There is a famous thirteenth-century story about Dogen, the founder of Zen in Japan. It is said that when he was nine years old he watched the smoke from incense burning at his mother’s funeral rise into the air and disappear. The loss of his mother and the disappearing smoke prompted him to ask questions about life and death and how to live a profoundly meaningful and beneficial life. Despite his diligent search, he couldn’t find anyone in all of Japan who could adequately answer his questions, so he ventured across the Sea of Japan to China, where Zen was flourishing at the time. He spent four years studying with a variety of accomplished Zen masters.
Upon his return from China, Dogen was asked, “What did you bring back from China to Japan?”
He said, “I came back empty-handed.”
“Yes, but what did you learn?”
“Not much, except gentle-heartedness,” he responded.
“Did you not learn anything else?”
“I learned that eyes are horizontal, nose is vertical.”
Along with Dogen’s interviewer, we are tempted to ask, “Come again?” We expect that this great Zen teacher, the founder of Zen in Japan, will provide us with a profound teaching. Is this the sum of his insight? Emptiness, gentle-heartedness, and the shape of our face? His response is so simplistic it almost seems laughable, or else it seems deliberately designed to frustrate us, as if he doesn’t want to give us the answer. But the story is sincerely intended as spiritual guidance, and though it appears almost too easy, it’s not. Perhaps Dogen is telling us that the answers we seek are in plain sight. Much like our own nose and eyes, they are easy to take for granted and impossible for us to see directly.
I’m not a philosopher. My interest is in change, insight, healing, and transformation; my job as an executive coach is to help people be more content, satisfied, and effective — solving real and important problems, small and large. My goal with this book isn’t so much to understand Zen ideas or philosophy, but to create a practical guide to becoming more awake, more balanced, happier, and more effective. What I’ve found is that the Zen Buddhist approach to problem solving is, counterintuitively and paradoxically, particularly efficient and effective. In fact, many spiritual traditions, including Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and the Desert Christian Fathers, have utilized paradox as a method for helping people to wake up, to be more alive, open, honest, creative. They use paradox to solve one of our most essential problems: as a bridge from the mundane activities of working, eating, defecating, and fornicating to the world of the sacred. Birth and death, self and no-self, here and not here, pain and loss — all are basic paradoxes of being alive, being human. We must walk a tightrope between them.
So, this chapter is devoted to exploring the basis or ground of Buddhist philosophy and its surprisingly effective approach to everyday life, and it also explains how to understand and work with Zen parables and the parables of our everyday lives, which I use throughout this book.
But first, what do I think Dogen was really saying? What do I think is the answer within his answer? Of course, there are many understandings. His simple statements reflect an entire world-view. One answer is that human life and consciousness are both clear and obvious as well as profound and mysterious. We are born empty-handed, and we will die empty-handed, and it is hubris to be too certain of what we “know”; this hubris leads to a narrow, one-sided view and ineffectiveness. Our minds want some assurance, some kind of map, something solid to hold on to, but we must let go of this desire and empty ourselves. Conversely, seeing only emptiness — getting stuck on the profound and mysterious — ignores what’s obvious, what’s right in front of our face: that we all share the same face, the same reality. Everyone is just like us, and kindness, gentle-heartedness, and compassion are never wrong actions. The Dalai Lama once proclaimed, “My true religion is kindness.” In a world filled with difficulty, violence, poverty, and great disparity, perhaps gentle-heartedness is the only right and effective action we can ever be certain of.
Twenty-five hundred years ago the historical Buddha had an experience of awakening to the truth of how to live in reality with utter freedom. He was compelled to teach what he had learned. His initial and most primary teaching is referred to as the Four Noble Truths:
1. Being human contains difficulty. That is, there is no denying old age, sickness, and death.
2. Suffering is caused by grasping. That is, whatever our circumstances, it is wanting things to be other than they are that is the cause of our suffering.
3. Grasping can be transformed into satisfaction. We can change our relationship with difficult circumstances and free ourselves from suffering.
4. The way to do so is to engage in the following eight practices, which Buddha described as the Eightfold Path: Wise View, Wise Thinking, Wise Mindfulness, Wise Speech, Wise Action, Wise Livelihood, Wise Diligence, and Wise Concentration.
In the spirit of this book, here are the Four Noble Truths presented as two paradoxical statements.
First — Awakening is within suffering.
Second — We change the world when we change ourselves.
How are we to understand the Four Noble Truths and their paradoxical nature? First, that both suffering and awakening exist, and they are related. Change, impermanence, sickness, and death are inherent to life and inescapable. All can lead to suffering. All can also lead to awakening. It is the experience of suffering and the failure of our desires to end suffering that lead us to pursue the path of awakening. On this path, we change how we relate to the world; we don’t change the world or end the circumstances that lead to suffering. By embracing suffering and accepting that the nature of life is difficult, we can awaken and free ourselves from suffering. This was and is a profound insight. Buddha’s teaching is to see and fully experience that within our suffering is freedom and happiness. Within our freedom and awakening is our difficulty and suffering. Embracing and living this insight is a lifelong practice.
Buddhism has been called the middle way, representing a path of moderation between the extremes of sensual indulgence and of asceticism or self-mortification, or between the physical and spiritual worlds. Though in the prologue I note that the term is sometimes misleading, the middle way is actually another definition for balance as I use it in this book: the most effective, awakened strategy is to ensure that none of the essential aspects of our life predominate or are ignored entirely.
A traditional story describes how the Buddha realized the meaning of the middle way when he sat by a river and heard a lute player in a passing boat and understood that the lute string must be tuned neither too tight nor too loose to produce a harmonious sound. This is completely aligned with a 2009 study showing that optimal performance is when effort is balanced, that is, in the middle between little or no effort and tremendous strain. Too little effort results in sleepiness or boredom. Too much effort results in strain and burnout. Making just the right level of effort leads to the best results.
Historically, the strand of philosophy and practices that became Zen Buddhism emerged in sixth-century China. During this time, the mystical, sacred practices of Buddhism in India merged with the practical, nature-oriented, farming culture of Chinese Taoism and ethically oriented Confucianism. Zen developed as a return to the practice of sitting meditation, with an emphasis away from philosophy and intellectual ideas. Instead, Zen focused on waking up to the ordinary and extraordinary experience of being a human being. The approach of Zen Buddhism is plain, simple, and direct, as well as mystical, complex, and profound: a paradox. All of Zen can be boiled down to three short statements: Do good. Avoid harm. Help others.
Another primary focal point of Buddhist teaching is what are called the Four Seals of Buddhist practice. The word seal refers to a stamp used to make something official or significant. It is said that in order for a teaching to be considered Buddhist it must contain these four elements: difficulty or suffering, impermanence, no objective truth, and awakening.
For awakening, I often substitute three words: freedom, intimacy, and clarity. The word awakening is often translated as “enlightenment,” and this can seem foreign and unattainable to most people. I believe that not only are freedom, intimacy, and clarity more useful terms, but they also more accurately represent the spirit and practice of people engaged in living as consciously as possible in the world of relationships.
I also like to add a fifth element to these foundational teachings, reverence — a feeling or attitude of deep respect, love, and awe, as for something sacred. These five elements are not beliefs. They are aspects or attributes of the Four Noble Truths. I like to think of them as a description of what is, of the essential factors in the lives of human beings. They are ways to see ourselves, others, and the world with more clarity, insight, and compassion. Here is a closer look at these “seals.”
There is no avoiding difficulty in our lives. We are born, we will grow old (if we are lucky), and we will die. We will misunderstand and be misunderstood. We will leave others and be left by others. We will be hurt by others, often unwittingly, and will in turn do our own share of hurting, by acts of either omission or commission. We can learn to accept, and to learn from, difficulty, especially in our relationships. Spiritual practice says, Don’t try to avoid or escape difficult relationships. Don’t try to escape pain or contradiction because both of these are unavoidable and can be great teachers. Keep exploring, entering, unfolding. Keep your heart open. Receive love when it blessedly comes your way, but be as supple and as understanding as possible when it eludes you or is even taken away. Surprisingly, to do so can make us happier or at least more at peace and less embittered.
Everything changes. There is nothing to hold on to. Impermanence is neither good nor bad. It is not an idea or a belief. It is what is. Who we are and who others are in this moment is different from who we will be and who others will be in the next moment. We see and experience change over long periods of time, but obviously changes are occurring in each moment.
Everything is interdependent. There is no objective truth. Everything that we think is solid is not — including ourselves, others, objects, even time. We live and breathe in relationship to others, and this very notion is fluid and subjective.
Within a personal context, I am young in relation to those older than me, and old in relation to those younger. I am a father and a son, a brother and husband. There is no little, unchanging person inside me directing my activities.
Within a business or organizational perspective, there are many truths. The sales team sees the world through different priorities and different eyes than the product development team and the finance team. I sometimes think that the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus could just as easily apply to business and corporate life: Owners Are from Mars, Employees Are from Venus, Managers Are from Saturn. These groups often see from completely different perspectives, all of which can be useful and correct. Our particular viewpoint, and its limitations, affects what we know and how we communicate.
Experiencing freedom, intimacy, and clarity arises by accepting difficulty, embracing impermanence, and truly understanding that there is no objective truth. They are not some special stage or condition but a way of living your life in accordance with reality. It is living with a completely open heart, a completely open mind, moment by moment, situation by situation.
Life is both mundane and amazing, perhaps beyond anything we can imagine. Since none of us knows how we were born or when we will die, reverence — a feeling of awe for that which is greater than us and beyond our descriptive abilities — is a profound and useful container through which to view and live our lives, and from which to engage in our relationships.
Naturally, following the Buddhist path to awakening, or maintaining the effective balance this book advocates, is easier to understand than to accomplish. Why? Because we hinder and undermine ourselves. Buddhism speaks of the Five Hindrances. These represent the problems we have to contend with, or the paradoxes we have to solve, in order to live an effective life. Rather than thinking of these in negative terms, however, I suggest approaching them like tools. Working with these tools helps us to identify our self-destructive, unhelpful habits and to develop new ones. The Five Hindrances are grasping, aversion, laziness, excitement, and doubt.
Rather than single words, these are five broad categories that can help us identify our own particular fears and anxieties. One of my favorite lines from the Heart Sutra, one of the most often read and chanted texts in Buddhism, says, “Without any hindrances, no fears exist.” All of these hindrances are addressed in detail in part 2, but here is a brief overview of what they entail.
Grasping is clinging, being caught by what we want. We all want things. Of itself, desire is not a problem — wanting friendship or to be competent or loved, for instance. Desire comes with the territory of being human. All humans have emotions, needs, and wants. But grasping is different from desire. Grasping is narrow and tight; it is inflexible. It holds. We grasp when we turn our need or desire into a story. We get hooked by our own story. In Tibetan Buddhism there is a word, shenpa, for this act, this process of a want or desire turning into grasping. We step into a thought pattern from our past or project a fear as we look into the future, and we hinder our connection with the present.
Aversion is the opposite of grasping, of clinging. It is turning away or avoiding. None of us like pain or difficulty. Not liking something is not a problem, just as desire is not a problem. Trying to avoid what we don’t want or like causes problems. As when grasping, we can get hooked by the story of what we don’t want. The story explains or justifies our aversion or places blame for our uncomfortable feelings outside of ourselves: “They make me uncomfortable,” or, “It makes me angry when you say that.” Feeling discomfort is just that, something we feel. Aversion is the story, the tightening, the pushing away (or the holding on to).
Excitement is when the mind is agitated, distracted. You can’t sit still or focus. Excitement has come to be regarded as a positive quality in our culture. Our work is exciting, our vacations are exciting, our lives are exciting. Our lives are often so exciting that we risk missing our lives. The mind won’t stop.
Laziness is not trying at all, not applying oneself, giving up, or simply giving in to one’s desires and distractions. It’s the urge to be comfortable in the face of difficulties. Of course, we all want to be comfortable, but laziness is a false sense of comfort and security. Laziness is losing sight of our own power, our values, and our vows and commitments to increase our awareness and to help others.
Doubt is a hindrance when it becomes skepticism and cynicism. It’s when we say, Why bother? Nothing ever changes. I will always be this way. Others will always be this way. The world will always be like this. No one can know anything, so what good is it trying to be better or to help anyone?
The Five Hindrances are one way to look at our lives. Each of us could easily develop our own list of hindrances, and even different schools of Buddhism develop their own particular lists. The categories don’t matter so much as recognizing when our thoughts and actions have led us astray from the Four Seals and the Four Noble Truths. What are your favorite hindrances? Which ones knock you out of balance most easily? Do you have three or five or ten hindrances that make you confused, that cause you to flail around and create more suffering for yourself? To be effective, we must come to know our own tendencies, for what is a hindrance for one person might be a breeze for the next, and so on.
The hindrances, all by themselves, are troublesome. Even worse, we often live our lives not realizing we are at their mercy. As I’ve said, one of the main purposes of Zen stories or parables is to wake us up to the self-defeating behaviors and assumptions we are living under. These stories are written to surprise, shock, confuse, and rattle our expectations. We are meant to ask: What does that mean? Sometimes we are also meant to laugh. Paradox, like tragedy, is often funny.
There is another famous Zen dialogue from ancient China about a monk and a teacher. The monk arrives at the monastery and says to the teacher, “I’ve arrived. Please give me your teaching.”
The teacher says, “Have you eaten your breakfast?”
The monk responds, “Yes, I have.”
The teacher says, “Wash your bowl.”
The monk understood. What could be more obvious?
In Zen Buddhism, a story like this is known as a koan. Koans are not tests. You don’t answer the questions they pose and move on. Koans are meant to be meditated on. They are used to deepen one’s understanding, to transform the way in which one experiences one’s own self and the world, generally by cutting through habits, patterns, and conventional views and attitudes. A koan doesn’t necessarily have an answer, though it may have several answers or interpretations. One learns by staying with the question — or the paradox or conundrum the story represents — and developing a deeper understanding, seeing all the ways it applies, uncovering hidden places within one’s consciousness, and developing one’s ability to learn and grow. In this way, the teaching becomes a lived experience rather than remaining an intellectual understanding.
A student is meant to just repeat the story or koan while going for a walk or during meditation practice. The story can often be distilled into a single phrase: “Wash your bowl.” During meditation or anytime, you can say this phrase to yourself during exhales, repeating it until you eventually let go of the words and just feel the phrase begin to merge with your breath. If you repeat the phrase to yourself during the day, you may notice it coming up spontaneously from time to time. The phrase may become a theme of your daily activity; it may begin to influence you, bringing your ordinary daily experiences to a deeper and more mysterious level.
The point is not to analyze the phrase but to keep chewing on it, living with it. Working with a phrase in this way, it is possible to widen our usual understanding of things. The phrase can open us to what matters most, what is truly important in our lives right now, in a way that can inform or surprise us. Something in our experience that we may have taken for granted might be totally transformed. Or the phrase may merely point out something to us that we hadn’t noticed before. Practicing with a phrase in this way brings us closer to, deeper into, our lives, beyond our unexamined habits and notions.
In addition, Zen stories often are not meant to be taken literally. The circumstances of the story are metaphorical, allegorical. In a story, if someone asks, “Where are you going today?” they invariably mean something like, “Where are you really going in your life?” or, “Where are any of us going?” As in the Zen story that opened this chapter, the question “What did you bring back from China?” isn’t about a specific, actual trip. It could be read to mean “What lesson can any human draw from life?”
Then again, sometimes the meaning is both literal and metaphorical. My guess is that “wash your bowl” has just such a multiple understanding. On a metaphorical level it says to the student, if you want to receive the teaching — that is, if you want to learn, if you want to broaden your vision, open your heart, or expand your understanding of yourself and the world — begin by paying attention to and bringing alive the simple, mundane activities of your life. No need to look elsewhere for life lessons. The teaching you seek, about meaning and connection, is right in front of you, in the midst of everyday activities. Let go of your preconceived ideas about where the real teachings are and pay attention to what is right in front of you. Go wash your bowl.
We each have the ability to bring mundane activities alive — through our attention, curiosity, and openness. This is what Zen stories encourage us to do, to be fully engaged in every moment. How is it that we don’t see how alive everything really is, right in front of us? How often do we hold back from being truly alive and present, waiting for just the right situation, job, or relationship? How often are we doing one thing without paying attention, only as a means to get to the “real” work? We may think, If only things were different, then we would engage; once we do this unimportant thing, then we will get to the meaningful activities.
Activities are mundane only if we treat them that way. Everything we do can be an expression of our innermost wishes, dreams, and intentions — a way to connect with our true calling and a way to help others open to new possibilities — right in the midst of conversations, difficult and messy feelings, emails, phone calls, and meetings. But only if we awaken to that possibility.
If we pay attention, we will find that our lives are filled with koans — tiny moments that sparkle like jewels and reverberate with complex, mysterious power. In fact, any of the myriad conversations that make up our lives can be seen and treated like Zen stories or koans — that is, statements or exchanges that are distilled, unpacked, internalized, and examined carefully until the lessons they hold have changed us, expanding our minds, honing our abilities and skills. Any moment in our life has this potential, if only we stop to consider it in a larger light. I work this way with my clients all the time. We don’t need to enter a Zen monastery to put this approach into practice. We just need to pay attention to what’s right in front of us.
For instance, when I was in my early twenties and a young student, practicing and studying Zen at the San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm, an older woman Zen teacher of mine looked me in the eyes and said, “Marc, you have a way of pissing away your power.”
I didn’t know what to make of this. I was stunned at her directness, and I was puzzled. Was this a criticism or a compliment? I felt bad, wondering why and how I was not embracing and utilizing my power. At the same time I felt encouraged because I had no idea I had any power to piss away! I thought, Where and what is the power that she sees in me, and that I don’t see? With whom and in what context? I suspected that this statement was intended as a gift — one human being looking at another, seeing and expressing what she believes is possible in the other person. Not measuring and comparing, but acknowledging an intrinsically positive quality. What she offered was both a compliment and a caution that said, “Look more deeply at yourself. Don’t squander your gifts.”
Though she probably didn’t mean it this way, her statement has been a koan for me ever since. I’ve stayed with this statement, and kept coming back to it, over and over, for nearly thirty years. It is rarely a comfortable puzzle, but it is an extraordinarily useful one. What is my power? How do I express this power? How do I give away my power, and at what loss to me and to others? How do I help others to find and express their power? This, I have come to understand, is perhaps the most central challenge and promise I make in my practice as an executive coach and as a Zen teacher. I believe it is also a key component of being a parent, partner, coworker, friend — asking, How do we help others, be present for others, respond to others in a way that allows them to find and express their own power?
The question of power can be fraught in a business context, and it comes up often. I will discuss power in more detail in chapter 8, particularly spiritual power and how that translates into influence and effectiveness. For right now, though, it’s enough to recognize that all the power you need to transform your life is within you right now. The questions you need to ask, the lessons you need to learn, the ways you need to improve, change, or strengthen: all these things exist right now inside you. All you need to call them forth are attention and sincerity. When we are frustrated, when we fail, we often throw away our experiences as useless. Instead, be deeply present for these experiences most of all. Treat them like koans. Meditate on them. These hold the keys to your power. Don’t piss them away or squander your gifts.