Speaker 1: During the meditation is not actually the wonderful moment, but
Speaker 1: much more is a training to become present with every moment,
Speaker 1: and by doing so again, we end up being able
Speaker 1: to really inhabit our lives fully welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for 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 Christopher Kivil, an ordained zen teacher who has
Speaker 1: been practicing since and teaching since in the lineage of
Speaker 1: his teacher, send Master Beaumont. Chris is also the managing
Speaker 1: director and founder of well Spring consulting and as the
Speaker 1: founder and host teacher of Garden Oaks Sanga. Today, Chris
Speaker 1: and Eric discussed his book Finding Zen in the Ordinary
Speaker 1: Stories and Reflections. Hi Christopher, Welcome to the show. Glad
Speaker 1: to be on. Nice to meet you. Eric. We are
Speaker 1: going to be discussing your book, Finding Zen in the
Speaker 1: Ordinary Stories and Reflections, and we'll be talking about that.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking about both of our Zen practices and
Speaker 1: lots of other things. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: let's start, like we all we is do, with a parable.
Speaker 1: There is a grandparent talking with a grandchild, and the
Speaker 1: grandparents says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, looks up at the grandparents, says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandparents 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. Eric, Thank you, and in
Speaker 1: reflecting on that parable, I really came to a sense
Speaker 1: of it's about a relationship. I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that I've been deeply touched by in my own
Speaker 1: growth and development and in the spiritual practice is how
Speaker 1: central relationship is. And this is a relationship between a
Speaker 1: grandparent and a grandchild, and the grandparent is giving something
Speaker 1: of meaning, something that the child can maintain and and
Speaker 1: think about and can help guide their life. And it's
Speaker 1: that relation that the grandparents being the giver and in
Speaker 1: the process being filled by that, and the grandchild receiving
Speaker 1: and being filled by that too. So it's a moment
Speaker 1: of teaching and growth. And so that I think really
Speaker 1: came through to me as I went deeply into this
Speaker 1: story and tried to sense what is its meaning? I
Speaker 1: reflected on other aspects as well. They're certainly the part
Speaker 1: of attending to one's own life spiritual practice and recognizing
Speaker 1: that there are certain ways of living choices. Once makes practices,
Speaker 1: one engages, and it really do support a more balanced life.
Speaker 1: So there's a choice there in terms of the one
Speaker 1: you feed. And then there's also the sense that there's
Speaker 1: really not two sides in the end, and that it's
Speaker 1: not that there's one part of us that we need
Speaker 1: to starve so that the other one can grow. But
Speaker 1: in fact it's through kind of a whole acceptance of
Speaker 1: each moment that leads us, I think, to our greatest
Speaker 1: presence and awareness. And so the story also is good
Speaker 1: for a child. But also at some sense there is
Speaker 1: the giving up of any sense of the good part
Speaker 1: and the bad part and entering into the hole and
Speaker 1: seeing what it teaches us. I love the idea of
Speaker 1: reflecting on that relationship between the grandparents and grandchild. It's
Speaker 1: sort of being fundamental to the whole thing. It's a
Speaker 1: really nice take. I wanted to start by taking a
Speaker 1: couple of lines from your book and just putting them
Speaker 1: out there and then sort of discussing them. And the
Speaker 1: idea I wanted to start with is something you say.
Speaker 1: So often what I'm doing is not what I choose.
Speaker 1: While talking with an acquaintance at a party, my eyes
Speaker 1: wander is there someone else across the room I should
Speaker 1: be talking to instead? When work appears impossible, other jobs
Speaker 1: seem better. I could be an exercise trainer, or just
Speaker 1: to stay at home dad, Right, And you kind of
Speaker 1: go on to talk about these different things and you say,
Speaker 1: I have spent many years second guessing the here and
Speaker 1: now it's a loss. Just choose this here and now,
Speaker 1: choose this route this time for rising, Choose this job
Speaker 1: with its particularities. Choose this person as the one I
Speaker 1: want to know. Well, when you read that to me,
Speaker 1: it brings real emotion because it feels so central as
Speaker 1: an aspect in my life. And that point, you know,
Speaker 1: what I'm doing is not what I choose. The first
Speaker 1: thought of that phrase is this isn't the right thing
Speaker 1: for me to be doing. But a deeper thought on
Speaker 1: that phrase is I have the opportunity to choose this moment.
Speaker 1: There's a flip right in that statement where either I'm
Speaker 1: not doing the right thing or I'm not choosing what
Speaker 1: I'm in the midst of. And for me, that sense
Speaker 1: is so central to living life in a way that
Speaker 1: is whole. And I say, in that element you just
Speaker 1: read back, how I think we all struggle with missing
Speaker 1: our lives. Our lives go by with so many mind
Speaker 1: moments when we are not actually being here and in particular,
Speaker 1: life has its challenges. It's not easy and smooth sailing
Speaker 1: all the time, although it has its wonderful moments and
Speaker 1: challenging moments, but trying to get outside of one's life
Speaker 1: into something else is actually a source of great loss. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that the two elements you brought up there,
Speaker 1: because there is the one which is simply letting go
Speaker 1: of this idea that what I want is somewhere else.
Speaker 1: You know, there's always a better moment than this one.
Speaker 1: You know. It makes me think of one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things in the world, as Calvin and Hobbs. There's
Speaker 1: a strip where Calvin is saying, I'm happy, but that's
Speaker 1: not good enough for me. I demand euphoria, which makes
Speaker 1: me laugh because, like you, that has been so central
Speaker 1: to me. But then I also love the way you
Speaker 1: flip that because a lot of times what I found
Speaker 1: is really helpful. And I've just been talking with clients
Speaker 1: about this. This week is about this idea of let's
Speaker 1: reflect on why you're doing what you're doing and get
Speaker 1: you back to approaching it from a point of choosing
Speaker 1: to do it, because it's really easy to get into
Speaker 1: I have to but there's not a lot of things
Speaker 1: we have to do, you know, So we're choosing to
Speaker 1: do certain things, and the more we can reconnect into
Speaker 1: that Here's why I'm taking my son to soccer practice tonight,
Speaker 1: not because I have to, but because I value him.
Speaker 1: I love him, and I value his development. Okay, now
Speaker 1: I'm actively sort of in a position of of ownership
Speaker 1: in my life versus stuck in this all I have
Speaker 1: to do this. It's a bit of a shift over
Speaker 1: in thinking. But as I was reflecting on your comment
Speaker 1: and coming to speak with you, I also was remembering
Speaker 1: back to things I've learned about managing addiction or avoiding addiction,
Speaker 1: which is related. It's it's the attraction to something that
Speaker 1: is desirable but not good. I think we're all addicted
Speaker 1: to different things. In other words, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: just a particular people who have problems with addiction. We're
Speaker 1: addicted to food, we're addicted to thought patterns, were addicted
Speaker 1: to certain life of patterns. The way we live our lives.
Speaker 1: And what I've found is by paying close attention to
Speaker 1: my daily life and being aware of what arises as
Speaker 1: a result of my choices, I can watch the consequences
Speaker 1: without judgment to see what happens. For instance, if I
Speaker 1: eat chocolate, which I enjoy from time to time, I
Speaker 1: noticed that it actually creates a mood swing in me
Speaker 1: that is unpleasant sometimes, and it's substantial enough that I
Speaker 1: realized that it's not actually worth the chocolate plus the
Speaker 1: mood swing. And so it's taken many repeats to get
Speaker 1: to a point where I'm actually not very interested in
Speaker 1: chocolate because of my memory of the mood swing at
Speaker 1: the moment when I'm thinking about engaging with chocolate. And similarly,
Speaker 1: in human relationships, if I have a pattern of discord
Speaker 1: with somebody, but I realized later that the pattern just
Speaker 1: kind of goes round and round doesn't resolve. I can
Speaker 1: see the moment in which I enter into the discord
Speaker 1: and choose a different way rather than just running down
Speaker 1: the same course of activity. And those kinds of things
Speaker 1: have something of the same aspect as to what you
Speaker 1: just read in the book, which is attending to the
Speaker 1: present moment and what it actually is rising rising there,
Speaker 1: and then watching and seeing what rises in the next
Speaker 1: moment and the next moment and the next moment, and
Speaker 1: putting it together in a chain in short cycles and
Speaker 1: long cycles to really understand the consequences of how one
Speaker 1: loves one's life. And I think it's through that kind
Speaker 1: of attentiveness that we end up owning our lives more
Speaker 1: and therefore being able to inhabit who we truly are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's really well said, and I think one
Speaker 1: of the key things in that is doing it without judgment,
Speaker 1: because the moment that we get into that harsh self judgment,
Speaker 1: we're unable to really observe clearly and carefully, which is
Speaker 1: what you're describing. You're describing I'm able to really watch
Speaker 1: this process. I'm able to really see it. And so
Speaker 1: being able to suspend that self judgment long enough to
Speaker 1: really watch and learn is so important and hard to do,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that's why it takes lots of repetitions. I
Speaker 1: think it's one reason meditation practice is so helpful. It's not,
Speaker 1: in my experience, always about becoming peaceful or calming them mind,
Speaker 1: but it's about practicing being attentive to whatever is arising.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people will say to me, well, I can't meditate.
Speaker 1: You know, I've tried. It doesn't work for me. And
Speaker 1: people ask me, you know, so, what what do you
Speaker 1: do for someone who doesn't who can't meditate? And I
Speaker 1: think that's a misperception of the fruits of meditation that
Speaker 1: at least in my experience. So there are some fruits
Speaker 1: that can allow one to get calmer and more peaceful
Speaker 1: in certain aspects of meditation, often when once first starts
Speaker 1: doing it. But more it's a practice of being deeply attentive,
Speaker 1: non judgmentally to whatever is arising. So if one is
Speaker 1: very worried about one's child because they're in the vaulved
Speaker 1: with some thing that may be concerning, then one pays
Speaker 1: attention to what that worry is and its landscape, and
Speaker 1: it may be hard to let that go and just
Speaker 1: go into some kind of meditation with no thinking, or
Speaker 1: if one is exhausted and feeling sort of the weight
Speaker 1: of exhaustion, Meditation in that stat is too deeply no
Speaker 1: exhaust gin and what it is and how one experiences it,
Speaker 1: and it's a training. Therefore that during the meditation is
Speaker 1: not actually the wonderful moment, but much more as a
Speaker 1: training to become present with every moment, and by doing
Speaker 1: so again we end up being able to really inhabit
Speaker 1: our lives fully. Let's go into meditation a little bit deeper.
Speaker 1: How would you describe yourself as that teacher end teacher,
Speaker 1: end teacher. Yeah, it's fine, Yeah, what is the basic
Speaker 1: instruction you give a beginning student on meditation. I would
Speaker 1: say that it's helpful to sit in a very stable position.
Speaker 1: If people can sit in a cross legged position on
Speaker 1: a cushion on the floor on a mat, that's helpful
Speaker 1: because the spine is erect and not stiff but balanced.
Speaker 1: And if that's not feasible sitting in a chair with
Speaker 1: the feet on the floor, someone has kind of a
Speaker 1: good center direct posture, and a still balanced posture helps
Speaker 1: for a still balanced mind. And then the simple practice
Speaker 1: that I often will tell people as a good way
Speaker 1: to engage in meditation, and one that one can return
Speaker 1: to over the years, is to count the out breath,
Speaker 1: and so as one breathes in, then one breathes out
Speaker 1: and counts one breathing in, breathe out, and count two
Speaker 1: breathing in, et cetera, and count up to ten, and
Speaker 1: after ten, return to one again and go back over
Speaker 1: up to ten and so forth. It sounds very simple,
Speaker 1: but I think what most people will find is that
Speaker 1: you don't get to ten before your mind interrupts and
Speaker 1: your galloping off somewhere else. And in that moment, part
Speaker 1: of the practice is to be non judgmental, but to
Speaker 1: be observant and say, oh, look where my mind just went.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about dinner or uh, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: going to be doing at work tomorrow, and then bring
Speaker 1: it back to counting the breath. And so it's not
Speaker 1: to see how many numbers you can count, but the
Speaker 1: objective is to learn how to bring yourself back to
Speaker 1: a place of restifal presents. One will do it hundreds
Speaker 1: of times in meditation, over and over again and again.
Speaker 1: It's simply a practice of returning to one center and
Speaker 1: learning that process. And so that can be very helpful
Speaker 1: when one is in a tense situation in life or
Speaker 1: facing something that's particularly uncomfortable, to bring oneself back to
Speaker 1: one center again, and this practice that helps develop that
Speaker 1: sense of presence in all sorts of different mind states.
Speaker 1: A moment ago we were talking about you know when
Speaker 1: in meditation if you're feeling really exhausted, is to get
Speaker 1: to know what that exhaustion is, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: transition somebody from all right, I'm really focusing on the breath,
Speaker 1: and everything I'm doing is I just come back to
Speaker 1: the breath, That's the primary thing, into a practice of
Speaker 1: one that you just described where I'm beginning to look
Speaker 1: more closely at what's arising. How do you move from
Speaker 1: just being focused on to the breath into something more
Speaker 1: open like we were talking about before. Well, there are
Speaker 1: a range of different meditative practices, and following the breath
Speaker 1: is a very good one for who are just learning it,
Speaker 1: but I would take somebody through a range of different practices.
Speaker 1: M One is just being just sitting and bringing oneself
Speaker 1: to a still presence with no counting or no methodology.
Speaker 1: That's hard to sustain over much time, but as a
Speaker 1: beautiful one as well and worth practicing. Another is there's
Speaker 1: the a meta prayer for oneself and other beings, and
Speaker 1: meditating on kindness and attentiveness to other beings can be helpful.
Speaker 1: But all of these are a way of training the
Speaker 1: mind and heart, the heart mind to be present with
Speaker 1: a activity that brings one into the present moment. And
Speaker 1: what I found is in meditation on meditation retreats, my
Speaker 1: general experience is that nothing is happening. It's quite different
Speaker 1: from some other activities I've engaged in, you know, yoga,
Speaker 1: spiritual dialogue, where there's a lot of interpersonal sort of
Speaker 1: fascination and excitement. Simple meditated practice has generally felt to
Speaker 1: me that there's nothing happening. It's just like there's no change.
Speaker 1: I can't really put my finger on anything that's that's
Speaker 1: changing I find it. For instance, I go for a
Speaker 1: three day or a weeklong meditation. Afterwards, I start noticing
Speaker 1: that I'm living differently. I noticed that I am taking
Speaker 1: my life up in a somewhat different way, subtly, but
Speaker 1: very consistently. So differently from some workshops I've been to
Speaker 1: over the years where I feel like I had an
Speaker 1: incredible high, but then it dies away three days later,
Speaker 1: unless they're like, I don't know what happened there. This
Speaker 1: focus on the meditative practice seems to have nothing happening
Speaker 1: during the actual practice of it, but that life actually
Speaker 1: starts to change. And so when you say, how do
Speaker 1: you take someone from that practice to the broader sense,
Speaker 1: I think it happens on its own accord as one
Speaker 1: engages earnestly in the practice, because the practice is a
Speaker 1: millennial old tradition that is actually a way that we
Speaker 1: retune our entire inner psyche and wiring to be able
Speaker 1: to engage with our lives. To really I want to
Speaker 1: ask you about your writing, because the book is a
Speaker 1: series of short reflections vignettes, I would say poems. I
Speaker 1: think I probably came across you on Twitter, if I'm guessing,
Speaker 1: and who knows how I saw you there? But you
Speaker 1: also write on Twitter, and you have a lot of
Speaker 1: classics en poets. You have this ability where you're sort
Speaker 1: of taking the present moment and observations of it and
Speaker 1: you're tying it to something deeper, And I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of curious. Do you have a process for seeing the
Speaker 1: world that way? I know that it emerges out of
Speaker 1: your deep meditative practice. The reason I ask is I
Speaker 1: think poets see things in a very interesting way. And
Speaker 1: the more that we can learn how poets are seeing things,
Speaker 1: the more we can learn to see that way in
Speaker 1: our own lives. Well. Part of the training that I've
Speaker 1: engaged in in Senny's Coon study, which is the study
Speaker 1: of East additional short little stories or vignettes that comes
Speaker 1: through the Zen tradition over many centuries, and these I've
Speaker 1: engaged with my teacher that I've learned from now almost
Speaker 1: thirty years, and one that comes to mind is one
Speaker 1: where the Zend teacher says to the student, stepped from
Speaker 1: the top of the hundred foot pole. Step from the
Speaker 1: top of the hundred foot pole. That's actually all that
Speaker 1: there's in that particular little engagement, and it sets up
Speaker 1: an investigation of what is meant by that. This responds
Speaker 1: then to your question about what my processes of learning
Speaker 1: to see the moment in a way that maybe goes
Speaker 1: deeper because at first it sounds a little nonsensical, or
Speaker 1: maybe there's somebody who's a circus person or something's going on.
Speaker 1: But then if you take it into yourself as something real,
Speaker 1: one realizes that there's moments in one's life when you
Speaker 1: feel like you're sort of on the top of something
Speaker 1: really tall and big, but to move anywhere there's great risk.
Speaker 1: It's times when want's holding on to one's own sense
Speaker 1: of personality. There may be times when it's challenging to
Speaker 1: try to gain some access to something uh difficulty in
Speaker 1: speaking to someone in a way that creates connection. Stepping
Speaker 1: from the top of a hundred foot pole than is
Speaker 1: a sense of engagement into into that space. But the
Speaker 1: story top of the hundred a pole is less important
Speaker 1: than the process of investigation to see what that little
Speaker 1: story means for oneself and with coon study where one
Speaker 1: takes up many, many of these stories. It's a repetitive
Speaker 1: process of seeing what is the deeper meaning in each
Speaker 1: of these stories that come through this en tradition. And
Speaker 1: by doing that, I think it's a training in how
Speaker 1: do I reflect on many ways of seeing a situation
Speaker 1: and bringing them to the deeper meaning. And so in
Speaker 1: the writing of my book, I did it from a
Speaker 1: place where it was arising from that meditative investigation. We
Speaker 1: try to see a series of vignettes and stories from
Speaker 1: a place of deeper knowing. And in the same way
Speaker 1: when I write my Twitter posts or tweets, I try
Speaker 1: to write from that place as well. My hope has
Speaker 1: been that there's lots and lots of books now on
Speaker 1: Buddhism and how to practice this and that, and they
Speaker 1: explain the practice and they give you a lot of
Speaker 1: different things you can do, but I find that there's
Speaker 1: a fewer written materials when when you read them, they
Speaker 1: draw you right there into the present moment. They are
Speaker 1: actually the practice happening in front of you, inside of you,
Speaker 1: rather than a description of what you can do in
Speaker 1: order to get somewhere with it. And so the book
Speaker 1: was set up to try to be an experience of
Speaker 1: the practice rather than to tell people about the practice.
Speaker 1: And that was also my desire to try to have
Speaker 1: that deeper meaning arise in each of the vignettes so
Speaker 1: that it could draw people into their own discovery and
Speaker 1: their own thinking for themselves. Yeah, it's very much in
Speaker 1: the direct pointing style, right, you can only point at
Speaker 1: somebody has to experience it, but it does have that
Speaker 1: nature of it. As a coon student myself, I recognize
Speaker 1: a lot of coons that sort of weave their way
Speaker 1: through both your tweets and the book. It's really well done.
Speaker 1: I want to hit a section of the book though,
Speaker 1: that's a little bit more reflection on are there stages
Speaker 1: along a path towards enlightenment? And I really love this
Speaker 1: because you say I've heard many answers, and you detail
Speaker 1: I don't know seven or eight different answers to this
Speaker 1: question of are there stages along a path towards enlightenment?
Speaker 1: But I think we could even phrase that just to say,
Speaker 1: what is spiritual growth about? What does that even mean?
Speaker 1: Where are we headed with this? Let's just open that
Speaker 1: topic up to sort of explore for a minute. Well,
Speaker 1: I remember an argument I had with my brother a
Speaker 1: number of years ago. He is a Daoist practitioner, and
Speaker 1: he was talking to me about the various different stages
Speaker 1: that he was aware of with Endooism, and I at
Speaker 1: the time was really focusing in on kind of a
Speaker 1: non dual approach that is a part of Zen. And
Speaker 1: it seemed to me that there's a unitary aspect to
Speaker 1: our lives and effect there's no stages in life. Simply
Speaker 1: arises and and it is this and once it's this
Speaker 1: that is it. And yet as I reflected more deeply
Speaker 1: over more years of practice, and I read many more
Speaker 1: texts in the meditation and Buddhist traditions, I started realizing
Speaker 1: that there were a lot of different opinions and ideas
Speaker 1: put forth on this question of our their stages. And
Speaker 1: right in the midst of the Buddhist practice, you know,
Speaker 1: there are the ten stages, or the four different positions,
Speaker 1: or you know, the gradual and sudden process, and a
Speaker 1: variety of different sort of ways of commenting on this.
Speaker 1: And yet there's also this unitary sense of there are
Speaker 1: in fact no stages. And so I thought, rather than
Speaker 1: come down in one place to try to say, you know,
Speaker 1: this is my philosophy on enlightenment or a path of
Speaker 1: spiritual growth? Why not explicate the fact that there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of ways of seeing this, And in fact, you're right.
Speaker 1: I list off in a series of different statements. You know,
Speaker 1: here's one that comes out of this source and this text,
Speaker 1: and here's another one that comes from this tradition. And
Speaker 1: what I end with I think is, you know, well,
Speaker 1: I think I'm tired of you know, I got to
Speaker 1: sweep the floor and wash the dishes and recognizing that
Speaker 1: all of it is a philosophization. Uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: our lives come down to activity and presenting ourselves through
Speaker 1: that activity. And so I think that the ideas about
Speaker 1: growth on a path of spiritual development our ideas and
Speaker 1: can be useful, but are probably not able to touch
Speaker 1: what is really going on. There's a wonderful phrase that
Speaker 1: George Bowman, who I have studied with for so many
Speaker 1: years and teacher, says, which is the mind that asked
Speaker 1: the question is not the mind that will find the answer.
Speaker 1: The mind that asked the question is not the mind
Speaker 1: that will find the answer. And that's been a good
Speaker 1: minder to ask the question. But then let the deeper
Speaker 1: meaning emerge on its own. You say at the end
Speaker 1: of that section, the only yardstick I can really apply
Speaker 1: to spiritual growth is my own personal experience, and if
Speaker 1: I am changing over time, then the yardstick is changing
Speaker 1: and can't be used as a tool of measurement. And
Speaker 1: I like that, And I think, like you said, I
Speaker 1: think there's a value in recognizing some stages. There's a
Speaker 1: value in recognizing that there's a path, and there's also
Speaker 1: just now boom here it is. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: these ideas that I thought we could explore a little
Speaker 1: bit more that I really liked. One is this idea
Speaker 1: of spiritual growth as a helix. Say more about that.
Speaker 1: I have a different analogy for that, but I want
Speaker 1: you to explain and then we can sort of talk
Speaker 1: about it, because this is a really interesting one. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that really struck me
Speaker 1: over a number of years of practice, as I was again,
Speaker 1: I have a number of dialogues with my teacher in
Speaker 1: the book, and one of the reasons I included that
Speaker 1: is because spiritual practice is so relational is really what
Speaker 1: I've learned that I don't think we gain development and
Speaker 1: growth in spiritual practice without the interaction with other people
Speaker 1: with their inspirations, with them being a burr under the
Speaker 1: saddle with the challenges and and the relationship with George Bowman,
Speaker 1: the teacher I've worked with all these years, is explicated
Speaker 1: in the book as a demonstration in a way of
Speaker 1: this relationship has been profoundly important for my own growth
Speaker 1: and development. And so at one point I think he
Speaker 1: describes spiritual growth kind of as a helix, something that
Speaker 1: you know, helix coils, goes around in circles, but also
Speaker 1: rises or you know, moves in a path. And it
Speaker 1: was in response to a realization I had after many
Speaker 1: years of working together with him, that we were repeating
Speaker 1: our conversations and frequently I wouldn't remember them that well,
Speaker 1: and I would think I discovered something really important. But
Speaker 1: I was also then going back through my notes as
Speaker 1: I was really working on this book and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out sort of what my path had been, and
Speaker 1: I was a little bit chagrined to find that there
Speaker 1: were times to three years ago when I had been
Speaker 1: having pretty much the same insight as I thought was
Speaker 1: entirely new that day when I was reading it back again.
Speaker 1: So I was like, wait, a minute. What's really going
Speaker 1: on here? Is this just all kind of tomfoolery, And
Speaker 1: so his likening it to a helix that we move
Speaker 1: and yet we cycle, and that there's a combination of
Speaker 1: moving forward and cycling around that's going on all the
Speaker 1: time is kind of a beautiful way of thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I love that because I think the other way that
Speaker 1: we can get discouraged on the spiritual path of the
Speaker 1: personal development path is that the same issues come up,
Speaker 1: we get stuck in what feels like the same place
Speaker 1: or like, well I thought I got through this, you know.
Speaker 1: And the analogy that I like is very similar to
Speaker 1: the one you make, which is being on a spiral staircase. Right.
Speaker 1: If you're on a spiral staircase and there's a picture
Speaker 1: hanging on the wall, every time you go around, you're
Speaker 1: going to see that picture. Ideally, you're back there with
Speaker 1: that same issue, but you're at a slightly higher level
Speaker 1: than last time you visited it. And you know, if
Speaker 1: it's one of your big ones, you're going to come
Speaker 1: back around to it and hopefully you're slightly higher level
Speaker 1: than the last time. But boy, the terrain looks very
Speaker 1: similar there. But I love what you say about this,
Speaker 1: You say our practices about returning to the same spot
Speaker 1: with no opinion, But it's actually like an alpha helix.
Speaker 1: I returned to the same place, but it's been refreshed.
Speaker 1: I meet the same place as I've been here a
Speaker 1: million times, and I've never been here before. And that point,
Speaker 1: if I've never been here before, I find also really
Speaker 1: helpful because I realized that if I just pay enough attention,
Speaker 1: I really lives. I actually haven't been here before. That
Speaker 1: it's my mind that's constructing it to be a repeat,
Speaker 1: and that the mind constructing it as a repeat in
Speaker 1: many ways is the holding of me into that pattern.
Speaker 1: And if I pay close enough attention, I realized, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, this is in fact not a repeat. This
Speaker 1: is I have new characteristics, and so that can also
Speaker 1: be a releasing aspect. Yeah, that pain really close attention. Again.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of that line you can never
Speaker 1: step in the same river twice, which is true. The
Speaker 1: river is different than when you last stepped in it.
Speaker 1: And yet when you step in the river, it has
Speaker 1: some fundamental characteristics that you're like, well, my foot's wet,
Speaker 1: you know, so it seems similar, you know, but there's
Speaker 1: differences and that's why the pain close attention is so important,
Speaker 1: because the nature of our brain is to take shortcuts.
Speaker 1: It's to say, oh, I've I've seen this before. You know,
Speaker 1: our visual site works this way, right. It's just I'm
Speaker 1: looking at something in front of me. I've seen it
Speaker 1: a hundred times, I don't really see it. That's what
Speaker 1: I was sort of getting at with your work around
Speaker 1: some of the poetry that you do is that I think,
Speaker 1: what poetry, when it's done right, points us towards it
Speaker 1: teaches me how to look closely? How do I look
Speaker 1: at this same moment I've been in all these times before,
Speaker 1: but look more closely, and thus new things are revealed.
Speaker 1: I had a beautiful moment in meditation this morning. I've
Speaker 1: been working on a con which is just becoming entirely
Speaker 1: still the statement of the teachers, you know, go through
Speaker 1: become entirely still, a pure white strip of silk, and
Speaker 1: there's a question of what that means. And I was
Speaker 1: meditating this morning, um somewhat buffeted by the challenges I
Speaker 1: was imagining of the day. And I sit in meditation
Speaker 1: in front of a window enough and I'm looking down,
Speaker 1: but I looked up and I my eyes went out
Speaker 1: the window to a large maple tree across a yard,
Speaker 1: and my mind at first was like, oh, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: that maple tree. And yet I was engaged in this
Speaker 1: seeking of what is this moment of entire stillness and
Speaker 1: a pure white strip of silk, and I noticed that
Speaker 1: the entire maple tree was rustling gently in the wind.
Speaker 1: The whole thing was in motion, and yet it appeared
Speaker 1: to be still. And there's something that really opened up
Speaker 1: for me, recognizing that that was really the shape of
Speaker 1: our lives. That it looks like we're just you know,
Speaker 1: same old, same old, going to work again or doing
Speaker 1: the same routine, and yet this sense of everything's moving
Speaker 1: and rustling and shifting constantly was a wonderful reminder. That
Speaker 1: is a great reminder, and that's a great coon. I
Speaker 1: love some of the language in these coons. That made
Speaker 1: me think of one that I've worked on, which is
Speaker 1: there's a line from it sitting in the room in
Speaker 1: absolute silence, mind filled like still water. I have not
Speaker 1: been doing zen as long as you have. I've done
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things. But then is my recent one.
Speaker 1: I just passed my hundredth co on wonderful. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the tradition I'm in, there's a hundred miscellaneous cons,
Speaker 1: and then now I'm into the gateless gate. I know
Speaker 1: these cons. It's a very interesting way to meditate. I
Speaker 1: was reading something by a contemporary, a zen teacher who
Speaker 1: was a little frustrated by some of the old cons,
Speaker 1: so he decided he was going to write his own cons.
Speaker 1: This was a fellowhod practice for many years, but he
Speaker 1: found it was tremendously difficult. And I think these cons
Speaker 1: come down with, you know, centuries of burnishing and tuning
Speaker 1: in order to actually create a space for us to
Speaker 1: engage in. So um, they've been really wonderful and helpful,
Speaker 1: and each one is different. It's quite remarkable to engage
Speaker 1: in cons study. There's a story in the book that
Speaker 1: I really liked that I was wondering if you could
Speaker 1: tell us, not because it paints you as a great person,
Speaker 1: although it does do that, but there's something more to
Speaker 1: it that I think is a beautiful story. And it's
Speaker 1: a story about you being a young man involved in athletics.
Speaker 1: I don't know which sport it was, but you guys
Speaker 1: are riding the bus home after a game. This was
Speaker 1: quite a moment in my life. It was actually soccer.
Speaker 1: It was probably when I was in my junior year
Speaker 1: in high school, and um, we would go to away
Speaker 1: games with the soccer team and there's a bunch of us,
Speaker 1: maybe thirty boys, and on the way home in the bus,
Speaker 1: there had been a tradition that when we won a
Speaker 1: soccer game, a few of the boys, the tougher, rougher boys,
Speaker 1: would walk back in the bus and pick some hapless
Speaker 1: boy and reach down into his back of his pants
Speaker 1: and rip his jock strap off forcibly, which of course
Speaker 1: is not at all comfortable for the boy as shamed him,
Speaker 1: and then hold the jock strap up in the air
Speaker 1: and shout and you know, sort of get a bus
Speaker 1: to kind of like shout along with them as a
Speaker 1: celebration of the victory and what they were doing to
Speaker 1: their boy. For me, it was a brutal and upsetting practice.
Speaker 1: And I found that at some point during one of
Speaker 1: those rides home, I stood up in the walkway in
Speaker 1: the school bus as these boys were coming towards the back,
Speaker 1: and said, if you're going to rip anyone's jock strap off,
Speaker 1: you're going to rip off mine and I just kind
Speaker 1: of stood in their way, and they were angry but
Speaker 1: turned around and went sat down. And when we got
Speaker 1: back to the school, those coaches that stood up, who
Speaker 1: had been sitting up in the front of the bus
Speaker 1: and not ever paying attention to this ritual, and he announced,
Speaker 1: We're not going to have any more jock straps ripped off,
Speaker 1: basically stopped the practice. For me. It felt moving because
Speaker 1: I felt like it had been this energy arising in
Speaker 1: me to try to do something about an unjust behavior.
Speaker 1: But the remarkable thing was years and years later, when
Speaker 1: I was sitting in my office one day, I got
Speaker 1: a call on the phone out of the blue, and
Speaker 1: they fell on the other end of the line said,
Speaker 1: I'm a therapist and I'm working with a client who
Speaker 1: told me the story of how actually you kept his
Speaker 1: jockstrap from being ripped off in the bus and how
Speaker 1: meaningful that was to him. And I have a practice,
Speaker 1: said this therapist, of trying to do one random act
Speaker 1: of kindness every day. And I asked my client if
Speaker 1: I could call you and tell you about this story,
Speaker 1: and he said yes, And so I'm calling you just
Speaker 1: to relay how meaningful that was to the man who
Speaker 1: was a boy at that time, and so I wrote
Speaker 1: that in the book because of the sort of the
Speaker 1: moment of connection over years that happened. I didn't consider
Speaker 1: myself to be a particularly out in front person in
Speaker 1: high school, and I wasn't, you know, on the first
Speaker 1: string generally on the soccer team, and wasn't the top
Speaker 1: of the pack in any way. So that impetus to
Speaker 1: stand up sort of came almost before thinking about it.
Speaker 1: It was one of those unmeditated responses of like, this
Speaker 1: is just wrong. It was a example of how our
Speaker 1: deeper selves move us, move us to take action to
Speaker 1: stand up for something, and I was using that as
Speaker 1: an example of kind of that inner self and how
Speaker 1: it operates. Yeah, I love that story because it just
Speaker 1: shows that we never know the deep impact that things have.
Speaker 1: You know, just by fluke, you got to know that
Speaker 1: that one thing had that impact, but we just don't know.
Speaker 1: And I love the way these things circle around, like
Speaker 1: that therapist is committed to an act of kindness, so
Speaker 1: that therapist reaches out to you. You know, now you
Speaker 1: know about this thing that you did, now you tell
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just all these positive actions just radiate
Speaker 1: in all these different ways. You know, we're not privileged
Speaker 1: most of the time to see them. I wish more
Speaker 1: of the good that everybody puts into the world, because
Speaker 1: most people put a lot of it into the world
Speaker 1: all the time. I wish it was somehow like if
Speaker 1: you could see it, you could visualize it, you could
Speaker 1: see some chart. Here's the ripples of all my kindness
Speaker 1: out into the world. Right. I think if we could
Speaker 1: see that, it would be beautiful. And so we just
Speaker 1: have to on faith sort of go, well, I us
Speaker 1: that's happening. So I love that story because it says,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, it's it's happening. I love the way
Speaker 1: you expressed that, and I think it's a deep encouragement
Speaker 1: for all the good that we all do in the world.
Speaker 1: One of the things we say at the one You
Speaker 1: feed a Lot is that there's no shortcut to lasting happiness. Right,
Speaker 1: We've got to do the work to improve our lives.
Speaker 1: But this can be really challenging to do without some support.
Speaker 1: Our lives are busy, there's a lot of things clawing
Speaker 1: at our attention, and we might have ways of working
Speaker 1: with our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are not very
Speaker 1: good for our well being. So if you'd like help
Speaker 1: working on any or all of those things, I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of spots that have just opened up in
Speaker 1: my one on one coaching practice. You can book a
Speaker 1: free thirty minute call to talk with me, no pressure,
Speaker 1: and we get to know each other at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash coach. So let's talk about a
Speaker 1: Zen phrase that I love and it's sort of fundamental
Speaker 1: to our Zen training. It's great faith, great doubt, and
Speaker 1: great courage. I think in my tradition they refrain courage
Speaker 1: as determination, but same thing. Great faith, great doubt, great courage.
Speaker 1: What do those three things mean to you? Because they
Speaker 1: sound sort of contradictory at first, you know, faith in doubt,
Speaker 1: Like how did those go together? Yeah? These actually have
Speaker 1: quite a history in this Zen tradition, and we're developed
Speaker 1: I don't know, five years ago and have been passed
Speaker 1: down from teacher to student through communities over the centuries.
Speaker 1: And faith is a central urge to find. It's the seeker.
Speaker 1: It's the sense of something is there, something that doesn't
Speaker 1: go away? And I think for many of us that
Speaker 1: are interested in a spiritual practice and know that there's
Speaker 1: something deep that we seek. There's a faith born of resonance.
Speaker 1: I know that there's something and there's value in seeking
Speaker 1: in that way, and so I see it as quite
Speaker 1: different than a faith, which is like I need blind faith,
Speaker 1: or I need wrote faith, or I'm just going to
Speaker 1: say I believe, and that's the way I follow the
Speaker 1: statements that I should be following, But more a sense
Speaker 1: of faith that arises because of one's own direct experience
Speaker 1: that there is something there that is deep that draws
Speaker 1: us forward to kindness, goodness, presence, connection, all of the
Speaker 1: things that I think we have inherently as our birthright.
Speaker 1: Doubt is something that plays off of the faith in
Speaker 1: that one never fully gets there, at least in the
Speaker 1: Zen tradition. And one of the things that I find
Speaker 1: tremendously helpful and powerful and Zen, although it is a conundrum,
Speaker 1: is that one can have great faith and very profound
Speaker 1: awakening experiences and can learn deep truths through engagement in
Speaker 1: the practice, and yet it's not long before one comes
Speaker 1: back around and it all seems to have fallen apart,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work anymore, or one is of a different
Speaker 1: mind state. And this is a regular process and leads
Speaker 1: into a sense of doubt if what are we doing here?
Speaker 1: You know? Is this all just a kind of a
Speaker 1: silly hoax? And in fact, anything that is a mental construction,
Speaker 1: anything that is a human created activity, has Charlatan aspects.
Speaker 1: And therefore when one looks at sort of the activity
Speaker 1: of life, it causes doubt to arise. It's like, I
Speaker 1: am not pure. I do bad things, so do other
Speaker 1: people around me. I try to get someplace good in
Speaker 1: my life. It doesn't always work. What are we doing?
Speaker 1: This seems like a mess. This is actually our condition.
Speaker 1: This is the truth of our condition. It's not that
Speaker 1: one has great faith and one lives in the great
Speaker 1: Temple of truth and beauty for the rest of one's life.
Speaker 1: It's that one oscillates and struggles between this profound sense
Speaker 1: of there is something here and it doesn't go away,
Speaker 1: that is deep and profound and meaningful, and my life
Speaker 1: keeps getting messed up and I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do about it. Those two then require courage in order
Speaker 1: to navigate that path, because it's a great conundrum. And
Speaker 1: if one truly wants to explicate one's faith and find
Speaker 1: a way, and if one has to grapple with the
Speaker 1: honesty of one's doubt and not pretend that this is
Speaker 1: something that wanted struggles with which I think anyone who's
Speaker 1: truly seeking does. The courage is required in order to
Speaker 1: really carry oneself into that inquiry over and over again,
Speaker 1: which then I think leads one through this helix we
Speaker 1: are talking about. But it's it's really the great faith,
Speaker 1: doubt and courage, or as you say, determination. I think
Speaker 1: the reason why the word courage resonates for me a
Speaker 1: little bit better, although I think it's a translation of
Speaker 1: Asian words which came perhaps from a Sanskrit word, So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that either courage or determination quite get
Speaker 1: at the original concepts, so either one can be used.
Speaker 1: The courage I find in my life is necessary. It
Speaker 1: is requires courage to be totally present with what is
Speaker 1: actually happening. It tries tremendous courage often because it is
Speaker 1: not the thing I really want to look at. And therefore,
Speaker 1: with that courage, I can engage my faith and live
Speaker 1: with my doubt and continue to move ahead. That just
Speaker 1: made me think of one of my favorite poems of
Speaker 1: all time. It's very short. I'm going to read it.
Speaker 1: You might know it, but I think it sums up
Speaker 1: what you said so well. It's by William Stafford and
Speaker 1: it's called The Way It Is. There's a thread you follow.
Speaker 1: It goes among things that change, but it doesn't change.
Speaker 1: People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to
Speaker 1: explain about the thread, but it's hard for others to see.
Speaker 1: While you hold it, you can't get lost. Tragedies happen,
Speaker 1: people get hurt or die, and you suffer and get old.
Speaker 1: Nothing you do can stop times unfolding. You don't ever
Speaker 1: let go of the thread. That's beautiful, it also says
Speaker 1: to me when it says you don't ever let go
Speaker 1: of the thread. In some ways one cannot let go
Speaker 1: of it. One might pretend one has let go of it,
Speaker 1: one might decide to go away from it. But one
Speaker 1: is always connected with that thread, and part of it
Speaker 1: is the process of remembering that one is actually connected
Speaker 1: with that threat. The piece about great doubt that has
Speaker 1: always resonated with me is just to think of that
Speaker 1: as great questioning, like this really deep, like what is this?
Speaker 1: You know, what is this? Whether it be the co
Speaker 1: on I'm practicing, whether it be the moment I'm in,
Speaker 1: whether it be the relationship. But really like just deeply questioning.
Speaker 1: It keeps changing, and the questioning continues to refresh us
Speaker 1: to determine what is true. Now, there's another section of
Speaker 1: the book that I wanted to touch on briefly, which
Speaker 1: is the principle of the secret or the emotional imperative.
Speaker 1: Can you share what that means? Well? When we are
Speaker 1: engaged in anything that it's been challenging in life, there
Speaker 1: is a sense of the eye that you can't talk
Speaker 1: to me like that, or you know, I'm not chopped liver,
Speaker 1: or I need to stand up for myself or get trampled.
Speaker 1: And this emotional imperative arises for most of us a
Speaker 1: number of times a day. It can be subtle and light,
Speaker 1: it can be powerful and strong. It can come up
Speaker 1: in an argument with someone or for me, you know
Speaker 1: a client that I have in my consulting practice that
Speaker 1: maybe doesn't understand what we're doing or respect our our work,
Speaker 1: and I can feel really upset and disregarded. That sense
Speaker 1: of standing up for oneself in a overblown way. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying, you know, having a good sense of self confidence,
Speaker 1: but there's this kind of imperative that operates in all
Speaker 1: of us because of the strength of the I am
Speaker 1: that operates. I am Chris Kievl. You are Eric Zimmer
Speaker 1: with a sense of defending the self, and that emotional
Speaker 1: imperative I think drives so much of what we do.
Speaker 1: And the secret underlying it is that it's a mirage.
Speaker 1: It's an extremely powerful, extremely convincing mirage, and that we
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to let it go and recognize that,
Speaker 1: in fact, there are thousands of ways of interpreting any
Speaker 1: given situation, and that the I am self interprets it
Speaker 1: in order to defend that sense of self, and that
Speaker 1: it arises over and over and over again in our
Speaker 1: human form. I used to think when I was younger
Speaker 1: and doing my Zen practice, is that I would learn
Speaker 1: a way to not have to deal with this part
Speaker 1: of life, because I would get spiritual and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to have this reaction to a sense of this
Speaker 1: is me I I you know, practice and studied, you know,
Speaker 1: letting go of one's ego and so forth, And yet
Speaker 1: that's actually not how it works. The way we operate,
Speaker 1: I think until we pass out of this life is
Speaker 1: this emotional imperative arises regularly, and it's often hard to
Speaker 1: tell quite what it's doing or how to corral it.
Speaker 1: And similar to earlier in the podcast where I talked
Speaker 1: about counting the breath and constantly bringing oneself back, there's
Speaker 1: the practice of bringing oneself back to center when one
Speaker 1: is gripped by the emotional imperative, to bring oneself back
Speaker 1: to realize that this too is a mirage and in
Speaker 1: fact things are much simpler than they may appear, and
Speaker 1: I can just take the next step forward and in
Speaker 1: many ways things tend to work out as one does that.
Speaker 1: And so that's really what that phrase is driving at
Speaker 1: in terms of the emotional imperative. Yeah, I love that
Speaker 1: you say after that, the secret is the greatest power
Speaker 1: and strength. Will we found where you most don't want
Speaker 1: to go. It's that treading into the places we don't
Speaker 1: want to look at, we don't want to see, and
Speaker 1: to say that, you know, it seems that to go
Speaker 1: into those places we most don't want to see. You know,
Speaker 1: Let's say if I got fired from my job, and
Speaker 1: you know, I know with things that are that painful,
Speaker 1: I tend to deflect and I can't even think about it.
Speaker 1: I do something else and took practice going to what
Speaker 1: the actual experience of that is feels like it's the
Speaker 1: scariest thing in the world. I realized that I and
Speaker 1: I think many of us throw up all sorts of
Speaker 1: dust and smoke screens, you know, get angry at somebody,
Speaker 1: or eat extra or get sleepy or sick, or you know,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of deflections because it feels like it's
Speaker 1: the most devastating thing that one could do is to
Speaker 1: go right to where one is feeling that great distress.
Speaker 1: And it does take fortitude, which is the courage I
Speaker 1: was talking about. But when one goes to that place,
Speaker 1: that place one most doesn't want to be, it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually make it feel better, but it avoids all of
Speaker 1: the junk that arises around the deflection and the escape
Speaker 1: and the telling oneself stories that then trap one in
Speaker 1: all sorts of additional repercussions, either within one's own self
Speaker 1: or with one's relationship with others. And so if one
Speaker 1: can hold tight in the midst of that great distress
Speaker 1: and stay present and make you know, thoughtful choices about
Speaker 1: how to walk forward, it's remarkable about how one's life
Speaker 1: calms down dramatically. That's really well said. You and I
Speaker 1: are going to continue in the post show conversation, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit about well, I'll just
Speaker 1: tease it like this. That's a section of the book
Speaker 1: that says I didn't think it would be like this,
Speaker 1: So you and I will do that in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post
Speaker 1: show conversation ad free episodes, a special episode I do
Speaker 1: call the teaching song and a poem, and other member benefits.
Speaker 1: And you want the joy of supporting the show that
Speaker 1: you love, go to When you Feed dot nets last
Speaker 1: join Christopher. Thanks so much for taking the time to
Speaker 1: come on. I've really enjoyed this conversation, and I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed your book. Thank you so much. Eric, It's really
Speaker 1: a treat. I very much enjoyed it. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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