In this issue:
· Insights Into Practices
· What I’m Reading
Insights Into Practices: How Dogen Can Make You A Better Leader (and a Better Person)
Eihei Dogen was a brilliant and prolific 13th century Japanese Zen teacher. His many writings are studied today as a core part of Zen practice and training. His teaching is highly useful and relevant in our work and lives today.
- How to be more present and trustworthy:
“To study the way of being fully human is to study the self. To study the self means to go beyond the self. To go beyond the self is to live with deep connection to everyone and all of life.”
It’s easy to get entangled and confused about questions around self and selflessness. Here, Dogen lays out a clear and simple set of practices: start by studying your self; become fully comfortable in your own skin. By doing this we can become more confident and more humble, and less self-conscious, less tossed around by the inner critic, less scanning for threats. Through knowing ourselves and going beyond ourselves we can become more connected to everyone and everything.
Self awareness is easy to say and hard to actualize. Dogen’s instructions of knowing yourself and going beyond self can open doors to a deeper understanding of how to lead, live, and love.
(A spectacular waterfall and pool outside of Oaxaca City, where I was traveling (and swimming in) last week.)
- How to meditate and integrate meditation with all parts of your life:
“The meditation I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain.”
Dogen says to forget about meditation. It’s often an idea, and a limited idea at that. Instead, step into your biggest, wisest self. Practice meditation as a way of cutting through the dualities of success and failure and let your true nature emerge. Then, take this approach into your daily life, like a dragon, like a tiger. Of course, this is highly aspirational, perhaps impossible. Being human often feels highly aspirational and at times impossible.
- How to be an exemplary leader (and we are all leaders):
“In performing your work you should cultivate joyful mind, grandmother mind, and big mind.”
– Joyful mind, the mind that embraces and appreciates everything
– Grandmother mind, the mind of unconditional love
– Big mind, the mind that isn’t caught by the dualities of success and failure
The key here is noticing, being aware of your state of mind and training yourself to bring forth and practice with wholesome and healthy ways of working. This doesn’t mean that we don’t feel stress and anxiety. The challenge and opportunity is to bring these healthy states of mind into our work, as ways to transform stress and anxiety into joy, love, and wisdom.
(A rainbow from the deck of my Northern California home.)
What I’m Reading
Living Beautifully With Uncertainty and Change, by Pema Chodron – A classic that I find myself returning to better practice with change and transitions.
Trauma, the Invisible Epidemic, by Paul Conti – A thoughtful and powerful book about transforming human suffering.