Poet David Whyte joins Marc to explore how not-knowing, presence, and poetry open the heart of authentic leadership.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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Marc: [00:00:00] Well, this is Marc Lesser, and I am really happy this morning. I don’t usually use the thrilled word, but I’m, I am somewhat thrilled to be here with a poet, author, teacher, activist, , David White. Hello, David.
David: Hello, Marc. And, uh, very good to be here too, for a conversation.
Marc: There’s no shortage of things to talk about, but you know where I, I want to start in a place that may or may not surprise you.
You know, most of, most of my, my day job is doing work in the corporate world. , , I do executive coaching with CEOs, mostly these days of socially responsible companies and some universities and, and I, I know that you used to do a lot of that work and some of your early books were about your [00:01:00] experience.
I love the story. There’s a, there’s a story that you tell about, someone coming up to you and saying, you know, this work is what we need in our, in our company. And, and you said, well, and why is that? And he said, well, it lifts, it lifts the human spirit. And, and I believe in that story, you say it was the, the head of strategy for Boeing.
And I, I think for some time. , you were doing quite a bit of that work, and I wonder, is that something that you are still doing?
David: Yes, indeed. Yes. It’s just, it’s less, it’s less central to me, uh, than it was at one time. There was the, uh, there was the novelty factor both for myself and for the world when, when a poet started working in corporations and so it was a big talking point.
Although I, I still work in, uh, major corporations around the world and, uh, big actually, and also small ones too, non profits and [00:02:00] various things around leadership. I’m much more dedicated to the artistic, uh, And revelatory frontier of, uh, of poetry and literature and, uh, and the contemplative arts, you know, coming out of my Zen sitting and, and, and so, um, I make less of a fuss about my corporate work, but I still do.
I’ll be, I’ll be working with, soon in Australia with a, with a corporation. I work in DenMarc with a very large, uh, corporation there. And, uh, And I, and, uh, it just carries on, there’s a wonderful momentum. But I’m much more interested in the original, uh, foundation of my work, which is really getting poetry to as many people as possible.
Uh, good poetry, because it’s such a lifesaver. You know, in the Zen tradition, you just need one phrase, one [00:03:00] invitation from a teacher, one moment, you know, when the water falls out of the bucket and, and you’re suddenly in new territory. And, uh, I feel the same way. I, I have the same experience with poetry.
One line can transform a life. If it’s embodied, you know, by the speaker, by the writer, by the listener. And, uh, and so that’s the edge that I’m, I’m much more fascinated by, uh, than, uh, I’m. So it’s lovely, you know, when I have, when I have a reading in London or in San Francisco, there’s a lovely cross section of people from the three different worlds that I work in.
One is the straight, uh, world of, of literature and poetry, uh, the classic. Poetry reading and, uh, and then you get people, uh, from the religious world. I’ve worked with a lot of religious people, mainly in the Catholic and Buddhist traditions. And then you get people [00:04:00] from the, from the corporate world and they’re all in the same room.
And sometimes they get into conversation and the unconscious underground conversation is what are you doing? What are you doing? So I love that. I love the way, um, I love the way poetry breaks through our outer named, uh, provincial, uh, identities that we make for ourselves.
Marc: Yes. And, you know, that’s been my experience even in the public kind of, um, you know, there’s something about what’s under the umbrella, like of mindful leadership.
I think there’s something poetic about it and it brings. It brings forth people from, searching for depth and meaning in all parts of their lives.
David: Yes. And, uh, I often, you know, I, I have an Institute for conversational leadership. Um, I’m probably underplaying my work in the work world.
And, uh, the name of that. Institute is in [00:05:00] vitas actually, which is a fake Latin, word, uh, which if there was a word in Latin, it would be the, uh, it would be the intimate imperative, you know, to invite in vitas. And, uh, so I talk about conversational leadership and the seven.
Elements of deepening a conversation. But I also say that, uh, every conversation is really an invitation. And when the invitation stops, then the conversation actually stops too. So it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the workplace, whether you’re in a corporation, whether you’re in your kitchen with your family.
Whether you’re looking at yourself in the mirror, uh, the whole dynamic is about making real invitations to yourself, to another, to a group of people. So you can call it a, uh, an organization, a business. So, so the way people, the way poetry touches people when I’m out there is that you will often get people who would come into a corporate room because they have [00:06:00] some goal.
That they want, but actually what happens in that room is it’s way beyond that goal. And also way underneath that goal too. It’s that it’s touching. If I’m doing my work properly, it’s, it’s touching people at a deep foundation. I had years ago in Oxford, I was, part of an associate fellow at, the Oxford university business school, Saeed and, I had a man from a major telecommunications company run up to me after my session and said, I don’t know whether to buy a Harley Davidson and drive off into the sunset or redouble my efforts in my work.
And I said, well, just hold those two things together because you’ve got exactly what I was talking about, you know? And, uh, so all of us, have that conversation between the polarities. There’s that gorgeous line by Rilke where he says, stretch your well disciplined strengths between two opposing poles.
Because [00:07:00] inside human beings is where God learns. Yeah. You use this word God, but it really means anything over the, as far over the horizon as you could ever imagine. imagine or engage with. Yeah. So, what calls also learns within us at the same time.
Marc: Yes.
Beautiful. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this phrase by a Zen teacher, Shinru Suzuki, where he says, practice. Is less like putting things in our baskets and more like finding things in our sleeves. Mmm. And, and that somehow that image feels to me so aligned with the work that you do.
Yes.
David: And
Marc: that poetry is like that. Yes. Right. You find something, you just leave that, um, may have been there, you know, for forever.
David: Yes, in both senses of the word, in the sense of, finding something that you’ve neglected, but also finding [00:08:00] things that you actually need to give away,
, you’ve had literally up your sleeve for years that you use as a little weapons of protection. So, uh, yes, that’s, that’s a lovely koan actually, finding things up your sleeve, I know I’ve read, I read most of, uh, Suzuki’s books actually and sat, uh, at the Zen center after he’d passed away, but I’ve never heard that, that invitation before, so that’s lovely.
Marc: It’s, it’s in one of his, , not so known, books called, Branching Streams, which is, commentary on a a Zen essay and poem called the Harmony of Difference and Equality. It’s the translation of, the Sando Kai in Japanese,
That’s one of his, uh, commentaries on, on that particular essays, old, old Chinese Zen essay.
David: Yes. He seems to have been a very powerful man in, in his absolute simplicity. The story that always moved [00:09:00] me was on his deathbed when he was suffering. And I think he had stomach cancer. And he noticed the consternation amongst the people around him.
And, , and he said, uh, you know, if you see me suffering, That’s just suffering Buddha, no confusion there. It’s really a powerful, powerful moment. And the compassion he had in his own suffering for those, for those who were witness, witnessing his difficulties was just really quite reMarcable.
Marc: Yes.
Yes. I’ve been very much appreciating, the work from your new book consolations too, as well as the, the series that you are, I guess just starting this January and. I so appreciate the invitation, to stop, right?
David: Yeah. Yeah. As I say in my essay on stopping in constellations two, stopping is how we go on
Yes. Because actually nothing ever stops. There’s an illusion. What you’re doing when you’re stopping it. Stopping is [00:10:00] moving to another. level actually, where what you thought was the mainstream, you realize was just, uh, Was just a back heady or, uh, or something at the surface and you’re actually moving towards the core of the movement.
You must have read , the essay on Zen to which I, I, uh, uh, uh, a good friend of mine is Henry Shukman, who’s, uh, Zen teacher in New Mexico and, uh, as, as received full Inca, you know, within his, uh, uh, he’s been handed the scrolls within his tradition. And, uh, I gave that essay to him in some trepidation.
I said, you have to look this over Henry before I let it out in the world. So, uh, it’s a little, uh, Tongue in cheek, but it’s also very serious and undermining all of the qualities that attract us to them, that are in, in many ways, false seductions, uh, and that, uh, Zen, as I [00:11:00] say, we, we go in because we see this clarity and we see this, these beautiful polished floors and, and bronze bells and, quiet and organization.
And, and so, we see this wonderful hope for, insulation from the confusions and difficulties and griefs of existence. But as I say in that essay, Zen always begins and ends in tears. Yeah. Yes. And, and in many ways, heartbreak like the rest of life. Heartbreak is all you need to know. That’s what you’re involved with, uh, and, uh, tears for your body to begin with.
Yeah. and then .
Marc: I’m also friends, friends with Henry and, and I Oh,
David: lovely. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And
Marc: I’ve been, I’ve been somehow, uh, handed the scrolls in the Suzuki Richi tradition.
David: Oh, lovely. Yeah. Marvelous. Yeah. Good. Good. I’m in good company too.
Marc: I think as you, as you’re, as I believe you’re saying, uh, I often think, you know, Zen [00:12:00] has become a, almost like a verb or a noun in our culture to mean, you know, calm or quiet or protected.
And I think that it should mean just the opposite of that. Right. It means, right. To, uh, have your, the, the practice. One of the ways that I define Zen is. Keeping one’s heart open, even when things, even when your heart is broken, even the hardest. Yeah.
David: Yeah. That’s the other quality, um, that I explored for years in conversation was that.
Every conversation is based on the invitation, but it’s also based on, on mutual vulnerability and vulnerability in the invitation itself too. And where there’s no vulnerability, there, the conversation also ends too. So, the, vulnerability, not as weakness, but, as invitation and of looking for help for the, for the help you need.
And [00:13:00] therefore being alert to, the help that other people need in their life too. The mutual, mutual understanding of our, essential, um, vulnerability and need for help in the world.
Marc: Yeah. There’s a, a beautiful expression that comes from a Zen koan that says, not knowing is most intimate.
David: Ah, yes. Yeah. I love that story. Yes. That’s right.
Marc: Right. So that’s, there’s many flavors of vulnerability, but in essence, they, maybe they come down to, , letting go of, of thinking that we know.
David: Exactly. Yeah
Marc: I was thinking David, how the other one of my, Other ways that I often quote you out in the world is when people say what they do, if they’re very clear and concise about describing their work or livelihood, they’re, it’s not very trustworthy.
There’s a, there’s a vulnerability and [00:14:00] aliveness in Not quite being able to describe our identities or work in the, in the world.
David: Yes. Yeah. It’s interesting. When I first went into poetry, it was very, a very powerful dynamic for me to tell people, ,that I was a poet, without apology.
And, of course, I, you’re covered from, Any, overly definitive idea because saying you’re a poet just opens up a whole conversation. That’s people say, how does that work? Or what is a poet? How do you do that? You know, and how do you look after yourself? But it was very, very powerful for me to use that word, which was like an invitation.
So with strangers on the flight to Cincinnati, what do you do? I’m poet. Yeah. And, uh, and no apology. And, uh, so that was more like, a dedication to the road that I was on, it’s like the bodhisattva vow. Uh, no one knows really what it means, but you make it, and find out as [00:15:00] you go along, uh, sentient beings are numberless.
I are numberless. I vow to save them. No one knows what saving another human being means, but, but we’re dedicated to the, to that road. Yes. So we can use. We can use powerful words. It doesn’t mean to say we always have to be silent or we always have to be mysterious. Uh, but you can use a word that’s invitational to both sides.
That’s also very powerful in, in its resonance.
Marc: I often, uh, of late think that the Bodhisattva vow, it should be flipped. You know, what you just said is generally the first one, but the second delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them.
David: Yes.
Marc: Um, it seems like that should come first before we start saving others.
David: Yes. Yes. Yeah. Maybe they’re just saving the best till [00:16:00] last.
Marc: Yeah, I don’t know how you might know how many years ago you recorded a clear mind wild heart.
David: Oh, I remember it though. It was on the Island here, actually, this gorgeous studio on the top of a hill. And, uh, the only drawback being that, uh, on clear days, you could hear the solo planes going over, so you’d, you’d pray for cloud and rain, actually.
But I remember three very intense days, something like six hours a day recording them. Yes. And I, I don’t remember anything of what I said. I just remember the intensity of the exploration. And I knew I was into something when the, when the, the, the, the sound engineers started talking about what I was saying at their breaks.
I said, that’s when you get the tech help involved in the conversation, that’s the sign that you’ve, you’ve passed the threshold. So, but, uh, I know it’s been out there in the world For years. [00:17:00] Yes.
Marc: I had them as, as CDs back, when CDs were a thing and I,
David: yes,
Marc: I, I listened to them as so many times that I was almost memorized parts of them.
I thought they were, they were lovely. And one of the many, one of the many stories that you tell in there was writing the poem, you describe yourself being that it was at night, rainy night, you were by yourself in a cabin and you wrote the line, you must learn one thing and, and how you’re feeling of surprise by the line that follows about,
David: right?
Marc: The world was made to be free in.
David: Yes, that’s right. That was, , that was what to remember when waking, in that first hardly noticed moment when you wake into this world and, emerging from this, this hidden place inside ourselves where everything gets reimagined. And the more we learn about sleep, the more we learn how [00:18:00] revolutionary that state is that our body and our mind is in.
And, then it all gets put back together and you’re actually this new person coming out into the morning, so you have this cargo of revelation. So, keeping it open, so the lines in the poem were something like, uh, What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
To become human is to become visible, while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your, in your true inheritance. Yeah. To become human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. What was the line that you quoted?
Marc: You must learn one thing.
David: Yeah. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free and give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes [00:19:00] it takes silence and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.
Actually, I started in on the, on a different poem. Uh, the poem you’re talking about is called Sweet Darkness. That’s right. Exactly. Yeah.
Marc: Yes.
David: Yeah. When your eyes are tired, the world is tired also. When your vision is gone.
When your eyes are tired, the world is tired also. When your vision is gone, no part of the world can find you. It’s time to go into the dark, where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your home tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds, except the one to which you belong. Sometimes, it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn [00:20:00] anything, or anyone, that does not bring you alive. It’s too small for you.
Marc: All
David: the poems are starting to meld into one.
Marc: And perhaps we reveal all along. You know, and I love your commentary. I don’t know that you remember, on that CD. You say, your commentary about that line, anyone or anything that doesn’t keep you alive is too small for you, doesn’t mean that you should give up all your friends.
David: No, exactly. It’s quite often you could equally say, um, you have made too small for you. Yeah. Uh, you’ve, you’re not paying attention, you’re not present, you’re not hearing the true voice of the birdsong or the,
Marc: yeah, so, well, this, you know, yeah, poetry as a, uh, powerful way into how we create. world, how we are creating [00:21:00] the world.
And that’s such a powerful gift and ongoing, ongoing practice.
David: Yes. Yes. It is an astonishing practice. Uh, it’s, uh, I’ve been so thankful to poetry. I remember when I lost my mother and it was such a, such an incredible trauma, uh, and, uh, door opening all at the same time, but I wrote intensively. Uh, whole cycle of poetry about the loss of my mother and, uh, after seven months, I said to myself, Oh my God, I’ve gone through seven years of grieving in seven months, just Through the discipline of speaking it into the world, yeah, and, uh, able to let my mother go to where, she was, uh trying to get to.
Yeah, I’m,
Marc: I’m struck, I’m struck by what you just said in that I, [00:22:00] as you said that I was remembering that. Seven years after my mother died, I remembered that there was a drawer next to my bed that I had not opened in seven years, and I opened it one morning, and it was a photo album that my mother gave me of, that she did of her life.
Before she died.
David: Oh marvelous.
Marc: It took me, I’m a lot slower than you. I, I, it took me seven years to somehow be able to revisit this. Marvelous.
David: There’s an instance of, of finding something in Suzuki’s sleeve.
Marc: Yes.
David: Yes. Lovely. Yeah. Beautiful.
Marc: Yes. In that case, it was something that I needed maybe both to pick up and remember, and maybe also to let go of in a different way.
David: Yes, or to hold in a different way too, [00:23:00] yeah. I don’t know if you read the essay on now in Consolations 2. But I, I was taking a very mischievous approach and I said, there is no power of now. So it’s amusing to say, there’s the power of 12 and a half minutes ago, as there is the power of now.
I said, we are this conversation between what occurred in the past and what’s about to occur in the future in anticipation. And, uh, depending on your presence, of course, the past changes. But, um, what we’re given from that is what allows us to hold the whole context. We’ve all had the experience of, of loved ones or witnessing other people with their loved ones, where they’ve lost their memory and the loss of their memory actually prevents them from being fully present in the world.
So we’re this astonishing, um, threshold where we’re not supposed to choose between past, present, and future. [00:24:00] And the Irish have known this all along. Actually.
Marc: We’d only,
David: only have listened to them. Yes. As they say the thing about the past is it’s not the past. Yeah. It’s, it’s here with you. Yeah.
Marc: Yes. Well, you say that in the essay on time, right? Time is not slipping through our fingers time, you know,
David: it is we who are slipping through the fingers of time.
Yes. Yeah.
Marc: Yeah. Memory and traces grant me a sense of time passing for me to learn. Right. Beautiful.
David: Yes. Well, we use that word time in such pejorative ways, you know, we have no time, time is against us, and, uh, we have to make time as if it was, as if it was possible to do that. So I thought I would, that actually that essay is, was probably the most physically transformative experience in the [00:25:00] whole delirious seven months of writing that book, actually.
Yeah. I was in, in true Rilke ian fashion, I was in a turret, in a In an Italian castle in the heart of the Perugian countryside writing that, but I had this astonishing experience with time and of, uh, seeing myself almost in an out of body experience And realizing, you know, how unappreciative of time we are.
Nothing could happen without time. Time is our friend, not our enemy.
Marc: Yes.
David: And, uh, and so that was a radical revolutionary understanding that came out of that. Yeah, actually that essay has just appeared on Substack, on my Substack this morning, actually, so I need to read it again, actually, through other people’s eyes.
When things appear on my, I read them and say, Oh, who wrote this? Try to read it for the first time. See if it makes any sense at all.
Marc: Yes. [00:26:00] Beautiful. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, the same, you know, the Zen guys back, you know, back in the 13th century, Dogen wrote time being, being time, how this exploration about there’s no, we can’t separate time from our own, our own, Lives our own identities.
David: Yeah. Something that German philosophers only came to five or 600 years later. Was it Heidegger? It was who is time being. Yes. Yes. That’s right. Yeah. Dogen Zenji is, , one of my great, one of my great heroes, actually. So, yeah, really. And, , I may be visiting his temple actually later, later this year in October, with a group of people.
So I look forward to that. Yeah. Yes. What about, what about yourself, Marc? What frontier do you feel you’re on conversational, invitational frontier?
Marc: Oh, you know, I’ve, I started writing a, uh, a book Um, called Buddhists Against Change.
David: [00:27:00] Oh, I love that. Yeah. Very suppressive
Marc: Yeah. And, so much of my world is, bringing, not so much poetry, but more, zen teaching, Zen koan, the, the work and writing of. Suzuki Roshi and Dogen, into the world of work, especially has been, you know, the place where I,
David: yes, if it’s such a mindful leadership, yes.
Marc: It’s such a big part of most people’s lives. And there’s so much, so much, you know, sometimes people say, well, why there? And I’m like, well, there’s an awful lot of suffering. There’s a lot of suffering and a need for, for healing in the, in the work world. And yeah,
David: Yes. Lovely. So that’s the book you’re engaged in right now, right?
Yes.
Marc: Yes. Well, , I’ve written five books on all kind of my, my, uh, my first book from 20 years ago was called ZBA, Zen of Business Administration,
David: which started
Marc: [00:28:00] as a joke. I was, I was once introduced as having my ZBA degree.
David: Lovely. Yes.
Marc: Well, well, David, maybe as a way of, of ending here.
I don’t know if there’s any, anything at all that any poem or essay or anything that you’d like to bring forward as a way of ending our, our time here.
David: Yes. I wonder, perhaps how we just, read the first, uh, paragraphs of time. It holds a lot of what we’ve been speaking about and, uh,
I’ll just read the first few paragraphs and stop when it seems as if it’s going on too long. So, time. Time is on our side. Time is not our enemy. Time is our greatest friend. If we, if we can come to know time in its own intimate unfolding way, and not through the abstract measure we have made of it, time starts to [00:29:00] grant a greater, more spacious, more elemental, and even eternal freedom to every mortal, seemingly time bound human life.
Time is not slipping through our fingers. Time is here forever. It is we who are slipping through the fingers of time, memory, and the traces of memory grant me a sense of time passing and also enable me to learn how I remember through time and how I learned and how I put those memories and that learning into conversation with the future shapes my identity for good or for ill.
Time is at the center of my identity. Time only seems to be something in which I participate involuntarily, but time needs me. Voluntarily to deepen my understanding of its multivalent nature and help to mediate its life fully in my world. Time needs me. Needs me to live through all its many [00:30:00] appearances to give it life and amplitude.
Time exists in a field of possibility which I influence and partly determine.
I may constantly cry that I need more time. But actually, time needs more of me. More of my spacious, uninterrupted, timeless time to live out and understand. Both it’s extraordinary depths and it’s incalculable far off horizons.
Marc: Beautiful. Well, David, , I have, wholeheartedly appreciated this time with you.
David: It’s been lovely, Marc. Yeah. And I look forward to seeing you in person along the road somewhere. Yes.
Marc: I look forward to that too. And yeah.
David: And seeing what you have up your sleeve. Yes.
Marc: The world is one giant sleeve.
David: Exactly. Lovely. All the best now. Thank you.
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