The One You Feed - Grace Schireson on Practical Zen

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Grace Schireson is president of Shogaku Zen and received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. She founded two practice centers and a retreat center under the Central Valley Zen Foundation.In this episode, Eric and Grace discuss her book, Naked in the Zendo: Stories of Uptight Zen, Wild-Ass Zen, and Enlightenment Wherever You AreBut wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Grace Schireson and I Discuss Practical Zen and …Her book, Naked in the Zendo: Stories of Uptight Zen, Wild-Ass Zen, and Enlightenment Wherever You AreHow we need to recognize our egoThe importance of seeing our existence within the large space of awareness“WITBOW” (Wishing It To Be Otherwise) is a formula for sufferingThe essential koan “When nothing will do, what will you do?Awareness is recognizing your true self and your connection to the entire universeMindlessness is just pure awareness and no ownershipThe 4 stages of developing awarenessThe important lesson of making mistakes often and publiclyGrace Schireson Links:Grace’s WebsiteFacebookInstagramCaviar is a food delivery app that brings premium local restaurants to your door. Get $10 off any order of $20 or more, by entering “FEED” at checkout. Download caviar the app today!Ana Luisa Jewelry makes beautiful, high-quality, and sustainably crafted jewelry pieces that are also affordable! Visit analuisa.com/wolf and enter Promo code: WOLF for 10% off your purchase. If you enjoyed this conversation with Grace Schireson on Practical Zen, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Cheri HuberPaths of Spiritual Awakening with Henry ShukmanSpiritual Growth with Normal FischerSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How we look for that space around situations, the possibility that it could be different, is a very important way of turning away from whatever we're hung up with into the possibility of change. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold

us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engage in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that will resonate

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Our guest on this episode is Grace Shearson, president of the Shogaku Zen Institute and a clinical psychologist. Grace received her doctorate in clinical psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, and founded two practice centers and a retreat center under the Central Valley Zen Foundation. Today, Grace and Eric discuss her book, Naked in the Zendo, stories of uptight Zen, wild-ass Zen, and enlightenment wherever you are. Hi, Grace. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. It is a real pleasure to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book,

which is called Naked in the Zendo, Stories of Uptight Zen, Wild Ass Zen, and Enlightenment Wherever You Are. But before we do that, we're going to start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother. She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I think the most important part of that parable is feeling or seeing or being in

touch with what actually is going on in your mind. My teacher in Japan used to say, what's the most important thing? It's watching your mind and or the emotions in your body. So for example, anger can be very exciting in your body. And if you don't recognize that wolf for one that needs to calm down a bit, then it's impossible not to feed it because you need to know it when it arises. So for me, the most important step in knowing which wolf to feed is knowing yourself and being honest with yourself and watching your own mind. That's a great way to start. You've got a bunch of lines in this book that I thought were so great. But the one where I wanted to start was you say that exposing the ego's cover-up

is the task of spiritual practice. Say a little bit more about that. Right. So the book Naked in the Zendo really isn't so much about taking off your clothes, although we do have one example of that in a chapter. Accidental pants falling off in the Zendo, which made me think about it. But one of the things that we notice as we're watching these wolves is that we want to get good at doing meditation. We want to be good at practice. We want to get good at doing meditation.

We want to be good at practice. We want to be the best one in the Zendo, actually. And if that's a wolf we need to watch because it has its disguises and it can look like sitting in a perfect posture or learning the chants perfectly, correcting other people. But really, it's about the ego. or learning the chants perfectly, correcting other people. But really, it's about the ego. And we need to be able to use practice to see even how the ego gets in there to steal our spiritual practice. Yeah, it is astounding the way it shows up everywhere, isn't it? And you talk a lot about that in the book, and I really appreciated that, about how much we are trying

to do it right. You make a nice job of showing this because I think that trying to do it right comes from two motivations, right? There is a genuine motivation of like, my spiritual practice matters, the world matters, I want to show up and I want to contribute the best I can. And then there's the ego side of it. I want to be seen as being good. I want to be seen as doing it right. Right. Yes, there are those two sides to most everything we do, like the two wolves you speak of. And when people ask me, for example, when they're getting ready to give us one of their first spiritual talks in the Zendo, a way-seeking mind talk, they ask me, you know, what they should say or how should it be? And I say, be helpful. Don't be good at it. Do something that's helpful to other people. Give them something that will help them. But if you try to be good at it, that's what's going to show up, your selfishness.

That's really good advice. There's another line that you use where you're also talking about spiritual practice. You say spiritual practice, however it develops, provides ways to see ourselves in a larger context. Right. So one of the things I realized because I'm tall and because I have a lot to say is that I can be rather dominant in a situation. And at some point when I was practicing, I realized, wait a minute, I am just a vegetable in this soup that's offering some flavoring. I don't want to overwhelm it. How can I keep practicing to be that vegetable in the

soup and be aware of being in the soup of all these people and be useful and not stand out as outstanding? Right. This idea of seeing ourselves in a larger context is really so important. It's this ability to take some perspective that is bigger than our own. I've got a program I teach called Spiritual Habits, and we talk about that in this. We talk about perspective. And the idea is that the bigger our perspective is, generally the better. Yes, because in that perspective, if we can only see ourselves and not the surrounding environment that we're in, we are stuck with ourselves in a particular way. There's no room to which this emotion, this negative feature is arising. But if we say, I am proud, that takes up the whole context. And we don't see the movement that we are within awareness and something is arising within that awareness, but it isn't me. I am the awareness.

I am the context. And these things arise and they fall away. But if we keep emphasizing, I am proud or I am smart rather than my pride is arising, there's no room for it to move. is arising. There's no room for it to move. We're only reinforcing these feelings of pride. Yeah, I like the way of thinking of that as that bigger perspective gives us room to move, to turn around, to look, to see it from different angles. If you've got a balloon that's filling up the entire box, you can't. I don't know why I chose a balloon in a box, but... filling up the entire box. You can't. I don't know why I chose a balloon in a box, but... Well, it's not you. Whatever it is, it's not you. It's a balloon in a box and it's filling it up. And that's what we need to see. So it's really important to see our existence within this large space of awareness. And this is something that Joko Back emphasized in her teaching, a bigger container.

Otherwise, our ego just keeps growing to fill that space like the balloon. Yeah, you mentioned that teaching from her. And you also mentioned one of my favorite sort of spiritual analogies ever, which is this idea of, you know, if we take a tablespoon of salt and we drop it in this little eight ounce glass of water I have, it's going to taste pretty bad. But if we drop that same tablespoon of salt in a gallon of water, well, okay, it's not going to be great, but okay. If I dump it in a 55 gallon drum, I'm not going to taste it. Yeah. If I dump it in a 55-gallon drum, I'm not going to taste it.

And it's that idea of the same amount of pain, the same amount of salt, the same amount of problem, if it's in a bigger container, doesn't feel the same way, doesn't taste the same way. Right. You know, there's a toy that I used to get in Chinatown. And you would put your finger in a woven tube, one finger in each end. And if you pulled it, it would become tighter and tighter. And it's like that, that as we pull and struggle with whatever is on our minds, it becomes tighter. And if we relax, it's easy to remove it from the fingers. You know, it becomes looser. And we want that spaciousness, that looseness, so we can actually see we don't have to do this. Right, right. That always reminds me of the story of, I've never verified if this is true, but sooner or later, somebody's gonna be like, that is not true. But the way that they

used to capture monkeys, they would put sweets inside a coconut and the monkey would put his hand in and then he would grab the sweets. And once he made that fist, he couldn't get his fist back out. Right. You know, and if the monkey just let go. Yeah. The hand comes out. Yeah. Same thing with those Chinese finger traps. Same thing with those Chinese finger traps. Yes, yes. Both of those are lessons in how we make ourselves miserable by grabbing onto something and insisting that it has to be this way. How we look for that space around situations, the possibility that it could be different,

that there's something else, is a very important way of turning away from whatever we're hung up with into the possibility of change. Yeah, you have a phrase that you use in the book that is really good, and that you say is really the root cause of suffering, or a, you know, one of the big root causes of suffering, which is wishing it to be otherwise, or a witbow. We could probably spend the rest of the episode on Whitbow and dealing with it, but share a little bit more about what that is. And then let's maybe talk about some strategies for working with it. Right. So when something happens, we want it to come out the way we want it to come out. And unfortunately, the universe doesn't work that way. Sometimes it

comes out the way we want it to, and sometimes it doesn't. But if we set our mind when something happens on this idea, no, I wanted the other thing. I wanted it to be this way. If we set our mind on that, it is a formula for suffering. because I often would say to my students, now let's examine this situation. Is your wish true or is reality true? And reality always trumps whatever it is you want. So we have to go with reality and not wish it to be another way. First, what way is it? And let's try to take that in. That doesn't mean we aren't going to try to change it, but we need to start there.

Yeah, this I think is such a profound teaching. We can all recognize this fairly intellectually that like, okay, well, yeah, it's me resisting the way things are that causes me to suffer, right? It's sort of a rephrasing of the second noble truth in some ways. And yet, boy, it's so wired into us. And it's really easy to say, well, okay, I get it intellectually until I'm not getting what I really want,

even in some cases, what I think I need. And so it isn't fair. Yeah, yeah. It's not right. No, it's not fair. It's clearly not. Yeah. So again, this is like the two wolves. And it's a survival tool, right? I mean, it has to be part of the equipment we have is how do we survive, we need to get the the food and then it turns out to be it's food that I find delicious and then the ego puts it all the way up there it has to be a special you know gluten-free da da da da kind of food before it's good or vegan food is good and as we keep saying this is what I need there's something true in it. There's some survival in it. And yet, when the ego gets its hands on it, it becomes a kind of fixation. And I want it the way I want it.

Like Burger King, we'll make it your way. So it's this wishing to have it my way, It's this wishing to have it my way, which comes from initially a need to survive. We have to get some of what we need. But as we turn what we need into status, it becomes a kind of obsessive trait where only certain things will do. So I'm not saying that being a vegan is obsessive or needing to be gluten-free. I'm just saying as we take survival drives and work with them and we can manufacture higher and higher standards,

for me, I need this to be the way I want it to be. And yet it's the most natural thing in the world. Yes, it is natural. Just like not wanting to be killed walking across the street is natural. You want to survive. And it's not. And I'm suffering because of it. And yet, I can't seem to let go. Well, the first thing to do is to feel the suffering. Wherever you are, feel that first. So that takes you back to there's suffering arising within this space, rather than I'm grasping for this thing. Because when it's me grasping, that takes up the whole space. But when we say, oh, there's suffering arising now, we can feel that there's a part of us that can recognize suffering, and

there's a part of us that is suffering. But we need to turn to what actually is, first of all, even if we don't like it. And that's where we encounter our suffering and our grasping and our wishing it to be otherwise. Well, I would say also that that's kind of the first step. If we want to make change in the world, the first step is recognizing how we're suffering with it. And so what is a genuine need for justice, for example, and what is just our having a tantrum about things the way they are. Right. And I think this gets more complicated. It's easier to see through when we go, oh, that's just me wanting another set of golf

clubs. I don't play golf. I don't know where these analogies are coming from. It's just me wanting another set of golf clubs versus saying something like, oh, I want to see justice done. You know, you and I were talking about the trial that was happening just before we came on, right? Yes, the verdict.

A lot of us have this deep desire for justice to be done. So it's easier for me to go, okay, that's just me being selfish when it's just me wanting the other thing I want. But this gets harder when we see something out in the world, and yet the principle is still true. Right. That me insisting that the world be the way I think it should be is a cause of suffering. It's true that the insisting is.

And that's where we have to see that our suffering is arising based on this situation. Just before COVID, my suffering was for these children who were in these border facilities. And there was only so much I could do before COVID. During COVID, I couldn't go there, but I could go there. I could go there. I could bring my body there to make a statement, which I did four or five times, to go to these different facilities

and to experience it and to be making a statement. But I couldn't make it stop. And so I had to recognize that as part of the suffering. There was something for me to do. And unless I wanted to sacrifice my life for this cause, I could not find a way to do more. It really came to me in terms of social justice when I was in Spain. And when I was in Spain was about the time that Trump was elected, and I was talking to some of the old-timers there about their experience during Franco. It's like, how do you get through this injustice?

The Spanish man said to me, you need to survive it. A Spanish man said to me, you need to survive it. So that took on a kind of meaning to me that wherever I saw injustice, I had to make it consistent with my ability to survive. I couldn't just throw myself at it. I couldn't just wish it away. But it's like, how do I live my life and continue to live my life so I can stand up for this injustice? I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

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Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really.

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Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week Buying Power column. Very few companies who go viral are, are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. This reminds me of another part of your book that I loved.

And you're quoting a Japanese philosopher and Buddhist scholar whose name I'm not going to be able to pronounce. Hisamatsu? Hisamatsu. All right, I did. Who said there is one essential koan in human life. When nothing will do, what will you do? Right. So we spend a lot of time in the philosophy and the history of Buddhism.

But I think this statement encapsulates the life struggle we have, which is when we can make a decision and when we can affect things, that's not so hard. Let's just move on and let's not feed the wrong wolf. However, when we don't know what to do, then we're stuck. And that's when we have to spend some time allowing our awareness to grow in a way until it guides us into the direction we need to be in. I just love that phrase that, you know, when nothing will do, what will you do? That really is a great, it's a great koan. Yeah, it is. It is. As he said, the essential koan. It's like all koans come from this experience of, I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to answer this. And I just have to go to a deep place. And that was a very interesting experience in Japan when I did koan practice in Japan. Because you had to fail. And of course, that wasn't very good. I'm used to being a good student, a good Zen student. And in order to do con work, you have to go in and face the teacher and not know and fail over and over again. Now, some of the time I was there, it was either teacher five or more times a day with what I had. And I

remember one time going to him and I was really tired. I mean, your retreat schedule is something like three in the morning till 10 at night. And you're doing your meditation and you're going there. So you're tired and you're cold and you're hungry and you don't have any of your comforts. And so how do you keep working on the nothing? Nothing will do. What do I do now? So I sat waiting to go see the teacher and have my interview and I had nothing. And I came in and I thought to myself, you know, I am a bad Soto Zen student. And that was my thought. It's like Rinzai is where you do the koans. So I thought to myself, I am a bad Soto Zen student.

And I went in to him and I just bowed. And he looked at me as if there was a bad smell in the room. And he said, is that your answer? And I said, yes. He said no good. And I was right. I'm no good at this. Good. Moving right along and being able to sustain oneself and not the self of I'm good at this but be able to continue to go into the depth of when nothing will do, what will I do to continue with that? It takes something. And I think that was the essential of the training that I had in Japan was, no, you don't just bow. You don't give up. You come up

with an answer, even though it might not be the right one, do it. So that was very powerful for me. My teacher is slightly more diplomatic. His usual thing is, he'll say, I think you need to sit with that some more, which is his nice way of saying, nope, that's not it. You did not get it right. There are many ways to say, no, that's not it. And in Japan, that kind of slap, no good, or just ringing the bell is like putting the wall there and you have to throw yourself against it. So it requires a different kind of energy. And I tried doing koan practice with some of my students here in the West, and they became very anxious. some of my students here in the West, and they became very anxious. And I realized that the kind of environment that I had been in, in Japan, was so intense, I really didn't have any energy left over to think or be anxious, and that I just had to use everything I had to survive and come up with an answer. So it's a lot harder

to translate the koan practice to our Western style for the teachers. But your teacher was trained most likely in the West. Definitely was trained in the West. I think he may have spent a little time in Japan. But yet I've worked with another Zen teacher who is a little more perfunctory, little time in Japan, but yet I've worked with another Zen teacher who is a little more perfunctory, give the answer. And he just, he just rings the bell like, nope, that's not it. So since I didn't have that experience, it was a little hard for me to translate it for my own students. And I also recognized in the West, the kind of environment I was providing at my Zen center was comforting, even though it was spare. And that left a lot of room for people to think and to become anxious. So it was a different environment. And so I actually stopped teaching the koans. My teacher in Japan wanted me to teach the koans that I had

practiced with him, but I didn't find a way to do it. So let's talk a little bit about awareness. You talk a lot about awareness throughout the book, and I want to start by having you just share a little bit about two aspects of awareness. Or maybe let me back up from that and allow you to sort of just say a little bit about when you're using the word awareness. What do you mean? Actually, for me, awareness is the true self. And so I don't remember what aspects I described of it other than you know there's an aspect of light there's an aspect of penetration but for example I was just talking to some women in a zen group I teach now and I said you can see yourself as the entire universe.

And one woman said, I don't see that. I don't get there. And I said, but you can, with your mind, reach out to see the entire limits, as far as your mind will go, of the universe. And if you recognize that your breath is coming from there, the furthest reaches of the universe, and you are made up of this breath, then you are the entire universe,

and your awareness of it is what really helps you to see that. So the awareness is your connection to the entire universe. Yeah, the two aspects that you're talking about, you say that there is the essence of the mind and the contents of the mind. And I love this basic idea because usually when we're talking about mindfulness, we're talking about being present. And the place that we usually start is with what is around, right? Like present to what? Oh, present to a sound. Oh, present to a site. We see the contents of our mind. Yes. And I love the way you describe

that this essence is when we shift from the contents of the mind into what it is that's seeing the contents. Would that be a way of saying it? Yeah, absolutely what I said. What I said. So, yeah, much of mindfulness is this kind of awareness moment to moment. Now I'm taking a bite of food. This is the way they eat in a mindful retreat, right? I'm taking a bite. Now I'm chewing it this many times. But what is it that's aware? What is it that is aware

not only of what's in your mouth and you're chewing, but of some other connections to the universe? What is it that is aware? And I really experience awareness as something that's not just part of the brain, but is, as I was describing, part of the entire universe. So awareness exists. That's the essence of awareness exists, both inside and outside. And in a certain way, the mind is an antenna for this awareness. And then the antenna translates this information and we see it as content. But something is watching. And that something is very interesting. People usually discover that something the first time they're meditating. All of a sudden, it's not just that they're having thoughts, it's that they're aware of having thoughts. So you don't have two brains. So you have only one mind and the mind has this quality of observing itself. The essence of mind can see and the contents are what

it's seeing. So oftentimes, I think when describing mindfulness, we don't go far enough into the other aspect, which is mindlessness. An essence of awareness without content, mindlessness. Say more about that last part, mindlessness. Well, mindlessness is, I think, one of the aspects of a Samadhi experience or an enlightenment experience where there's no ownership. There's just pure awareness. And we've lost that identification with the content of who we are, which we're usually watching. And it can be rather brief, but it's what happens. If we're very lucky

with a meditation experience, all of a sudden, we're just aware and we're not stuck with this particular vision of who we are or what we're experiencing. you talk about four stages in developing awareness discovery amplification, circulating awareness, and then finally awareness arising spontaneously. So maybe we could walk through each of those four stages. So the first one is what I described for sitting down to meditate. We never knew that there was a quality of the mind that wasn't thinking. We thought thinking was our entire mind. And all of a sudden we sit down to meditate and we're watching the thoughts arising. It's like, whoa, there's something that is aware of the content of the thoughts. And then the amplification is how we practice, whether it be yoga, tai chi, or zazen. How do we practice the exercise of relating to awareness?

You know, focusing on the breath, for example. And then in the next stage, in circulation, is about how do we bring it into our activities. So it's not just I'm sitting here and I'm aware of being aware. But as I'm moving through my life, my awareness is actually active. I remember when I used to cook at Berkeley Zen Center, I was a head cook for a while, and all of a sudden, my body would turn around and I would see somebody about to put soy sauce in the coleslaw. It's like, no, you don't put soy sauce in the coleslaw. But something in my awareness warned me because that was my job. Now we turn around and we look and see, oh, what is he doing over there? He's putting soy sauce

in the coleslaw. I thought it was a good idea. So it wasn't in the recipe. Anyway, that is how we notice. Sometimes I would talk to my students about when you're walking outside, take the position of the gravel that your foot is on so that you're not just hearing the sound of your foot on the gravel but the gravel itself is part of your awareness and so that's a way of kind of changing position and circulating that awareness what you just said there reminds me of koan practice so much taking that different position yes letting me of koan practice so much. Taking that different position. Yes. Letting go of thinking it through.

So then, obviously, or maybe not so obvious, obvious to me anyway, is that when awareness is spontaneously arising in a certain way, when I was trying to use awareness in my work of cooking, it spontaneously arose to save the coleslaw from the soy sauce. It just came up and my body turned, you know, I remember it very vividly. And then I was standing in the opposite direction. And all of a sudden, my body turned and I saw this horrible possibility. You're very opposed to soy sauce in the coleslaw. I have my opinions, yes, but people loved my coleslaw. So one of the things about coleslaw is it has to be fresh. It has to have a fresh flavor. So it's garlic, mayonnaise, and mustard and whatever salt you need to balance it.

That's all. And then all those flavors, especially during sashimi, are just very vibrant. The soy sauce, not so much. This gentleman was wishing it to be otherwise. Well, he was a cook helper who generally, I guess, used soy sauce in his food and thought it was a good addition. But anyway, I was famous for my coleslaw. So I must say I have a big ego attachment there as well. So I guess we've sort of stumbled into... I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like...

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Stories about cooks. And the title of the book, Naked in the Zendo, comes from a story that occurred to a cook. I don't know if it was a cook at the Berkeley Zen Center. I think it was, right? Yeah. You want to share that story? Well, yes. And this was a great way to circulate awareness. You might think you were the best cook in the world and your coleslaw was the best coleslaw. But then what happened when you tried to serve the food, when you had the position of being a server in the zendo, and you had to be present for each person. So each job required a different kind of awareness. And in that particular case, I was a server assigned to take the bowls that had come from the kitchen and offer them and scoop or use tongs to serve the food. And as I was

standing there in the back of the zendo, the room where we were all meditating, and there must have been at least 50 people in there, the cook came in. And in Berkeley, the cook would make bows before the food was served. So the food would be delivered, and then the cook would step in, make his bows as this is my offering to the community. And this cook, when he made his third bow, his pants fell off. And much to his credit, he was wearing underwear because some things can go by the by during a long retreat, but he hadn't managed to get underwear on that day. And so his pants fell off and I was standing very close to him watching.

And so I said to myself, I didn't see that. That didn't happen, wishing it to be otherwise, because I had to serve the food and I didn't want to destroy the meal ceremony. However, when I looked up at my teacher, Sojin Mel Weitzman, he was laughing hysterically. So then I couldn't hold it back. Because Sojin was across the room from the man who's George whose pants fell off. So he couldn't help but see and anyway, that's his job is to watch all of us. So then I started laughing as I'm carrying the bowls. And I laughed so hard, everything is running down my face, my nose, my eyes. But at some point during this, I noticed that George

had left the Zendo. I mean, it's kind of of embarrassing so he didn't stay for the meal he went outside and so when it was time for me to take the bowls back after I'd finished my job of serving I saw George sitting on a bench and I said George how was that for you and what happened and he said well my pants were loose so I took a big breath so that my belly filled out my pants and they were on snugly. But when I bowed the last time, I exhaled. So that left room for my pants to fall off. But I said, well, how did it feel? He said, well, I really wanted to go up to our teacher and say, Master, I have been enlightened.

And I realized, yes, of course you're enlightened. You just did one of the most embarrassing things you could do in a group of people. And you lived through it. And that's when I began to understand the notion of how much we try to look good in doing this practice and how important it is to make mistakes in front of everyone. So then this became a teaching that I had for my own students, which is make your mistakes often and publicly. And don't let your need to be good at this constrain your freedom, your freedom to make mistakes and understand you just continue. Your life continues and your ego isn't growing because you just got it slapped a little bit. So I think it's a very important practice for those of us doing a

spiritual practice in a community is we automatically compete to be good at it and to get it right. And so there's a point where that crosses over into ego versus just I really want to learn how to practice as a way of amplifying my awareness. Yeah, yeah, that's a funny story. Yeah, it is. As I was reading this story, I was waiting to hear about how mortified George was. And what a lovely man. He was a lovely man. In fact, before I included this story in the book, he had deceased.

And I contacted his widow to make sure it was okay with her to include this story in the book, because he was such a sweet person and a quiet person. So this wisdom was not something we all were exposed to by his blathering about it. He just sat there quietly, understanding that his ego had just been exposed, and he had dropped it with his pants. So this was a form of enlightenment. Let's have you tell another story for us here. And I'm going to let you pick the story. But you wrote a book that really was to expose, while we're talking about exposing, to expose the stories of Zen women. And Buddhism, for all its wonderful things, is a very patriarchal culture. And Zen is no different, better or worse, I don't know, than other aspects of Buddhism. But you wrote a book that was really about bringing out

some of the wonderful stories of some of the women throughout Zen who have played an important role in the tradition. And so I was wondering if you would tell us one of their stories. Yes, I will, because there was one woman in particular who's a favorite among Zen students now that we've gotten her story out. And her name was Miao Zong. That was her practice name. And she was practicing at a temple called Chingshan. And Chingshan actually is in the ancestral lineage of Tofuku-ji, where I ended up practicing. So when I uncovered her story through one of the Buddhist scholars, I didn't know I was going to be affected by her behavior at Chingshan.

So she was one of the senior students of a teacher named Dahui. And at that time, it was common for women to be excluded from monasteries. And so the head monk was very upset with Dahui, his teacher, for allowing this woman to be in the monastery with the monks. And there's all kinds of reasons he wasn't out of the question because the teacher who was Dahui's teacher actually had relationships with some of his women students. So this was quite some time ago. Anyway, the monk who was upset, Wan Nan, he was upset by having a woman in the monastery. So Da Hui said, why don't you go talk to her? Rather than complain to me, go complain to her.

So this senior monk went to her and she was in her quarters, her little retreat room in Qing Shan. And she asked him if it was to be a Dharma interview or a personal interview. So was this going to be about Buddhist practice or was it going to be something between the two of them? And he said it was going to be an interview about Buddhism, a Dharma interview. So she said, well, because it's a Dharma interview, I'm going to send my attendants away, my helpers, and you send yours away, and we'll just face each other one to one. And so when he entered her room, he found Miao Zong naked and spread eagle on her bed.

And he said, what kind of a place is this? Probably pointing to her genitals. said, what kind of a place is this? Probably pointing to her genitals. With great composure, Miao Zong replied, this is the place where all Buddhas and ancestors enter the world. Possibly contemplating his own sexual advances, Wan An asked, and may I enter it or not? And she said, very calmly, horses cross, asses do not. This is a very famous phrase from another earlier teacher, which she turned around and used on her own. This was Joshu's response when someone came to him and said, I've heard about this great bridge of Joshu, but all I see is an old log bridge. And Joshu said, horses cross and asses cross. So she

used Joshu's famous Zen expression for her own purpose. And then when she said, horses cross, but asses do not, she closed her legs and turned her backside to him and said, this interview is over. And he left. And he went to the teacher to tell the teacher what had happened. And the teacher said, you can't say that she lacks wisdom. So he was a very awakened teacher. But what really struck me as I had studied this story for years before I practiced in Japan, was that actually my teacher was a descendant of Dahui. So the temple I was in was part of that lineage, Tofukiji, in Japan. In fact, it was built on the plans of Qingshan in China. And when Miao Zong stayed at Qingshan in China, she stayed in the abbot's quarters, some section of the temple that was a little restricted, so the monks didn't come and

go all the time. So she had some privacy. And when I stayed at Tofuku-ji, I stayed in the abbot's quarters. So I could see the direct connection to her insisting that she had a place there to my being able to practice in a male monastery in Japan because of what she had done historically. And this was a very profound experience for me to recognize that what I was doing by being in Japan would possibly open doors for other women and that this was very important that what we do for each other to conserve the practice and make it available for others is very important. And we do that with our own courage and our own heart and our own intent practice. That's a great story. So speaking of what we do for others and carrying this practice forward, tell me a little bit about the Shugaku Zen Institute that you have founded? Suzuki Roshi's name was Shogaku Shunryu Suzuki.

So Shogaku is auspicious peak, I think. I can't remember. Shunryu is something about the dragon. So what bothered me and why I started Shogaku Zen Institute was that Zen students might spend 20 or 30 or more years practicing in a Zen monastery. And sometimes an American Zen temple would say, okay, well, now it's time for you to go. And they had no skills.

I know one story of a young man who later went back to school and was one of our graduates of Shogakusen Institute who started out by refinishing floors. of Shogaku Zen Institute who start out by refinishing floors. And while certainly using awareness to do tasks is an important part of Zen, all those hours of meditation, which could be used to listen to with a full heart, to listen to other people and to counsel them and to be a chaplain, for example, that's the kind of work that would also be beneficial. So in Shogaku Zen Institute, we offer with as little cost as possible because we do things online and don't have a brick and mortar institute to support. And we pay the teachers

according to how many students come into the class. We are offering classes for Masters of Divinity. So it's a graduate degree. And with that, and with other training, Zen students can become chaplains or spiritual advisors, something that makes direct use of the awareness and attention that they've developed during their practice of Zen. So you're basically trying to give them some sort of credit for all the work they've done on meditating. Yes. So what we can do for a certain number of units, as most universities can, is say,

tell us what classes you've had, what practice periods you've gone to. Let the teacher who we know is an authorized Zen teacher sign off on that class, and we can give you some credit for that, some credit for your hours of meditation, and you need to take the classes, you know, in Buddhist history and philosophy and so on. But we're also trying to make the classes, for example, Buddhist history, like the history of races in Buddhism. How has Buddhist practice been discriminatory? Right now, we're offering a course in psychological first aid, which we think people are going to need to use. We've all been traumatized by this pandemic. So how can we help people?

If people don't have time to go into therapy, how can we be helpful to people? So these are the kinds of skills that we're trying to develop so people can use the time they've spent meditating to help in the world. Wonderful. Well, Grace, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It has been a real pleasure to chat with you. And I really appreciate everything you shared with us. We'll have links in the show notes to your website and to your books and other ways that people can find you. Terrific. Thank you for having me. And it's been great to talk to you. I'm going to see someone

who's read my book and actually understood some things that I'd forgotten. I did read it and I loved it. Thank you so much. Okay. Bye-bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.

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