environment that I had been in in Japan
Speaker 1: was so intense I really didn't have any energy left
Speaker 1: over to think or be anxious, and that I just
Speaker 1: had to use everything I had to survive and come
Speaker 1: up with an answer. So it's a lot harder to
Speaker 1: translate the coon practice to our Western style aisle for
Speaker 1: the teachers. But um, your teacher was trained most likely
Speaker 1: in the West. Definitely was trained in the West. I
Speaker 1: think he may have spent a little time in Japan.
Speaker 1: But yet I've worked with another Zen teacher who is
Speaker 1: a little more perfunctory give the answer, and he just
Speaker 1: he just rings the 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 cons. My 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. So
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about awareness. You talk a
Speaker 1: lot about awareness throughout the book, and I want to
Speaker 1: start by having you to share a little bit about
Speaker 1: two aspects of awareness, or maybe let me back up
Speaker 1: from that and allow you to sort of just say
Speaker 1: a little bit about when you're using the word awareness,
Speaker 1: what do you mean. Actually? For me, awareness is the
Speaker 1: true self, and so I don't remember what aspects I
Speaker 1: described of it, other than you know, there's an aspect
Speaker 1: of light, there's an aspect of penetration. But for example,
Speaker 1: I was just talking to some women in a zen
Speaker 1: group I teach now, and I said, you can see
Speaker 1: yourself as the entire universe. And one woman said, up,
Speaker 1: I don't see that. I don't get there. And I said,
Speaker 1: but you can with your mind reach out to see
Speaker 1: the entire limits as far as your mind will go
Speaker 1: of the universe. And if you recognize that's your breath
Speaker 1: is coming from there, the furthest reaches of the universe,
Speaker 1: and you are made up of this breath, then you
Speaker 1: are the entire universe. And your awareness of it is
Speaker 1: what really helps you to see that. So the awareness
Speaker 1: is your connection to the entire universe. Yeah, the two
Speaker 1: aspects that you're talking about, you say that there is
Speaker 1: the essence of the mind and the contents of the mind.
Speaker 1: And I love this basic idea because usually when we're
Speaker 1: talking about mindfulness, we're talking about being present, and the
Speaker 1: place that we usually start is with what is around
Speaker 1: right like present of what present to a sound, oh,
Speaker 1: present to a site. We see the contents of our minds,
Speaker 1: and I love the way you describe that that this
Speaker 1: essence is when we shift from the contents of the
Speaker 1: mind is into what it is that seeing the contents.
Speaker 1: Would that be a way of saying it? Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: what I said. What I said, So, yeah, much of
Speaker 1: mindfulness is this kind of awareness moment to moment. Now
Speaker 1: I'm taking a bite of food. This is the way
Speaker 1: they eat in a mindful root treat. 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
Speaker 1: aware 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. It 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 translates
Speaker 1: this information and we see it as content. But something
Speaker 1: is watching, and that's something. It's very interesting. People to
Speaker 1: usually discover that something the first time they're meditating. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, it's not just that they're having thoughts,
Speaker 1: it's that they're aware of having thoughts. So you don't
Speaker 1: have two brains, so you have only one mind, and
Speaker 1: the mind has this quality of observing itself. The essence
Speaker 1: of mind can see and the contents are what's what
Speaker 1: it's seeing. So all fentimes, I think when describing mindfulness,
Speaker 1: we don't go far enough into the other aspect, which
Speaker 1: is mindlessness, an essence of awareness without content mindlessness. Say
Speaker 1: more about that last part mindlessness, Well, mindlessness is I
Speaker 1: think one of the aspects of a Sobodhia experience or
Speaker 1: an enlightenment experience, where there's no ownership, there's just pure
Speaker 1: awareness and we've lost that identification with the content of
Speaker 1: who we are, which we're usually watching and it can
Speaker 1: be rather brief, but it's what happens if we're very
Speaker 1: lucky with a meditation experience. All of a sudden, we're
Speaker 1: just aware and we're not stuck with this particular vision
Speaker 1: of who we are or what we're experiencing. You talked
Speaker 1: about four stages in developing awareness, discovery, amplification, circulating awareness,
Speaker 1: and then finally awareness arising spontaneously. So maybe we could
Speaker 1: walk through each of those four stages. So the first
Speaker 1: one is what I described for sitting down to meditate.
Speaker 1: We never knew that there was a quality of the
Speaker 1: mind that wasn't thinking. We thought thinking was our entire mind,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden we sit down to meditate
Speaker 1: and we're watching the thoughts arising. It's like, whoa, there's
Speaker 1: something that is aware of the content of the thoughts.
Speaker 1: And then the amplification is how we practice, whether it
Speaker 1: be yoga, taigi or zazen, how do we practice the
Speaker 1: exercise of relating to awareness, you know, focusing on the
Speaker 1: breath for example. And then um in the next stage
Speaker 1: in circulation is about how do we bring it into
Speaker 1: our activities. So it's not just I'm sitting here and
Speaker 1: I'm aware of being aware, but as I'm moving through
Speaker 1: my life, my awareness is actually active. I remember when
Speaker 1: I used to cook at Berkeley's and Center. I was
Speaker 1: a head cooked for a while, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: my body would turn around and I would see somebody
Speaker 1: about to put it's soy sauce in the cole slaw.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, you don't put soy sauce in the
Speaker 1: cole slaw. But something in my awareness warned me because
Speaker 1: that was my job. Now we turn around and we
Speaker 1: look and see, oh, what is he doing over there?
Speaker 1: He's pretty soy sauce in the coal slice. Thought it
Speaker 1: was a good idea, so it wasn't in the recipe anyway.
Speaker 1: That is how we notice. Sometimes I would talk to
Speaker 1: my students about when you're walking outside, take the position
Speaker 1: of the gravel that your foot is on, so that
Speaker 1: you're not just hearing the sound of your foot on
Speaker 1: the gravel, but the gravel itself is part of your awareness.
Speaker 1: And so that's a way of kind of changing position
Speaker 1: and circulating that awareness. What you just said there reminds
Speaker 1: me of Coen practice so much. Taking that different position, yes,
Speaker 1: letting go of thinking it through. So then, obviously or
Speaker 1: maybe not so obvious. Obvious to me anyway, is that
Speaker 1: when awareness is spontaneously arising in a certain way. When
Speaker 1: I was trying to use awareness in my work of cooking,
Speaker 1: it's spontaneously arose to save the coal slaw from the
Speaker 1: soy sauce. It just came up and my body turned,
Speaker 1: you know, I remember it very vividly. And then I
Speaker 1: was standing in the opposite direction, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: my body turned and I saw this horrible possibility. You're
Speaker 1: very opposed to soy sauce in the cole slaw. I
Speaker 1: have my opinions, yes, but people loved my cole slaw.
Speaker 1: So one of the things about cole slaws it has
Speaker 1: to be fresh. It has to have a fresh flavor.
Speaker 1: So it's garlic, mayonnaise and mustard and whatever. So you
Speaker 1: need to bounce it, that's all. And then all those flavors,
Speaker 1: especially during seschine, are just very vibrant. That soy sauce
Speaker 1: not so much. This gentleman was was wishing it to
Speaker 1: be otherwise. Well he was. He was a cook helper
Speaker 1: who generally, I guess you soy sauce and his food
Speaker 1: and thought it was a good addition. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: was famous for my cole slaw, so I must say
Speaker 1: I have a big ego attachment there as well. So
Speaker 1: I guess we've sort of stumbled into stories about cooks.
Speaker 1: And the title of the book, Naked in the Zendo,
Speaker 1: comes from a story that occurred to a cook. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was a cook at the Berkeley's
Speaker 1: and Center. I think it was right, Yeah, you want
Speaker 1: to share that story, Well, yes, then this was a
Speaker 1: great way to circulate awareness. You might think you were
Speaker 1: the best cook in the world, and your coal slaw
Speaker 1: was the best coal slaw. But then what happened when
Speaker 1: you tried to serve the food when you had the
Speaker 1: position of being a server in this endo, and you
Speaker 1: had to be present for each person, So each job
Speaker 1: required a different kind of awareness. And in that particular case,
Speaker 1: I was a server assigned to take the bowls that
Speaker 1: had come from the kitchen and offer them and scoop
Speaker 1: or use tongs to serve the food. And as I
Speaker 1: was standing there in the back of the zendo, the
Speaker 1: room where we were all meditating, and there must have
Speaker 1: been at least fifty people in there, the cook came in.
Speaker 1: And in Berkeley, the cook would make bows before the
Speaker 1: food was served, so the food would be delivered, and
Speaker 1: then the cook would step in make his bows, as
Speaker 1: this is my offering to the community. And this cook,
Speaker 1: when he made his third bow, his pants fell off,
Speaker 1: and for too much to his credit, he was wearing underwear,
Speaker 1: because some things can go by the bye during a
Speaker 1: long retreat, but he hadn't managed to get underwear on
Speaker 1: that day, and so his pants fell off. And I
Speaker 1: was standing very close to him, watching, and so I
Speaker 1: said to myself, I didn't see that that didn't happen
Speaker 1: wishing it to be otherwise because I had to serve
Speaker 1: the food and I didn't want to destroy the meal ceremony. However,
Speaker 1: when I looked up at my teacher, so John mel Wieman,
Speaker 1: he was laughing hysterically. So then I couldn't hold it
Speaker 1: back because so Joan was across the room from the
Speaker 1: man whose George, whose pants fell off, so he couldn't help.
Speaker 1: But see in anyway, that's his job is to watch
Speaker 1: all of us. So then I started laughing as I'm
Speaker 1: carrying the bulls, and I laughed so hard everything is
Speaker 1: running down my face, my nose, my eyes. But at
Speaker 1: some point during this I noticed that George had left
Speaker 1: the zendo. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing, so he
Speaker 1: didn't stay for the meal. He went outside. And so
Speaker 1: when it was time for me to take the bulls
Speaker 1: back after I finished my job of serving, I saw
Speaker 1: George sitting on a bench and I said, George, how
Speaker 1: was that 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 from 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 in line. You just
Speaker 1: did one of the most embarrassing things you could do
Speaker 1: in a group of people, and you lived through it.
Speaker 1: And that's when I began to understand the notion of
Speaker 1: how 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, is we automatically compete to be good at
Speaker 1: it and to get it right. And so there's a
Speaker 1: point where that crosses over into ego versus just I
Speaker 1: really want to learn how to practice as a way
Speaker 1: of amplifying my awareness. Yeah, yeah, that's a funny story.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. As I was reading the story, I
Speaker 1: was waiting to hear about how mortified George was and
Speaker 1: what a lovely man. He was. A lovely man in fact,
Speaker 1: be for I included this story in the book. He
Speaker 1: had deceased, and I contacted his widow to make sure
Speaker 1: it was okay with her to include this story in
Speaker 1: the book. Because he was such a sweet person and
Speaker 1: a quiet person, so this wisdom was not something we
Speaker 1: all were exposed to be by his blathering about it.
Speaker 1: He just sat there quietly understanding that his ego had
Speaker 1: just been exposed and he had dropped it with his pants.
Speaker 1: So this was a form of enligenment. Let's have you
Speaker 1: tell another story for us here, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: let you pick the story. But you wrote a book
Speaker 1: that really was to expose we're talking about exposing, to
Speaker 1: expose the stories of Zen women and Buddhism, for all
Speaker 1: its wonderful things, is a very patriarchal culture and Zen
Speaker 1: is no different, better, worse, I don't know, than other
Speaker 1: aspects of Buddhism. But wrote a book that was really
Speaker 1: about bringing out some of the wonderful stories of some
Speaker 1: of the women throughout Zen who have played an important
Speaker 1: role in the tradition. And so I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you would tell us one of their stories. Yes, I will,
Speaker 1: because there was one woman in particular who's a favorite
Speaker 1: among Zen students now that we've gotten her story out.
Speaker 1: And her name was Mean Song, that was her practice name,
Speaker 1: and she was practicing at a temple called ching Shan.
Speaker 1: And Ching Shan actually is in the ancestral lineage of Tofukuji,
Speaker 1: where I ended up practicing. So this when I uncovered
Speaker 1: her story through one of the Buddhist scholars, I didn't
Speaker 1: know I was going to be affected by her behavior
Speaker 1: at Ching Shan. So she was one of the senior
Speaker 1: students of a teacher named Dohue, and at that time
Speaker 1: it was common for women to be excluded from monasteries,
Speaker 1: and so the headmonk was very very upset with dot Way,
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: was dot Way'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 noon, he was upset
Speaker 1: by having a woman in the monastery, so to Way 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 retreat room and chang shan, and she asked him
Speaker 1: if it was to be a dharma interview or a
Speaker 1: personal interview. So was this going to be about Buddhist
Speaker 1: practice or was it going to be um something between
Speaker 1: the two of them, And he said it was going
Speaker 1: to be an interview about Buddhism, a darm interview. So
Speaker 1: she said, well, because it's a darm interview, I'm going
Speaker 1: to send my attendance away my helpers, and you send
Speaker 1: yours away, and we'll just face each other one to one.
Speaker 1: And so when he entered her room, he found ments
Speaker 1: On naked and spread eagle on her bed, and he said,
Speaker 1: what kind of a place is this probably pointing to
Speaker 1: her genitals with great composure, and mounts On replied, this
Speaker 1: is the place where all Buddhas and ancestors enter the world.
Speaker 1: Possibly contemplating his own sexual advances. One on asked, and
Speaker 1: may I enter it or not? And she said, very calmly,
Speaker 1: horses cross, asses do not. This is a very famous
Speaker 1: phrase from another earlier teacher, which she turned around and
Speaker 1: used on her own. This was Joe Sho's response when
Speaker 1: someone came to him and said, I've heard about this
Speaker 1: great bridge of Joshua, but all I see is an
Speaker 1: old long bridge, and josh said, horses cross and asses crossed.
Speaker 1: So she used Joshu's famous zen expression for her own purpose.
Speaker 1: And then when she said horses crossed, but asses do not,
Speaker 1: she closed her legs and turned her backside to him
Speaker 1: and said this interview is over. And he left and
Speaker 1: he went to the teacher to tell the teacher what
Speaker 1: had happened, and the teacher said, you can't say that
Speaker 1: she lacks wisdom. So it was a very awakened teacher.
Speaker 1: But what really struck me, as I had studied this
Speaker 1: story for years before I practiced in Japan, was that
Speaker 1: actually my teacher was a descendant of Dohua. So the
Speaker 1: temple I was in was part of that lineage Tofukuji
Speaker 1: in Japan. In fact, it was built on the plans
Speaker 1: of ching Shan in China. And when Maya Song stayed
Speaker 1: at ching Shan in China, she stayed in the abbots quarters,
Speaker 1: some section of the temple that was a little restricted,
Speaker 1: so the monks didn't come and go all the time,
Speaker 1: so she had some privacy. And when I stayed at Tofukuji,
Speaker 1: I stayed in the abbots quarters, so I could see
Speaker 1: the direct connection to her insisting that she had a
Speaker 1: place there to my being able to practice in a
Speaker 1: male monastery in Japan because of what she had done historically.
Speaker 1: And this was a very profound experience for me to
Speaker 1: recognize that what I was doing by being in Japan
Speaker 1: would possibly open doors for other women. And this was
Speaker 1: very important. That what we do for each other to
Speaker 1: conserve the practice and make it available for others is
Speaker 1: very important. And we do that with our own courage,
Speaker 1: in our own heart, and our own intent practice. That's
Speaker 1: a great story. So speaking of what we do for
Speaker 1: others and carrying this practice forward, tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit about the Shugaku zen Institute that you have founded.
Speaker 1: Suzuki Roshi's name was Shogaku shun Reuse Suzuki, so Shogaku
Speaker 1: is auspicious peak. I think I can't remember suming was
Speaker 1: something about the dragon. So what bothered me and why
Speaker 1: I started at Shogakuzen Institute was that Zen students might
Speaker 1: spend twenty or thirty or more years practicing in a
Speaker 1: Zen monastery, and sometimes on Americans in 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 Shogakuzan 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 exam. So you're basically trying
Speaker 1: to give them some sort of credit for all the
Speaker 1: work they've done on meditating. Yes, so what we can
Speaker 1: do for a certain number of units is most universities
Speaker 1: can is say, tell us what classes you've had, what
Speaker 1: practice periods you've gone to. Let the teacher, who we
Speaker 1: know is an authorized in teachers sign off on that class,
Speaker 1: and we can give you some credit for that, some
Speaker 1: credit for your hours of meditation. And you need to
Speaker 1: take the classes you know in Buddhist history and philosophy
Speaker 1: and so on. But we're also trying to make the classes,
Speaker 1: for example, of Buddhist history, like the history of races
Speaker 1: in Buddhism. How has Buddhist practice been discriminatory? Right now,
Speaker 1: we're offering a course in psychological for stay, which we
Speaker 1: think people are going to need to use. We've all
Speaker 1: been traumatized by this pandemic, So how can we help people?
Speaker 1: If people don't have time to go into therapy, how
Speaker 1: can we be helpful to people. So these are the
Speaker 1: kinds of skills that we're trying to develop so people
Speaker 1: can use the time they've spent meditating to help in
Speaker 1: the world. Wonderful, Well, Grace, Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to come on the show. It has
Speaker 1: been a real pleasure to chat with you, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate everything you've shared with this school of links
Speaker 1: in the show notes to your website and to your
Speaker 1: books and other ways that people can find 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've forgotten.
Speaker 1: I did read it and I loved it. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Okay, bye bye. M If what you just
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