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I think the idea of teachers as exemplars actually tends to get both teachers and students

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in trouble.

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Because the students come in with the attitude that this person should be an exemplar and

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maybe project a lot of idealized virtues onto this teacher.

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And unfortunately from what I saw, I think a lot of teachers come to believe their own

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PR.

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People are acting kind of worshipful towards them so they start to think that they really

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are those exemplars.

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Rick Archer - The Safety of the Mind

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Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump.

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My name is Rick Archer.

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My guest today is Julie Nelson.

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And I read Julie's book called "Practicing Safe Zen"

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and as I read the book, I was thinking,

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"This would be one of those interviews where I wish we could just talk for 24 hours

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and read the book aloud and then keep stopping every other sentence to discuss the point

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being made, because there were so many good points made in the book. But that would be

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an awfully long interview. I think we'd have a lot of drop-offs. So what I'm going to do,

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for starters, is just have Julie introduce herself, and then we'll get into it. So tell

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us a bit about yourself, Julie.

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Yeah. So I am in my 60s with a couple of grandkids. I just had brunch with today, since today is

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Mother's Day. I've practiced Zen for about 20 years. I did some Vipassana meditation before that.

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I started in the Robert Aikens lineage, later changed to Mizumi Roshi, for those who are

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interested. It's Soto Zen, but also uses koans, so it's kind of a mix of what people think of as Soto

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and Rinzai Zen. My sangha's had lots of problems over the last 10 years, and that's what inspired

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me to write that book. I'm also a retired economics professor. I did my research in feminist and

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ecological economics, which made me kind of swimming against the stream in that profession,

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but it was worthwhile. Good. That's a good little intro. Oh, and I could also say I am a

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transmitted teacher in the in the white plum lineage at this point. So you still practice and

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teach Zen, obviously. Yeah, good. Well, so your book is about, you know, first-hand experience with

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problematic teachers in the various Zen sanghas you belong to. And it's unfortunately a universal

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story. It's not limited to your experience. And it's not limited to Zen or Buddhism or

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Christianity or anything. I mean, it goes around the world and has perhaps for a long time.

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And, you know, one thing I kept thinking about as I was reading your book is that

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that saying by Jesus, "You shall know them by their fruits." And I've always naively, perhaps,

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or idealistically thought that spiritual teachers should be poster boys for, you know,

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what this can do for you, you know? There should be examples that you look at them and think,

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"Hey, I'd like to have what he or she has." You know, it seems like, you know, it's really

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turned this person into, you know, kind of an exemplar of what a human being could and should be.

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But unfortunately, there are so many examples to the contrary, and I'm afraid it's confusing and

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and disillusioning for a lot of students.

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I know people that have sort of given up on spirituality

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or taken one look at it and thought,

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eh, that seems kind of screwy.

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I don't want to get involved in it.

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So I'm sure you've pondered that same thought.

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In fact, I'm sure you brought it up in your book.

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But let's start the conversation with that.

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What do you think about what I just said?

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I think this idea of wanting to look up

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to teachers as exemplars is natural. We want to think that somebody in the world really

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has things figured out, and if we just, you know, stay close to them, we can get everything

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figured out and do that as well. I think it's reasonable to hope that teachers are well-behaved,

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and well-behaved not in the sense of always doing everything perfectly, but be willing

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to atone and make restitution when they screw up. I think the idea of teachers as exemplars

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actually tends to get both teachers and students in trouble, because the students come in with

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the attitude that this person should be an exemplar and maybe project a lot of idealized

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virtues onto this teacher. And unfortunately, from what I saw, I think a lot of teachers come to

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believe their own PR. People are acting kind of worshipful for towards them. So they start to

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think that they really are those exemplars. And then of course, from a more objective point of

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view, they're actually doing some really nasty things sometimes. Yeah. I mean, in ordinary

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education, if you go to college, let's say, and you want to study physics, you expect that your

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professors are going to be, they're going to know a lot about physics, you know. And, you know,

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It gets a little bit more abstract with some of the more softer sciences.

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If you were to study ethics, you would hope that your teacher at Harvard Divinity School

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or wherever you were was an ethical person who was teaching ethics.

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It's a little bit less hard to measure than physics.

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If we're interested in enlightenment or spiritual development or awakening or whatever we want to call it,

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it seems to be it's not unreasonable to expect that the teacher has attained some degree of it.

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Otherwise, why is he or she a teacher?

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And yet then, you know, you have to wonder, well, what's the measure of that?

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What are the characteristics of that attainment?

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You know, what should I expect and what would be too much to expect in someone who is supposedly

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more advanced on the spiritual path?

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I think the idea of some kind of spiritual attainment, spiritual achievement, that some

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people are functioning on a higher plane, that somebody is coming in, unfortunately

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cuts two ways.

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One is that it, you know, all being, I mean, one of the constant themes of my book is that we're

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all Buddha nature and we're all human, you know, frail humans at the same time, right? So it's

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really easy to take anything that feels like an attainment, you know, even in a spiritual realm,

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and turn it into a merit badge, you know, turn it into something that feeds our ego.

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I do think teachers should be, and usually are, people who have had some kind of,

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what I like to call opening experience, you know, it's some sort of visceral sense of the unity of

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the universe and of our own continuity with that. So that they have it, but that is

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in most cases a momentary experience or, you know, maybe for some people it right here might go on

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for days or weeks, but then the question is how is that integrated into someone's life? And if you

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If you take that experience and think, "Oh, now I'm enlightened, now I'm a perfect human

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being, now I can go teach," it's going to end badly.

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If you take that as an experience that, yeah, really memorable, really shook up the way

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I see the world, now what am I doing next?

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And now where do I need to open next?

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And what do I need to look at next, even if it's unpleasant?

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to keep on growing, to keep on having that beginner's mind.

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- Yeah, I was just having an email conversation this morning

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with Dana Sawyer, Phil Goldberg,

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and a fellow named Frederick Smith,

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who was a Sanskrit professor at the University of Iowa.

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And the other two have been on BatGap.

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And one of them was mentioning that very often

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somebody will have some profound experience

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a few seconds in the 1970s, let's say, and they're still hanging their hat on that experience,

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you know, still kind of clinging to it as building a little shrine around it, you know.

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Yeah. And even some great, you know, poets like William Blake, I believe, had had some

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kind of profound experience like that. And it didn't last, but he spent his whole life

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writing beautiful poetry inspired by that experience. So that's great. But I think, correct me if

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if I'm wrong from the perspective of your tradition,

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that awakening-- there's different kinds of satori,

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right, or samadhi.

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Some are temporary, momentary, and others

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are said to be abiding.

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And the idea, as I understand it,

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is to maybe have the temporary ones, but then over time,

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they might give way to an abiding realization.

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I'm not sure about that sense of...

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I mean, in some subtle way, maybe there's some...

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you live more and more of your life

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with that realization, but you still live your life as

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a human being in the relative world with clay feet.

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So, I don't...

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I don't think anybody is going to...

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I would have a very hard time believing that anybody even

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Buddha himself was in a state where every action was always... I mean, the Buddha had some

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very retrograde ideas about women, for example, right? So, we're always, like I said, we're

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always human and we're always Buddha. And hopefully over time with integration and with

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work and with practice and with... I think the Sangha is very important, the community,

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people setting us straight and sometimes showing us stuff we don't want to see, that we can

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have a long maturation where we can spend more of our time, you know, not acting from our

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small self. But my guess is the people that do that most effectively probably don't even

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know that they're doing it. That is, they're not checking up on themselves and measuring

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themselves all the time.

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Yeah, in other words, it comes naturally if it's a natural state of development.

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Like, I don't know, riding a bicycle. It's really hard at first and you fall off and everything,

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but after a while it's kind of second nature and you're not thinking, "Oh, I got a balance, I got a balance."

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[Laughter]

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Yeah, there was one writer, it was talking about A. H. Dogen, founder of Soto Zen,

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just went about to know oneself is to forget oneself and likened it to riding a bicycle,

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that you really need to figure out who you are. But once you do that, you're not thinking through

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every step in the same sort of way you did in the process of kind of figuring out who you are.

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Rick Yeah. On the other hand, there's a quote that I often quote from Padmasambhava, which was that,

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"Although my awareness is as vast as the sky, my attention to karma is as fine as a grain of

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barley flour. You know, so basically he's saying, "Hey, I'm pretty cosmic, but that doesn't grant

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me a pass to just sort of do whatever. I have to really kind of mind my P's and Q's and be precise."

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Yeah. Impeccable. We're not escaping our causes and conditions and our karma. Just

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momentary experiences. Okay. You've probably heard Ken Wilber's

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lines of development model. He talks about waking up, cleaning up and growing up.

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That sounds good. I read some of his work quite a while back.

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So yeah, and he, he makes the point that these different lines, not only those three, but also,

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you know, the intellectual, the emotional, the sensory, and so on, are not necessarily

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tightly correlated. And they can get really out of sync with one another.

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Yeah, the spiritual bypassing chapter in my book, I talk about that because it's,

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I think there's often a misconception that Zen practices is some kind of cure-all. And if you

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just, if you're having, you know, psychological problems, just do more Zazen, you know, if you're

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sexually immature, just do more Zazen or something like that. And no, you stunt yourself and you

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you probably become a danger to others when you get too off balanced in these ways.

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Yeah, and a danger to yourself. I mean, if you're psychologically unbalanced, doing more

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meditation of any kind can put you in a mental hospital, you know?

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Yeah, yeah, there's people who go way into dissociation or into more deeply into depression.

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I'm sure we've both seen it happen probably. And in the sexual realm, I mean, you know,

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are famous, supposedly enlightened gurus who've come from the east to the west and some who

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started out in the west who are sexually or emotionally less mature than your average high

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school boy.

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I mean,

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Yeah, well if it went into a monastery at age nine, you know, what do you expect?

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Yeah.

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Anyway, it might be worth mentioning at this point for the audience that, you know, this is

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an issue that has concerned me for quite some time and some others. And together with Jack O'Keefe

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and Craig Holliday and others have joined in now, we started an organization called the Association

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for Spiritual Integrity. And it now has nearly 800 members, I think, and about 60 member

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organizations and we're doing all kinds of interesting things. It's spiritual-integrity.org.

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But we considered it important because of the kinds of issues that Julie and I are discussing

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here and we don't present it as some sort of authoritative, moralistic body that's going

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to censure people or revoke their licenses or grant licenses or anything else. We're

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just trying to kind of infuse into the collective awareness of the spiritual community an appreciation

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of the importance of ethics on the spiritual path. And we've kind of outlined some guidelines

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or tenets, code of ethics, that we, after hours and hours and days and weeks of discussion

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continual revision feel are baselines for what a spiritual teacher should or should not do.

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And I feel that this is more almost for the sake of students than it is for teachers,

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because if a teacher is inclined to misbehave, he's not going to think, "Oh, I should check with

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the guidelines and see if this is out of line." You know, usually they're kind of off on some

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tangent when they start misbehaving and have lost their discrimination.

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but students should be able to hold teachers' feet to the fire and not assume that, "Well,

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this guy is supposed to be enlightened, and so as crazy as his behavior seems to be,

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who am I to judge? You know, I should just continue sitting here."

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- No, it's really important that there are some bodies and some ethical codes and statements

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out there that says, you know, this isn't allowed. And there really has to be

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trust within a spiritual teacher-student relationship, and there are--when that trust is violated,

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when the teacher ends up using that relationship for their own purposes in some way, it can

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be devastating to students and to communities, as I have found out.

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Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few different ways to go at this.

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One is greater education for both teachers and students about power in teacher-student

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relationships because there really is power.

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The student is looking for something.

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The teacher has some kind of knowledge that the student wants to get, and that creates

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a power differential.

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And I think a lot of people are ignorant about that.

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Sometimes people think teacher abuses of power is just a bad apple problem.

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a few narcissistic psychopaths and they do the abuse and everybody else is okay. And there's

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a few of those out there, but what I have seen the most is just more garden variety

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ignorance, even that a teacher has power. You don't necessarily feel powerful because

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people are coming to you and asking you questions, but if they're trusting you, they're giving

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you power. And so teachers need to know kind of what behavior helps build that trust and

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what sort of behavior destroys it. Students need to know the same kind of thing so they

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can, you know, if they're feeling really queasy about something a teacher's doing, they can

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look at something like the Code of Ethics for the Spiritual Integrity group and say, "Oh,

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you know, this really is out of bounds.

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- Yeah.

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- And I know that that group doesn't, you know,

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do any kind of certification or that kind of thing,

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but in some ways I think, well, I mean, I think that our,

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I think it's not necessarily sufficient,

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but it's certainly necessary

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for battling teacher abuses of power.

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I think a lot of teachers don't really tend to be

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very well educated about what kind of power they hold over students when students are coming to them and trusting them with very personal things and trusting their advice.

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And a lot of students aren't really sure where the boundaries are between acceptable and unacceptable behavior by a teacher.

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So having some of that laid out is helpful.

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I don't think it's sufficient because, I mean, what I think a lot of teachers are giving other

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teachers too much of a pass when they see misconduct going on. I would like to see more

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sort of mutual accountability. Yeah. We're sort of touching on these points, but I'll

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crystallize it into a question.

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Well, two part, a statement and a question.

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Swami Sarvapriyananda, who I admire a lot,

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often says that you can have ethics without enlightenment,

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but you can't have enlightenment without ethics.

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And yet another spiritual teacher, whom I won't name,

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said at a conference that if you think that ethics

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have anything to do with awakening,

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you don't understand awakening.

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I agree with the first, with Swami's statement,

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and strongly disagree with that one. But what's your take on why ethics are important on the

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spiritual path in any tradition? We've touched upon it, but let's flesh it out some.

00:19:23.620 --> 00:19:28.340
Diana: Yeah, in the early moments of this, we talked about the fact that these sorts of

00:19:28.340 --> 00:19:35.380
cosmic opening experiences may last only seconds. They may be life-changing, but they last only

00:19:35.380 --> 00:19:40.820
seconds. And it may be true that in those few seconds, how I'm going to behave is not the

00:19:40.820 --> 00:19:48.700
main issue. The main issue is who I am, right? And if we don't build a little temple to that

00:19:48.700 --> 00:19:54.100
experience and hang on to it and try to, you know, think of that as the be-all and end-all,

00:19:54.100 --> 00:19:58.580
but we actually use what that experience is trying to teach us, I think we will have a

00:19:58.580 --> 00:20:04.500
bent to act more ethically because we realize kind of both how insignificant we are and

00:20:04.500 --> 00:20:12.500
how interconnected we are. But it doesn't come easy. Our karma and our habits and our conditioning

00:20:12.500 --> 00:20:19.260
is very strong. So to actually live out in the way that we're maybe very briefly pointed

00:20:19.260 --> 00:20:24.980
to in a Satori or Kensho kind of experience, to actually live that out takes hard work

00:20:24.980 --> 00:20:29.620
and it takes, you know, constantly being reminded, you know, reminding ourselves, reminding each

00:20:29.620 --> 00:20:33.980
other about what's ethical behavior.

00:20:33.980 --> 00:20:38.500
Rick Yeah, in the Zen tradition, is there a whole

00:20:38.500 --> 00:20:46.140
emphasis and explanation on deconditioning oneself, on working out all the sort of samskaras,

00:20:46.140 --> 00:20:51.020
as this is sometimes called, that condition us to types of behavior?

00:20:51.020 --> 00:20:54.980
Diana The way that we do it, at least in the tradition

00:20:54.980 --> 00:21:01.740
that I'm in is through study of the 16 Bodhisattva precepts, the ethical teachings. And the way

00:21:01.740 --> 00:21:09.140
we study them is not as a list of "thou shalt not" or "thou shalt," but as opportunities

00:21:09.140 --> 00:21:15.740
for waking up. So in the middle of a 12-week series that we run, and the way we run this

00:21:15.740 --> 00:21:21.540
class is every week we take one of them, and we just let it point out where in our life

00:21:21.540 --> 00:21:30.740
are we not speaking truthfully? Where in our life is sexuality coming up? And not trying to

00:21:30.740 --> 00:21:37.140
necessarily change our behavior right away, but just use that as a spotlight to what we're doing.

00:21:37.140 --> 00:21:42.980
Use that to reflect on what's going on in our body, what our beliefs are that are causing us to

00:21:42.980 --> 00:21:50.260
do this. And then after we focused on this for a while without trying to change it, trying to kind

00:21:50.260 --> 00:21:55.540
of stop, you know, when an occasion comes up where we feel like we're about to say something untrue.

00:21:55.540 --> 00:22:02.660
And that, that, using a book by Diane Rossetto called "Waking Up to What You Do," she talks

00:22:02.660 --> 00:22:10.340
about it being the dead spot that is creating, having enough consciousness of the precepts and

00:22:10.340 --> 00:22:15.060
of our own behavior to be able to sometimes stop in that point where we can actually make a decision.

00:22:15.060 --> 00:22:20.180
And in that point we can make a decision. We can choose to go with a habit, just grab on the usual

00:22:20.180 --> 00:22:25.820
way we do, or we can choose to do something different. And that to me is this unwinding

00:22:25.820 --> 00:22:29.280
of the habit. It's loosening it up.

00:22:29.280 --> 00:22:36.560
That's really good. Some people argue philosophically and even with some kind of neurophysiological

00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:42.580
explanation that we don't have free will, and that we just feel like we do, we appear

00:22:42.580 --> 00:22:49.020
to, but that we really don't. And to the best of my knowledge, I disagree with that. I may

00:22:49.020 --> 00:22:55.420
be wrong, but my feeling is that we are conditioned certainly, but not absolutely. We have some wiggle

00:22:55.420 --> 00:23:00.380
room, and the wiggle room, like you just said, could enable you to say to stop if you have the

00:23:00.380 --> 00:23:06.940
impulse to do something. There's some kind of discernment or discrimination or faculty that

00:23:06.940 --> 00:23:14.380
enables us to make choices, and if we use that faculty wisely, then we kind of move ourselves

00:23:14.380 --> 00:23:20.140
up the spectrum in terms of being less bound and conditioned, we attain greater freedom and

00:23:20.140 --> 00:23:28.220
we're less tormented, let's say, by habits or impulses that would be deleterious.

00:23:28.220 --> 00:23:31.580
And it's not easy work.

00:23:31.580 --> 00:23:35.180
No, it's a lifetime of...

00:23:35.180 --> 00:23:36.380
It's a lifetime, yeah.

00:23:36.380 --> 00:23:39.820
Yeah, yeah. Self-scrutiny.

00:23:40.620 --> 00:23:47.420
I mean, one thing I like to, that occurred to me very strongly on this issue of self-scrutiny,

00:23:47.420 --> 00:23:53.260
is that there's a huge difference between wanting to be awake and wanting to be good. I spent a lot

00:23:53.260 --> 00:23:58.780
of my life trying to be good. The problem is if you make a project about trying to be a good person,

00:23:58.780 --> 00:24:04.140
all the psychological research says we have confirmation bias. You know, we like to see

00:24:04.140 --> 00:24:08.300
what we like to see, and we tend to not see the things we don't want to see. So if you want to

00:24:08.300 --> 00:24:13.700
to be good, you really don't want to see it, you know, notice when you're doing bad, right?

00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:17.940
This way I just described working with the precepts is really trying to focus in on, you

00:24:17.940 --> 00:24:22.740
know, when am I about to do something that, you know, I really should think about. And

00:24:22.740 --> 00:24:26.780
it's really uncovering a lot of those places that we, you know, shadow areas, places that

00:24:26.780 --> 00:24:31.620
we don't want to see bad behaviors. If we really want to wake up, we should be saying,

00:24:31.620 --> 00:24:36.460
"Yes, thank you for showing me where I'm screwing up." You know, our human side doesn't want

00:24:36.460 --> 00:24:42.700
do that. Human size only wants praise. But if we really want to wake up, we should be,

00:24:42.700 --> 00:24:49.180
you know, glad in some way to find another spot where our habit energy and our knots

00:24:49.180 --> 00:24:50.940
are keeping us constrained.

00:24:50.940 --> 00:25:01.180
Yeah, you know, there's been a kind of a debate in the contemporary spirituality between

00:25:01.180 --> 00:25:09.860
And those who are engaged in, let's say, self-betterment practices, you know, Tony Robbins or various

00:25:09.860 --> 00:25:18.660
Be a Better, you know, various things you do to try to make yourself a better person, but

00:25:18.660 --> 00:25:22.500
there's not a whole lot of talk of self-realization in there, you know.

00:25:22.500 --> 00:25:28.460
And then the other wing is people who are focused on knowing your true nature, self-realization,

00:25:28.460 --> 00:25:31.900
And they often critique the self-betterment people.

00:25:31.900 --> 00:25:38.320
But I think that the two are not diametrically opposed, and in fact, are complementary and

00:25:38.320 --> 00:25:39.580
could go hand in hand.

00:25:39.580 --> 00:25:46.540
And of course, in their extremes, both of these things can be rather absurd.

00:25:46.540 --> 00:25:52.320
The self-betterment stuff can get kind of silly, and the know-your-true-nature to the exclusion

00:25:52.320 --> 00:25:57.060
of everything else can become very cold and devoid of ethics again.

00:25:57.060 --> 00:26:04.560
Well, I actually love the book by a woman named Joan Tollison. The title is great. "Death,

00:26:04.560 --> 00:26:05.900
the end of self-improvement."

00:26:05.900 --> 00:26:08.900
I've interviewed Joan. I know Joan.

00:26:08.900 --> 00:26:18.720
Isn't that a lovely title? I don't think it's not that we don't improve. Do I behave better

00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:24.940
after many years of Zen practice? I don't know. Ask my family. Ask people around me.

00:26:24.940 --> 00:26:30.220
I could have all sorts of illusions about it. I think that's probably the case. I think some

00:26:30.220 --> 00:26:35.420
people think I'm, you know, even more obnoxious because, you know, I won't tolerate their nonsense,

00:26:35.420 --> 00:26:37.500
you know, so I don't know. Yeah.

00:26:37.500 --> 00:26:40.940
Pete: Kind of reminds me of Ram Dass saying, if you think you're enlightened,

00:26:40.940 --> 00:26:42.620
go spend a weekend with your parents.

00:26:42.620 --> 00:26:43.420
[Laughter]

00:26:43.420 --> 00:26:48.060
Dianne: I was thinking, this is, you know, our final words before people like, you know,

00:26:48.060 --> 00:26:53.020
go to Thanksgiving or, you know, Christmas or holiday gatherings, yes. Now is the test of your

00:26:53.020 --> 00:26:57.900
practice. You thought it was, you know, Sashin retreat, long sitting. No, it's Thanksgiving

00:26:57.900 --> 00:26:59.660
dinner with your relatives.

00:26:59.660 --> 00:27:07.620
Yeah. Okay, it's an interesting, I mean, I've been meditating since the 60s. And, and, you

00:27:07.620 --> 00:27:12.780
know, I was a teacher of meditation for many years. And it's like, I continually ponder

00:27:12.780 --> 00:27:18.560
these questions, because I don't see them. I don't feel like I've totally resolved my

00:27:18.560 --> 00:27:26.560
understanding of the paradoxes and discrepancies that I often see in spiritual communities.

00:27:26.560 --> 00:27:30.760
And you know, I come up with explanations, my best explanation being that we're all works

00:27:30.760 --> 00:27:36.800
in progress, and that, you know, you can never sort of rest on your laurels and assume you're

00:27:36.800 --> 00:27:42.840
done. And that, and Ken Wilber's thing of lines of development, where there can be quite

00:27:42.840 --> 00:27:50.840
a significant development of awakening in consciousness, and yet you can be quite immature and stunted

00:27:50.840 --> 00:27:53.160
in other of those lines.

00:27:53.160 --> 00:27:54.160
Yes.

00:27:54.160 --> 00:27:59.920
Okay. Now, feel free to chime in on anything, any time. Don't just wait for me to ask you

00:27:59.920 --> 00:28:04.760
questions. This is just a conversation, so anything you want to say. But I'm going to

00:28:04.760 --> 00:28:07.320
start looking at my notes here.

00:28:07.320 --> 00:28:12.560
So here's a synopsis of your book, the overall theme.

00:28:12.560 --> 00:28:18.240
The book explores both the beauty and transformative potential of Zen practice alongside its inherent

00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:20.100
dangers and pitfalls.

00:28:20.100 --> 00:28:24.100
It emphasizes the need for awareness, healthy boundaries, and accountability within Zen

00:28:24.100 --> 00:28:29.040
communities to practice safely and address issues like teacher misconduct and spiritual

00:28:29.040 --> 00:28:30.040
bypassing.

00:28:30.040 --> 00:28:34.820
Then you draw upon your personal experiences, including several different portrayals within

00:28:34.820 --> 00:28:37.820
and communities to illustrate these points.

00:28:37.820 --> 00:28:41.820
And you actually name names.

00:28:41.820 --> 00:28:45.820
I'm surprised you haven't been sued, but I guess it's permissible to do that.

00:28:45.820 --> 00:28:52.820
Well, I name names only in for documented things.

00:28:52.820 --> 00:28:56.820
I have unfortunately heard of a lot more cases of abuse than I could write down,

00:28:56.820 --> 00:29:00.820
but I didn't want to repeat rumors and undocumented things.

00:29:00.820 --> 00:29:09.320
I use people's own words or statements by bodies that have done investigations.

00:29:09.320 --> 00:29:11.320
Yeah, good.

00:29:11.320 --> 00:29:14.320
Or my first-hand experience.

00:29:14.320 --> 00:29:15.820
Right.

00:29:15.820 --> 00:29:21.320
As a sangha, we have had legal threats by people who didn't like what we said.

00:29:21.320 --> 00:29:26.820
Empty threats, because you can give somebody a bad online review and it's not illegal.

00:29:26.820 --> 00:29:35.020
But yeah, people who kind of pride themselves on being virtuous and being, you know, more

00:29:35.020 --> 00:29:42.100
gentle than the law can be quite litigious when you give them a bad review.

00:29:42.100 --> 00:29:43.660
Yeah.

00:29:43.660 --> 00:29:52.220
So, let's say the average student just kind of starting out on the path, or considering

00:29:52.220 --> 00:29:59.020
starting out on the path and being interested in Zen as a possible path for them, as I was

00:29:59.020 --> 00:30:05.460
actually before I took the path I took. But it was Zen books that inspired me to learn

00:30:05.460 --> 00:30:12.740
to meditate and get going with this spirituality stuff. But what should they know? As someone

00:30:12.740 --> 00:30:20.740
who's been in it for decades, what cautions and advice would you give them to proceed in

00:30:20.740 --> 00:30:27.500
a safe way to choose a trustworthy teacher, and to not let themselves get burned, you

00:30:27.500 --> 00:30:28.500
know.

00:30:28.500 --> 00:30:32.720
Yeah, yeah. Well, I had a, I came at this a few different ways. One is a lot of people

00:30:32.720 --> 00:30:36.340
just start meditating on their own, right? They don't even try a teacher, a sangha, they

00:30:36.340 --> 00:30:43.100
just read a book and start. And that has some, some dangers and also some day, I would say

00:30:43.100 --> 00:30:49.100
actual dangers for some people and a number of pitfalls, a number of sort of detours that

00:30:49.100 --> 00:30:55.840
people can hit. The real dangers for people with certain pre-existing psychological conditions,

00:30:55.840 --> 00:31:01.940
they may find when they sit that their depression just gets worse, they have psychotic episodes,

00:31:01.940 --> 00:31:08.020
all of these kinds of things. And there's documented cases of this going on, or psychological

00:31:08.020 --> 00:31:11.140
dissociation, they confuse that with them.

00:31:11.140 --> 00:31:13.340
Yeah, I think you mentioned Willoughby Britton in your book.

00:31:13.340 --> 00:31:14.660
Willoughby Britton has a whole thing.

00:31:14.660 --> 00:31:18.580
Brown University, she has this whole thing devoted to helping people who get in trouble

00:31:18.580 --> 00:31:23.980
with meditation. Right, right. So it's something that, you know, essentially if you try meditation

00:31:23.980 --> 00:31:30.500
and you know, whatever's been overwhelming you is getting even more overwhelming. Stop

00:31:30.500 --> 00:31:35.820
and get some advice, you know, maybe see a therapist, do something else. Zen is not a

00:31:35.820 --> 00:31:41.700
panacea, it's not necessarily for everybody. So that's just kind of a first hurdle to get

00:31:41.700 --> 00:31:45.700
Most people can practice meditation with no ill effects.

00:31:45.700 --> 00:31:51.700
In terms of the Zen path of realization,

00:31:51.700 --> 00:31:56.700
we talk about the great matter dealing with the big issues of life and death,

00:31:56.700 --> 00:32:00.700
there's a number of things that could just be seen as detours.

00:32:00.700 --> 00:32:04.700
Getting hung up on trying to get to certain mind states.

00:32:04.700 --> 00:32:07.700
"I'm going to meditate so I can be calm."

00:32:07.700 --> 00:32:12.900
That can be helpful, but it can also be a trap.

00:32:12.900 --> 00:32:16.340
Sometimes I'm just not a calm person.

00:32:16.340 --> 00:32:20.260
Does that mean I'm not practicing Zen? Maybe not.

00:32:20.260 --> 00:32:24.820
I'm being at this moment fully, I'm not a calm person.

00:32:24.820 --> 00:32:31.300
Or bliss states, or despair, or a lot, there's just a lot

00:32:31.300 --> 00:32:36.260
of stuff that can start coming up in individual practice that

00:32:36.260 --> 00:32:42.980
that needs to be handled carefully and just mostly treated as something that comes up rather than as

00:32:42.980 --> 00:32:50.260
a be-all or an end-all of the practice or some kind of personal failure at the practice.

00:32:50.260 --> 00:32:57.380
So I kind of go through a list of those things. It is very helpful to have a community and a teacher.

00:32:57.380 --> 00:33:03.700
Some people in Zen say it's absolutely necessary to work with a teacher. I'm a little bit more

00:33:03.700 --> 00:33:10.660
iffy about that. I think teachers can be very helpful. I can't see in, certainly in the Zen

00:33:10.660 --> 00:33:15.140
tradition, you see that. I can't see in a lot of the earlier Buddhist writings, the emphasis is

00:33:15.140 --> 00:33:23.300
really on community, not about, you know, working with one particular person. When looking for a

00:33:23.300 --> 00:33:28.820
community or a teacher, I suggest just some basic things like doing a web search on the community's

00:33:28.820 --> 00:33:38.420
name or the teacher's name and words like, you know, abuse, cult, misconduct. It can be hard because a lot of

00:33:38.420 --> 00:33:44.020
teachers and communities can look very warm and welcoming

00:33:44.020 --> 00:33:52.980
as long as you kind of stay around the edges. As you get more involved, you may find, you know,

00:33:52.980 --> 00:34:01.780
some really nasty power dynamics going on behind the scenes. And so trying to avoid cultish groups

00:34:01.780 --> 00:34:10.660
is important. Cultish groups are groups where basically the leader or leaders believe that

00:34:10.660 --> 00:34:15.380
they know what's best. And not just what's best maybe for your personal spiritual development,

00:34:15.380 --> 00:34:20.820
but increasingly the more you get involved, they know best about finances, about real estate,

00:34:20.820 --> 00:34:24.980
about your personal life, you know, about what you should be saying and who you should be talking to

00:34:24.980 --> 00:34:31.940
and who your friends should be and everything else. Very important to watch out for those things.

00:34:31.940 --> 00:34:38.900
One of the things that those kinds of groups do is suppress dissent to a big degree.

00:34:38.900 --> 00:34:43.940
One way to test if you're in such a group is to try disagreeing with something.

00:34:43.940 --> 00:34:48.180
You know, are you treated as an adult that might have some kind of contribution to make? Are you

00:34:48.180 --> 00:34:56.740
treated like an unruly kid, labeled as unspiritual, you know, kicked out. Those are some things to

00:34:56.740 --> 00:35:01.620
watch out for. And I saw some of those behaviors in some of the groups that I was in, in terms of

00:35:01.620 --> 00:35:06.820
ostracizing people who made any criticism, or treating them very badly.

00:35:06.820 --> 00:35:13.700
Yeah, it can almost get comically extreme. A friend of mine went to an

00:35:15.060 --> 00:35:22.100
ashram in Mexico for a while for a retreat. And it was so controlling that no one was supposed to have

00:35:22.100 --> 00:35:27.620
any opinion or make any decision. Like she had some idea of what salad dressing to serve with

00:35:27.620 --> 00:35:32.980
lunch. And oh, no, no, no, the leader decides everything. You know, I had a similar experience

00:35:32.980 --> 00:35:38.660
where yeah, that the leader decided that there should not be any salt in the oatmeal. You know,

00:35:38.660 --> 00:35:43.380
the cooks, the participants had no choice in it. It was just no, no, we don't do that.

00:35:43.380 --> 00:35:47.620
Yeah.

00:35:47.620 --> 00:35:52.300
Which makes you wonder, I mean, about the subjective state of that leader, if he thinks

00:35:52.300 --> 00:35:55.780
that he has that kind of omniscience.

00:35:55.780 --> 00:35:58.580
Yeah, yeah.

00:35:58.580 --> 00:35:59.900
God.

00:35:59.900 --> 00:36:07.780
I think one phenomenon is that being a spiritual teacher can go to your head if you don't have

00:36:07.780 --> 00:36:11.820
enough whatever, emotional maturity or something.

00:36:11.820 --> 00:36:19.980
the authority, the adulation, if that comes your way, even subtle adulation, like, you

00:36:19.980 --> 00:36:24.220
know, just respect and so on, can inflate an immature ego.

00:36:24.220 --> 00:36:27.300
DG Yeah, exactly. I point to that a lot in the

00:36:27.300 --> 00:36:32.180
book because, well, a lot of people recognize that there are teacher abuses of power, and

00:36:32.180 --> 00:36:36.860
it's usually the sexual abuses of power that make the headlines, but there's also financial

00:36:36.860 --> 00:36:41.360
and emotional kinds of things that go on. A lot of people think it's just, you know, a

00:36:41.360 --> 00:36:46.540
few predators out there, a few narcissistic psychopaths or something. But it's really

00:36:46.540 --> 00:36:53.620
much more garden variety ego and subtle ego inflation, I think, behind most of these cases.

00:36:53.620 --> 00:37:02.220
The teachers that I experienced creating very serious abuses of power also sometimes taught

00:37:02.220 --> 00:37:10.380
very well, taught very effectively, said useful things, right? I suspect that most of them,

00:37:10.380 --> 00:37:16.380
one I'm maybe not so sure about, but most of them had had valid opening experiences.

00:37:16.380 --> 00:37:25.900
A lot of them I had sat next to as students, and as students they were quite humble and committed

00:37:25.900 --> 00:37:33.180
to the practice. And in the book I mentioned what I call the Gold Raksu effect. That is, in my

00:37:33.180 --> 00:37:37.980
tradition, you wear a black kind of bib-like garment when you're a student, but you've committed to

00:37:37.980 --> 00:37:44.780
living the Buddha way. You've taken the bodhisattva precepts. But then when you become

00:37:44.780 --> 00:37:51.340
a transmitted teacher, you wear a brown or a golden brown one. And I saw people that I'd sat

00:37:51.340 --> 00:37:59.900
with for years as humble co-students become arrogant as hell as soon as they put on a gold

00:37:59.900 --> 00:38:05.180
raksu. Suddenly they were not to be questioned, they were to be honored, and when I became

00:38:05.180 --> 00:38:10.540
transmitted I got a little taste of how this works. Two things, one is I noticed people started to

00:38:10.540 --> 00:38:16.540
take what I said more seriously, you know, people sometimes stood back when I passed by, you know,

00:38:16.540 --> 00:38:22.220
these very subtle things, and some of them I think were unconscious, some of them I think had been

00:38:22.220 --> 00:38:29.500
taught as part of the tradition. And I also was allowed into teacher meetings, groups of teachers

00:38:29.500 --> 00:38:36.060
together, which I think can just become an echo chamber for pride. Yeah, you know, we do know

00:38:36.060 --> 00:38:41.260
better than the students about, you know, the oatmeal or the, you know, kind of jam to put on

00:38:41.260 --> 00:38:46.780
the toast, or you know, yeah, I think there can be this echo chamber effects and it's just very subtle

00:38:46.780 --> 00:38:56.540
yeah, ego stroking that I actually, I keep what I, as a teacher now, I keep what I call a gold

00:38:56.540 --> 00:39:01.740
raksu, I'm calling a gold raksu journal, got a little notebook down here, and when some of

00:39:01.740 --> 00:39:06.060
these feelings come up of like, you know, aren't I special, or wouldn't it be better if this room

00:39:06.060 --> 00:39:10.060
was a little bit more full, you know, like my teaching is so good, I really should have more

00:39:10.060 --> 00:39:14.620
students. I write those kinds of thoughts down in this journal, you know, that it's better to have

00:39:14.620 --> 00:39:20.140
your enemy close, right? You know, so I write these thoughts down so I can just laugh at them and know

00:39:20.140 --> 00:39:26.300
that I'm human. And remember not to, I hope, you know, and I hope the song will help me not take

00:39:26.300 --> 00:39:34.380
them seriously. Yeah, it's almost like dangerous to become a teacher. It is. I think it's, it's a

00:39:34.380 --> 00:39:44.380
huge entrustment. It's very serious. Yeah. It has pitfalls that you're not going to

00:39:44.380 --> 00:39:50.140
encounter if you're just a student. And so, you know, there shouldn't be a kind of ambition

00:39:50.140 --> 00:39:56.060
to become a teacher as soon as possible. I think. Yeah. And so a few of the other teachers

00:39:56.060 --> 00:40:00.820
I've talked to have said that, I mean, people often congratulate someone when they when they

00:40:00.820 --> 00:40:03.860
become a teacher. And they said, Well, you know, maybe we should offer condolences.

00:40:03.860 --> 00:40:04.860
Right.

00:40:04.860 --> 00:40:10.620
I've heard and maybe you can correct me on this that in the in the Zen tradition, maybe

00:40:10.620 --> 00:40:16.300
some particular branch of it, if you have a spiritual awakening, presumably, you know,

00:40:16.300 --> 00:40:21.300
an abiding one, you're supposed to wait 10 years before you teach.

00:40:21.300 --> 00:40:28.300
There's very, there's there's certainly old Zen stories about this. But yeah, this kind

00:40:28.300 --> 00:40:34.300
this impulse that once you've had a big opening experience, you're now ready to show the rest of the world is

00:40:34.300 --> 00:40:41.660
definitely, you know, frowned on. If you go to a Zen teacher and describe a great opening experience,

00:40:41.660 --> 00:40:48.300
you'll probably get an underwhelming response from them. You know, "That's nice. Now, what about your, you know,

00:40:48.300 --> 00:40:51.140
koan, your precept study, or, you know, something else?"

00:40:51.140 --> 00:40:55.940
Just to kind of bring you down that notch, you know, keep you from building that temple over that

00:40:56.780 --> 00:41:01.580
experience. Ten years, I don't know. Some of the different teacher groups have different

00:41:01.580 --> 00:41:06.780
criteria for how long to wait. There's some old Zen stories about people who went off

00:41:06.780 --> 00:41:12.620
to the mountains for 20 or 30 or 40 years, you know, to practice more before they came back to teach.

00:41:12.620 --> 00:41:18.060
The stories that I like best, really, there's a wonderful story about

00:41:18.060 --> 00:41:25.420
Daishan... no, oh shoot, I have a hard time with the Chinese names. Anyway, a teacher who was very

00:41:25.420 --> 00:41:31.020
highly respected, very old, when he was about 80, he decided to go on a pilgrimage to learn

00:41:31.020 --> 00:41:35.740
more and he said, "If I meet, you know, an 80-year-old, I'll learn from them. If I meet

00:41:35.740 --> 00:41:44.620
an 8-year-old, I'll learn from them." And Ehei Dogen in Japan commenting on that said,

00:41:44.620 --> 00:41:49.100
"Maybe that 8-year-old is an 8-year-old girl." You know, this is in medieval Japan, that would

00:41:49.100 --> 00:41:54.540
have been a, you know, kind of a shocking thing to think that a distinguished senior Zen teacher

00:41:54.540 --> 00:42:01.900
could learn from an eight-year-old girl. So, more than the time spent practicing before teaching,

00:42:01.900 --> 00:42:08.860
I think that keeping that open mind of "I'm never just a teacher, I'm always still a learner"

00:42:08.860 --> 00:42:18.140
is even more important. Yeah, or isn't there that phrase in Zen, "beginner's mind"?

00:42:18.140 --> 00:42:22.300
that's how I interpret it. You know, like you should always have the attitude of a beginner.

00:42:22.300 --> 00:42:29.580
DG Yeah, and I actually don't think of teaching as an identity. I think of it as a role,

00:42:29.580 --> 00:42:35.420
and a role that comes with a lot of responsibility. I think as soon as we glom onto anything as a firm

00:42:35.420 --> 00:42:41.740
identity, we're getting in trouble. I mean, this is, you know, Zen is in, one of the hazards,

00:42:41.740 --> 00:42:47.740
actually, of Zen is it's kind of destabilizing of ideas about who we are, which is a good thing,

00:42:47.740 --> 00:42:51.740
if it leads in the direction of spiritual awakening and understanding who we are in the universe.

00:42:51.740 --> 00:42:58.140
But if we destabilize the idea of who we are in a bad way, we can just become, say, overly loyal

00:42:58.140 --> 00:43:06.220
to a teacher, just kind of put the responsibility for our life in their hands. And so, you know,

00:43:06.220 --> 00:43:11.820
being a teacher, to say, you know, I had a colleague of mine at one point, ex-colleague now,

00:43:11.820 --> 00:43:17.020
say, "I am a teacher. I am always a teacher." And I don't feel that way. I feel like, you know,

00:43:17.020 --> 00:43:20.540
when I go to the grocery store, I'm a shopper, you know, when I'm playing with my grandkids,

00:43:20.540 --> 00:43:26.140
I'm a grandma. And I want to be the, you know, I hope I'm living out the wisdom and compassion I've

00:43:26.140 --> 00:43:31.340
learned from Zen study in any of these roles. But I don't need to be a Zen teacher when I'm

00:43:31.340 --> 00:43:36.940
picking out bananas, you know, that's not my... I mean, you know, change the word teacher to,

00:43:36.940 --> 00:43:42.060
you know, heart surgeon. Are you a heart surgeon when you're like on the toilet or, you know,

00:43:42.700 --> 00:43:49.020
surfing or whatever you do. Yeah, yeah, and I, so being a Zen teacher, you know, when I take up that

00:43:49.020 --> 00:43:54.620
role, when, you know, I'm asked to give a Dharma talk or when someone wants to meet with me one-on-one,

00:43:54.620 --> 00:44:00.540
it's a very serious role to take up, and there are, you know, boundary issues involved, there are power

00:44:00.540 --> 00:44:07.100
issues involved, I have no illusions that I can always, you know, answer someone's question.

00:44:07.100 --> 00:44:16.380
all I can do is meet people and perhaps the additional experience or study that I've had can be helpful.

00:44:16.380 --> 00:44:20.860
Yeah, that point about answering someone's question is interesting. Do you, as a teacher,

00:44:20.860 --> 00:44:25.980
sometimes find yourself saying, "I don't know"? And have you seen teachers that are

00:44:25.980 --> 00:44:29.340
too proud to say that?

00:44:33.100 --> 00:44:39.580
Yeah, I mean, I think that if a teacher is too proud to say, "I don't know, there's something wrong."

00:44:39.580 --> 00:44:50.460
What I saw was not so much teachers that were reluctant to say, "I don't know," when faced with

00:44:50.460 --> 00:44:57.260
some sort of personal or spiritual question, but who really didn't realize that they didn't know

00:44:57.260 --> 00:45:04.060
things like legal standards for dealing with clergy misconduct. They believe that they somehow

00:45:04.060 --> 00:45:10.060
naturally knew how to handle this without ever studying, so that kind of, you know, without

00:45:10.060 --> 00:45:14.780
reading up and certainly without listening to anybody who wasn't a teacher, even if they might

00:45:14.780 --> 00:45:23.980
have a legal background. So kind of the assumption of knowledge in areas where one doesn't have it,

00:45:26.060 --> 00:45:30.340
even if one may, you know, modestly say, I don't know when asked, you know, some particular

00:45:30.340 --> 00:45:33.100
question within a kind of a dharma context.

00:45:33.100 --> 00:45:40.460
Yeah, I can think of examples of this where teachers, well-known teachers, are often asked

00:45:40.460 --> 00:45:45.380
all kinds of questions. And rather than saying, "Oh, that's not my field. I don't know anything

00:45:45.380 --> 00:45:48.460
about that." They feel like they have to give an answer.

00:45:48.460 --> 00:45:52.620
Yeah, yeah. If you want to start questioning me about, you know, what modern physics has

00:45:52.620 --> 00:45:57.100
to do with spirituality, I'll say, you know, I probably know less than you do, you know,

00:45:57.100 --> 00:46:05.420
I've read a few books, but I'm not an expert, not my area. And yet, we see teachers doing

00:46:05.420 --> 00:46:11.820
all sorts of decisions about finances and real estate and people's personal lives. I know,

00:46:11.820 --> 00:46:16.060
I heard of a teacher who told students, you know, who they should marry, you know, just crazy.

00:46:16.060 --> 00:46:21.340
- That was in the back of my mind. And some people want that, they have a guru and they,

00:46:21.340 --> 00:46:26.860
should I marry so and so? Or should I get this job? Or should I buy a house and things? And

00:46:26.860 --> 00:46:30.060
most teachers, go ahead, you're going to say.

00:46:30.060 --> 00:46:35.740
I mean, that to me is this destabilizing of the feeling of who I am in the wrong direction.

00:46:35.740 --> 00:46:40.140
Instead of kind of trusting the Dharma, you just you trust this other human being

00:46:40.140 --> 00:46:46.620
in a way that that erases boundaries rather than then overcomes separation.

00:46:47.340 --> 00:46:53.980
Yeah, which is not to say, I mean, ancient, all the ancient traditions of the world have the

00:46:53.980 --> 00:47:00.060
archetype of the wise elder, you know, who does have some life experience and who's

00:47:00.060 --> 00:47:05.740
it was worth getting advice from on things. But hopefully, if they if they are genuine,

00:47:05.740 --> 00:47:12.060
they're also humble, and won't advise you on things they don't have any expertise in.

00:47:12.860 --> 00:47:15.180
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

00:47:15.180 --> 00:47:23.660
What as a teacher, um, have you you kind of alluded to this but have you had experiences where you felt like

00:47:23.660 --> 00:47:26.380
students were

00:47:26.380 --> 00:47:30.220
making too much of a fuss about you or you know, just to um,

00:47:30.220 --> 00:47:35.020
Agulating you in in some way and what what do you do to?

00:47:35.020 --> 00:47:42.060
Tone that down. Yeah. Yeah. I have had this just in in a few subtle ways. I remember somebody

00:47:42.600 --> 00:47:47.160
apologizing to me for something that was actually my fault. I thought, I don't know.

00:47:47.160 --> 00:47:54.520
Okay, they probably have this idealized image of me. And

00:47:54.520 --> 00:48:04.280
I have, it's one of those contradictory things, I think, that it's really the teacher's

00:48:04.280 --> 00:48:10.920
responsibility to not let that go to their head more than it is their responsibility to just

00:48:11.560 --> 00:48:17.800
stomp that out in the student, right? I think sometimes for students it's a phase that you

00:48:17.800 --> 00:48:22.920
have to go through. You really don't have any confidence in your own Buddha nature,

00:48:22.920 --> 00:48:29.080
so you kind of have to believe that it's somewhere near you, okay? Somewhere near you where you can

00:48:29.080 --> 00:48:35.240
get access to it, so you put all of that on your teacher. And that might be a necessary stage.

00:48:35.880 --> 00:48:41.000
So, you know, a student idolizing a teacher doesn't necessarily mean that the student

00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:44.920
needs correction. What it does mean is the teacher needs to be really careful,

00:48:44.920 --> 00:48:49.240
and the teacher needs to take the task of growing the student out of that.

00:48:49.240 --> 00:48:52.360
That's great. Very well put. Yeah, I like that.

00:48:52.360 --> 00:48:56.520
Putting on my glasses so I can look at some more of my notes here.

00:48:56.520 --> 00:49:04.600
Well, there's a section on pitfalls in spiritual practice. Let's talk about some of these.

00:49:04.600 --> 00:49:09.640
So, spiritual bypassing. I believe you quoted Robert Augustus Masters in your book.

00:49:09.640 --> 00:49:09.640
Yeah.

00:49:09.640 --> 00:49:14.680
I've interviewed him years ago. But explain what spiritual bypassing is,

00:49:14.680 --> 00:49:15.800
and we'll talk about it a little bit.

00:49:15.800 --> 00:49:22.040
Well, the original way that John Welwood defined it had to do with bypassing psychological

00:49:22.040 --> 00:49:33.960
maturity issues. So, you're having, you know, unhappiness, pain, psychological immaturity,

00:49:33.960 --> 00:49:42.960
just go and practice and we don't need to worry about the fact that I hate my parents or that I'm not getting along with my spouse or whatever.

00:49:42.960 --> 00:49:47.960
We just kind of sideline all of that stuff by becoming more holy.

00:49:47.960 --> 00:49:56.960
What I've seen a lot, actually more in person, is kind of a confusion of Zen practice with emotional flatlining.

00:49:56.960 --> 00:49:59.960
That equanimity just means that nothing's going to bother me.

00:49:59.960 --> 00:50:05.120
Okay, so it's really just a separation from my life, you know, it's separation from my

00:50:05.120 --> 00:50:11.360
body, separation from my life, to try to bypass those uncomfortable things that come up in

00:50:11.360 --> 00:50:17.760
the real world. And that's not the Zen way. The Zen way brings us more into our life,

00:50:17.760 --> 00:50:23.300
doesn't take us out of it. But it's very appealing, you know, it's a, you know, it kind of turns

00:50:23.300 --> 00:50:25.560
religion into a feel-good drug.

00:50:25.560 --> 00:50:34.100
Yeah, a lot of these points are nuanced. There is something, I'd say, to equanimity, at least

00:50:34.100 --> 00:50:37.960
in the Hindu tradition, in the Bhagavad Gita, it talks about equanimity being one of the

00:50:37.960 --> 00:50:43.120
characteristics of self-realization, you know, you're not just blown away by every little

00:50:43.120 --> 00:50:44.120
thing.

00:50:44.120 --> 00:50:48.440
No, but I think of equanimity as having the ballast to ride the waves.

00:50:48.440 --> 00:50:49.440
Yeah.

00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:54.360
Okay, so it's not that you're flatlining. The storms are still coming, the conditions

00:50:54.360 --> 00:50:59.320
of your life haven't changed, there will still be grief and loss and, you know, other things

00:50:59.320 --> 00:51:04.340
that you really need to face and deal with. But you're not going to be, you know, thrown

00:51:04.340 --> 00:51:07.920
entirely off balance when these things come along.

00:51:07.920 --> 00:51:12.680
Yeah, maybe one way of putting it is if you're in tune with your Buddha nature, that it's

00:51:12.680 --> 00:51:18.860
a deeper dimension, which is like the silent level of the ocean that's not perturbed by

00:51:18.860 --> 00:51:21.120
the hurricane that's blowing on the surface.

00:51:21.120 --> 00:51:25.280
Yeah, I mean, you don't ignore the fact that it's choppy on top, but the fact that it's

00:51:25.280 --> 00:51:29.280
choppy on top doesn't shake you to your core.

00:51:29.280 --> 00:51:32.480
The way it's just one level of a deep ocean.

00:51:32.480 --> 00:51:33.480
Yeah.

00:51:33.480 --> 00:51:34.480
Yeah, good.

00:51:34.480 --> 00:51:41.120
No, but it's, I mean, spiritual bypassing is a common syndrome.

00:51:41.120 --> 00:51:45.840
People thinking that they can just meditate away, whatever bothers them.

00:51:45.840 --> 00:51:50.200
Even sometimes, like a serious medical issue, they'll think that I can meditate that away

00:51:50.200 --> 00:51:56.720
or take some herbs, I don't need to go see the doctor. I've had friends die with that

00:51:56.720 --> 00:52:03.320
attitude at least in the initial stages. Anything more we want to say about spiritual bypassing?

00:52:03.320 --> 00:52:10.620
I added on, in the book, I added a few more things. I think besides bypassing the pain

00:52:10.620 --> 00:52:16.880
of life and, you know, the pains of growing up psychologically and in other ways, we can

00:52:16.880 --> 00:52:24.540
also try to bypass life events. I remember overhearing one person, a man one time talking

00:52:24.540 --> 00:52:31.120
about how he decided to really commit to doing Zen once a week, and somehow in the conversation

00:52:31.120 --> 00:52:34.460
it came up that he was leaving his wife at home with like three young kids who get really

00:52:34.460 --> 00:52:40.580
rowdy in the evening. Yeah, maybe he was committing to the spiritual life, but maybe it was just

00:52:40.580 --> 00:52:45.940
avoiding being home with the rowdy kids, you know, you can use it that way too. Or, you

00:52:45.940 --> 00:52:50.820
You know, you've got a... I gave another example of you, suppose you're running a business

00:52:50.820 --> 00:52:55.500
and your co-manager is, you know, abusing your employees. So you recommend that they

00:52:55.500 --> 00:53:00.900
go on a Zen retreat, you know. Okay, maybe you actually need to deal with their behavior,

00:53:00.900 --> 00:53:06.980
not just spiritualize it and, you know, try to kind of override it that way. So anyway,

00:53:06.980 --> 00:53:07.980
that's...

00:53:07.980 --> 00:53:11.300
Yeah, that's good. And the Zen retreat isn't necessarily going to make the fundamental change

00:53:11.300 --> 00:53:12.300
that that...

00:53:12.300 --> 00:53:15.140
No, what this person probably needs is to be confronted and saying, "You're a jerk with

00:53:15.140 --> 00:53:19.460
the way you're treating these employees and, you know, we really got to deal with that.

00:53:19.460 --> 00:53:20.460
Yeah.

00:53:20.460 --> 00:53:28.220
Um, you also, also you talk about, you know, engaging with one's shadow.

00:53:28.220 --> 00:53:30.860
I've done whole interviews about, about the shadow.

00:53:30.860 --> 00:53:31.860
Yeah.

00:53:31.860 --> 00:53:32.860
Most.

00:53:32.860 --> 00:53:37.860
And, you know, you earlier you're saying like, you know, maybe you grew up in an ashram and

00:53:37.860 --> 00:53:44.340
then you come to the, to the West and you misbehave sexually with students or something because

00:53:44.340 --> 00:53:49.960
you don't have, you've never sort of dealt with the issues that an ordinary adolescence

00:53:49.960 --> 00:53:56.360
would have enabled you to deal with because you were in this protected environment. So,

00:53:56.360 --> 00:54:01.940
do you feel, would you care to define shadow and do you feel that everyone has one? And

00:54:01.940 --> 00:54:13.940
does Zen provide specific procedures for engaging with it or would one need to seek outside help?

00:54:13.940 --> 00:54:23.620
Yeah, I like the, again, Robert Augustus Masters has written very well on the issues of shadow.

00:54:23.620 --> 00:54:25.860
And shadow are those things we don't want to face.

00:54:25.860 --> 00:54:30.380
So when I was mentioning the difference between wanting to be awake and wanting to be good,

00:54:30.380 --> 00:54:37.420
I think as a main goal, wanting to be good, it tends to encourage us to hide our shadow,

00:54:37.420 --> 00:54:39.540
because it's getting in the way of our projects.

00:54:39.540 --> 00:54:55.780
to be awake, I hope allows us to go into those dark spaces when they present themselves.

00:54:55.780 --> 00:55:01.220
Joan Sutherland talks about both enlightenment and endarkenment.

00:55:01.220 --> 00:55:07.380
And Robert Augustus Masters talks about the spiritual life being a fire.

00:55:07.380 --> 00:55:09.540
We like the light, but we don't like the heat.

00:55:09.540 --> 00:55:16.580
So there's, you know, I think a lot of people come to spiritual, you know, make, initially

00:55:16.580 --> 00:55:23.940
come to spirituality out of a desire to be a good person and, you know, and feel good

00:55:23.940 --> 00:55:26.420
at the same time.

00:55:26.420 --> 00:55:33.380
And yet there are times when we need to really face, in Zen we talk about the three poisons,

00:55:33.380 --> 00:55:41.060
hatred and delusion. And I think I mentioned when, you know, as we work with the precepts,

00:55:41.060 --> 00:55:48.180
we're really opening up and and noticing, you know, our own greed, hatred, and and delusion,

00:55:48.180 --> 00:55:53.060
no matter how long we've been on the path. There's always still some, you know, at least some bits of

00:55:53.060 --> 00:55:59.780
this, and for most of us, you know, big chunks of this stuff left to work out. Whether Zen,

00:56:02.260 --> 00:56:08.980
I think things like precepts practice in our group, I think it sometimes has opened up to people

00:56:08.980 --> 00:56:17.220
some of their darker behaviors and beliefs. And it can be scary, but if you're actually

00:56:17.220 --> 00:56:21.700
carrying around with you for a week, you know, I'm just going to notice when I have an inclination to

00:56:21.700 --> 00:56:28.580
speak untruthfully. That could dig out some shadow stuff, or I'm going to really notice if my

00:56:28.580 --> 00:56:32.500
my sexuality is kind of turning dark.

00:56:32.500 --> 00:56:34.100
That could actually help you notice.

00:56:34.100 --> 00:56:39.060
Probably, it also helps to do some more

00:56:39.060 --> 00:56:41.780
direct psychological work.

00:56:41.780 --> 00:56:44.820
I've done a couple of years of therapy myself,

00:56:44.820 --> 00:56:49.740
and I think for a lot of people that more direct approach

00:56:49.740 --> 00:56:55.140
is a very good complement to these more spiritually oriented

00:56:55.140 --> 00:56:56.860
practices.

00:56:56.860 --> 00:56:59.020
That precepts practice sounds really good.

00:56:59.020 --> 00:57:03.380
You know, the spiritual group that I grew up in,

00:57:03.380 --> 00:57:06.940
the teaching was that, you know,

00:57:06.940 --> 00:57:09.180
all you have to do is water the root of the tree

00:57:09.180 --> 00:57:10.460
and the whole tree will flourish.

00:57:10.460 --> 00:57:12.180
In other words, just, you know,

00:57:12.180 --> 00:57:15.060
dive into pure consciousness and stay there for a while

00:57:15.060 --> 00:57:16.140
and come out and live your life

00:57:16.140 --> 00:57:19.340
and everything else will be taken care of automatically.

00:57:19.340 --> 00:57:24.340
And there were so many egregious examples of that

00:57:25.300 --> 00:57:31.060
not working all the way to the top of the organization.

00:57:31.060 --> 00:57:33.500
But the fact that in your practice,

00:57:33.500 --> 00:57:36.580
you put very specific attention as a group,

00:57:36.580 --> 00:57:39.180
as a community, on specific precepts

00:57:39.180 --> 00:57:40.980
and really ponder them.

00:57:40.980 --> 00:57:44.220
I think that must really have a healthy effect

00:57:44.220 --> 00:57:46.140
on people's development.

00:57:46.140 --> 00:57:50.420
Some people have taken the cycle more than once.

00:57:50.420 --> 00:57:51.380
They found it helpful.

00:57:51.380 --> 00:57:52.960
And at a different part of their life,

00:57:52.960 --> 00:57:58.480
back and take it again and all new insights. And I think at least one of the cases, the

00:57:58.480 --> 00:58:06.560
case of sexual abuse in the history of the Sangha that I've been in, I mean, retrospectively,

00:58:06.560 --> 00:58:11.520
I could see things where this person was, I think, quite separated from their body in

00:58:11.520 --> 00:58:16.360
some ways. As I suspect, they're carrying around a lot of shadow having to do with their

00:58:16.360 --> 00:58:23.400
body and its desires. You know, that's me as a third person, kind of from the outside.

00:58:23.400 --> 00:58:29.080
But yeah, and I think, you know, again, some people, they can teach very effectively for

00:58:29.080 --> 00:58:34.480
a long time, and it's like, you're just shocked when they get hijacked by they've got something

00:58:34.480 --> 00:58:40.320
they haven't dealt with, and it comes out, and it's, you know, terribly destructive.

00:58:40.320 --> 00:58:48.320
Yeah, and I think it's worth saying or reiterating if we've already said it that this kind of

00:58:48.320 --> 00:58:56.000
focus on precepts and on ethics is not just a kind of a sideline or a luxury or an entertainment

00:58:56.000 --> 00:58:57.000
or something.

00:58:57.000 --> 00:59:04.760
It's because violating these things can really scuttle your progress.

00:59:04.760 --> 00:59:10.720
can really undermine and you know, you can really crash and burn to mix several metaphors

00:59:10.720 --> 00:59:11.720
in there.

00:59:11.720 --> 00:59:14.440
Well, crash and burn and take a lot of people with you.

00:59:14.440 --> 00:59:17.480
And take a lot of people with you, yeah.

00:59:17.480 --> 00:59:22.360
And so, you know, it behooves someone on the spiritual path to actually pay attention to

00:59:22.360 --> 00:59:27.280
this as a critical component of your spiritual toolbox.

00:59:27.280 --> 00:59:31.000
Actually, in Zen, I mean, there can sometimes be some confusion.

00:59:31.000 --> 00:59:36.600
talk about three levels of practice of ways regarding the Zen. The first one is the literal,

00:59:36.600 --> 00:59:40.880
which is just kind of the basic stop sign, you know, don't do this kind of thing. Second

00:59:40.880 --> 00:59:45.200
is compassionate or relative, where you take into account more of the context, because in

00:59:45.200 --> 00:59:51.120
real life, you know, it's not always clear which of the sixteen precepts should take precedence.

00:59:51.120 --> 00:59:54.880
Sometimes you can't do them all at once, so you have to weigh and think about what's going

00:59:54.880 --> 01:00:00.720
to, you know, have the best result. But then there's something called the absolute level,

01:00:00.720 --> 01:00:10.560
which is, we say that at the absolute level there's no right or wrong. And one Zen book

01:00:10.560 --> 01:00:16.120
quotes, I think, St. Augustine as "Love God and do what that wilt." That is, if you were

01:00:16.120 --> 01:00:20.520
really loving God all the time, you would be doing the right thing, right? But that's

01:00:20.520 --> 01:00:26.000
very dangerous because people delude themselves into thinking, "Oh, I'm a Zen master, so therefore

01:00:26.000 --> 01:00:29.200
or whatever I must do is right.

01:00:29.200 --> 01:00:31.800
And I've heard people say almost in that work,

01:00:31.800 --> 01:00:34.800
you know, I questioned a Zen teacher about what they did

01:00:34.800 --> 01:00:39.240
in a group with some other Zen teachers around

01:00:39.240 --> 01:00:41.200
and this teacher's first response was,

01:00:41.200 --> 01:00:43.240
"Well, it's what I do."

01:00:43.240 --> 01:00:45.500
(laughing)

01:00:45.500 --> 01:00:48.320
And then we kind of eventually talked around

01:00:48.320 --> 01:00:49.880
that maybe it wasn't quite right,

01:00:49.880 --> 01:00:54.180
but it was like, you know, my first go-to

01:00:54.180 --> 01:00:55.720
about whether this is correct or not

01:00:55.720 --> 01:00:57.760
was judging by my own behavior.

01:00:57.760 --> 01:01:04.320
Pete: Yeah, there was this fairly well-known spiritual teacher who it turned out was sleeping

01:01:04.320 --> 01:01:08.440
with a lot of his students and when it came to light, he said, "Well, I'm not doing

01:01:08.440 --> 01:01:09.440
it. God's doing it."

01:01:09.440 --> 01:01:10.440
[Laughter]

01:01:10.440 --> 01:01:17.000
Danielle: Exactly. So, this absolute level of the precept, even though it's taught,

01:01:17.000 --> 01:01:20.800
you know, it's so easily twisted that, you know, in our group where we go through the

01:01:20.800 --> 01:01:25.980
precepts, we talk about taking that, you know, very carefully and watching out for that delusion

01:01:25.980 --> 01:01:31.240
that we're, you know, we're actually in that state when we're, may very much not be.

01:01:31.240 --> 01:01:34.000
Rick Yeah. Your statement about on the level of

01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:38.600
the absolute, there's no right and wrong, well, there's also no universe on that level.

01:01:38.600 --> 01:01:39.600
Debra Yeah.

01:01:39.600 --> 01:01:41.960
Rick But once you get into the relative, there's

01:01:41.960 --> 01:01:45.160
a universe and then all the rights and wrongs and everything else come into play.

01:01:45.160 --> 01:01:47.000
Debra Yeah. You know, in the relative world, we

01:01:47.000 --> 01:01:51.680
be bumping into each other all the time, and we'd better, you know, pay attention to how

01:01:51.680 --> 01:01:52.680
we do that.

01:01:52.680 --> 01:01:53.680
Yeah.

01:01:53.680 --> 01:01:54.680
Yeah.

01:01:54.680 --> 01:02:01.020
That kind of segues us into perhaps the next point, which is misunderstanding no self.

01:02:01.020 --> 01:02:09.240
You hear a lot of talk of no self in not only Buddhist lineages, but Vedanta and so on.

01:02:09.240 --> 01:02:12.800
And some people make it the kind of like main...

01:02:12.800 --> 01:02:19.240
a guy named Richard Sylvester, who I interviewed, who wrote a book called "I Hope You Die Soon,"

01:02:19.240 --> 01:02:25.880
meaning the self is going to die. And there are teachers who, you know, insist that they

01:02:25.880 --> 01:02:30.200
don't have a self. There is no such thing. And the fact that you might perceive yourself

01:02:30.200 --> 01:02:36.960
to have one is delusional. So what is your understanding of the concept of self, everything

01:02:36.960 --> 01:02:42.320
else, if we look at it from the perspective of differentiation, your you looks at it as

01:02:42.320 --> 01:02:49.440
that in Zen we say we live both in the world of emptiness and the world of form. And so

01:02:49.440 --> 01:02:54.720
this world right now, you, the screen, you know, the bookshelf, the screen behind, this

01:02:54.720 --> 01:03:00.920
is all one universe. If we look at it from the point of view of the absolute, I'm you,

01:03:00.920 --> 01:03:04.520
you're me, I'm your bookshelf, everything else, if we look at it from the perspective

01:03:04.520 --> 01:03:12.760
differentiation. You're you, I'm me, and it's all the same universe, but it has these two sides to

01:03:12.760 --> 01:03:20.920
it. We often tend to think that we're in the world of distinct objects. Me versus you, this versus

01:03:20.920 --> 01:03:29.720
that. I give an example of the book about where we're encouraged to sit both alert and relaxed,

01:03:29.720 --> 01:03:33.880
and to a lot of people that's a contradiction. You're either tense or you're sleepy, right?

01:03:33.880 --> 01:03:36.880
So we keep on distinguishing these things.

01:03:36.880 --> 01:03:42.880
And the realization that we can describe metaphorically all sorts of ways,

01:03:42.880 --> 01:03:48.880
but only comes through with this kind of cellular level through an opening experience,

01:03:48.880 --> 01:03:51.880
which a person can only understand for themselves.

01:03:51.880 --> 01:03:57.880
That is the experience of I'm both nothing,

01:03:57.880 --> 01:04:04.120
in the sense that I'm not a distinct entity that you can pull off and separate from everything else.

01:04:04.120 --> 01:04:10.520
And yet I'm also contradictorily everything, because I'm not separate from everything else.

01:04:10.520 --> 01:04:19.240
And so there's no self in terms of no enduring entity, which actually is just

01:04:19.240 --> 01:04:24.600
embarrassingly empirical. You know, what did you have for breakfast this morning? That's part of

01:04:24.600 --> 01:04:29.160
what you are now, you know, and it's not going to be part of what you are a couple days from now,

01:04:29.160 --> 01:04:33.480
except for, you know, a couple molecules somewhere. So it's, it isn't like it's a,

01:04:33.480 --> 01:04:38.600
you know, it shouldn't be that hard to understand, but we don't, we don't usually understand it. We

01:04:38.600 --> 01:04:43.720
usually feel like there's some kind of me that's looking out through my eyes and feeling what's

01:04:43.720 --> 01:04:50.280
coming in through my skin, and this is, this is separate. So no self is understanding, and then,

01:04:50.280 --> 01:04:54.760
then death is much less scary when we understand no self in that way because

01:04:54.760 --> 01:05:00.200
and the metaphor I like is that we're waves on the ocean and just because our wave peters out

01:05:00.200 --> 01:05:04.440
doesn't mean we've were anything other than ocean. We're still ocean. We've always been ocean.

01:05:04.440 --> 01:05:12.920
We will still be ocean. Unfortunately, the misunderstanding of no self is I'm supposed

01:05:12.920 --> 01:05:19.880
to just obliterate my personality and merge with my teacher and that I think is where we get into.

01:05:19.880 --> 01:05:27.720
a great deal of trouble. Yeah, that's good. I like to think of it in terms of

01:05:27.720 --> 01:05:33.600
multidimensionality. The universe itself is multidimensional and at different

01:05:33.600 --> 01:05:38.720
levels it has different characteristics. I mean, you know, everything

01:05:38.720 --> 01:05:43.160
seems solid at this level, but you know, a physicist would tell you this is almost

01:05:43.160 --> 01:05:48.600
entirely empty space. There's really nothing material there. Yeah, it just kind of seems

01:05:48.600 --> 01:05:54.560
seems solid, but if you could sort of see on the quantum mechanical level or subatomic

01:05:54.560 --> 01:05:59.200
level you wouldn't see anything solid. And both are true, it doesn't have to be either

01:05:59.200 --> 01:06:04.960
or. It's just knowledge or reality is different at different levels of perspective.

01:06:04.960 --> 01:06:05.960
Yeah.

01:06:05.960 --> 01:06:13.120
Yeah. And the same with the self/no self thing. You've probably heard of the spiritual teacher

01:06:13.120 --> 01:06:21.120
Nisargadatta Maharaj, he was an Indian spiritual teacher, but he, one of his comments was that

01:06:21.120 --> 01:06:25.760
the ability to appreciate paradox and ambiguity is a sign of spiritual maturity.

01:06:25.760 --> 01:06:26.760
Yeah.

01:06:26.760 --> 01:06:27.760
Yeah.

01:06:27.760 --> 01:06:34.120
Because the universe is kind of paradoxical, or maybe it isn't to itself, because it, you

01:06:34.120 --> 01:06:39.440
know, it makes sense from its perspective, but from any kind of limited perspective, even

01:06:39.440 --> 01:06:44.360
on the level, you know, quantum mechanics, a photon is both a wave or a particle, depending

01:06:44.360 --> 01:06:46.760
upon whether or how it's observed.

01:06:46.760 --> 01:06:52.680
Yeah, so that's, I mean, in the book, I use two different diagrams that I mean, I have

01:06:52.680 --> 01:06:57.920
this analytical, you know, brain, this is the way I work and for people who, you know,

01:06:57.920 --> 01:07:03.000
for whom it's useful. I offer a couple of diagrams, where you know, this versus that

01:07:03.000 --> 01:07:06.800
world is like a white circle and a black circle. And they're just they're just different.

01:07:06.800 --> 01:07:08.320
Oh, the yin yang thing.

01:07:08.320 --> 01:07:12.740
And then, you know, the yin-yang is an ancient symbol of that, where it isn't that the white

01:07:12.740 --> 01:07:18.080
and black come together and make gray, just kind of some meh, mediocre thing, but they're

01:07:18.080 --> 01:07:20.380
dynamically, they're two sides of the same coin.

01:07:20.380 --> 01:07:23.160
We wouldn't know what dark is if we didn't know what light was, right?

01:07:23.160 --> 01:07:26.080
You know, they mutually define each other.

01:07:26.080 --> 01:07:28.840
And I have something called like a compass where you can put words in.

01:07:28.840 --> 01:07:33.580
So like, I mean, going back to that, that I mentioned, you know, we tend to think of

01:07:33.580 --> 01:07:41.420
being alert and being relaxed as being opposites. But if you've sat, you know, sat meditation for

01:07:41.420 --> 01:07:47.900
a long time and you've really settled in with your body and quieted your mind, you find that this is

01:07:47.900 --> 01:07:53.740
true. You can, you're not worried, you're not anxious, you're not tense, you don't have to

01:07:53.740 --> 01:07:59.420
work to try to be awake sometimes, and yet you're more alert than you've ever been. You can hear

01:07:59.420 --> 01:08:06.200
every sound and you know, feel every air particle. So this, you know, that what looks like two

01:08:06.200 --> 01:08:13.000
opposites in our normal way of thinking actually can, you know, interact in this yin yang sort

01:08:13.000 --> 01:08:14.000
of way.

01:08:14.000 --> 01:08:19.040
David Russell Restful alertness, you could call it. I think

01:08:19.040 --> 01:08:24.920
if there's a lot of residual fatigue in the in the nervous system, it can be hard for people

01:08:24.920 --> 01:08:30.600
to settle into a state of restful alertness like that because when they get restful, then they

01:08:30.600 --> 01:08:39.240
fall asleep. But the fatigue can be neutralized, it can be resolved, and so your system is fresh

01:08:39.240 --> 01:08:45.640
and can get very settled without getting sleepy. Yeah, and you know, we call it practice for a

01:08:45.640 --> 01:08:51.960
reason. It takes practice. It doesn't usually happen the first time, and it doesn't necessarily

01:08:51.960 --> 01:08:56.360
happen every time, even when you've been doing it for years. But sometimes it does happen,

01:08:56.360 --> 01:08:59.000
and sometimes you can really notice that this is a real thing.

01:08:59.000 --> 01:09:05.560
Yeah, and there's a neurophysiological component to it, as I was just kind of indicating that,

01:09:05.560 --> 01:09:10.280
you know, I mean, they've done all kinds of studies on all kinds of long-term meditators

01:09:10.280 --> 01:09:16.360
of various practice traditions, and, you know, the brain changes observably and profoundly.

01:09:19.160 --> 01:09:27.640
Okay, so second part of your book, "Why Zen Forms and Institutions Matter," and we might

01:09:27.640 --> 01:09:34.920
be repeating ourselves a little bit, but let's see how we can do here. So, you know, this section of

01:09:34.920 --> 01:09:40.200
the book, you could say, examines structural issues within Zen communities. And we keep saying Zen,

01:09:40.200 --> 01:09:45.560
because that's your, that's your tradition, but almost everything we're talking about here, you

01:09:45.560 --> 01:09:49.680
you could apply to almost any other spiritual group.

01:09:49.680 --> 01:09:50.520
- Yeah, I think a lot of it--

01:09:50.520 --> 01:09:53.480
- From the Mormons to the Hare Krishnas or whatever.

01:09:53.480 --> 01:09:56.460
I didn't mean to lump you in

01:09:56.460 --> 01:09:58.420
with the Mormons and the Hare Krishnas.

01:09:58.420 --> 01:09:59.960
(laughing)

01:09:59.960 --> 01:10:04.960
But, okay, so there's an inherent power imbalance

01:10:04.960 --> 01:10:07.960
once one becomes a teacher.

01:10:07.960 --> 01:10:09.760
We've already talked about that.

01:10:09.760 --> 01:10:12.540
And some people try to ameliorate that

01:10:12.540 --> 01:10:17.540
by not even arranging the seating on a dais,

01:10:17.540 --> 01:10:20.420
but just like having everybody sit in a circle or something.

01:10:20.420 --> 01:10:25.060
So it illustrates, we're all kind of on the same level.

01:10:25.060 --> 01:10:30.060
- I mean, I think there is a false duality

01:10:30.060 --> 01:10:33.900
in either hierarchy or no hierarchy,

01:10:33.900 --> 01:10:36.580
you know, that those are only choices.

01:10:36.580 --> 01:10:41.580
Because the fact is that people tend to differ in power

01:10:41.580 --> 01:10:46.540
tend to differ in power, even sometimes for trivial reasons. Someone with a louder voice or taller or

01:10:46.540 --> 01:10:52.940
something like that may have more power in a group. And when you're talking about Zen teaching, and

01:10:52.940 --> 01:10:56.300
whether it's a transmitted teacher or just somebody who's been around longer,

01:10:56.300 --> 01:11:02.300
you know, people will tend to look up to them and ask them questions, right? And may even trust them

01:11:02.300 --> 01:11:11.100
with, you know, some personal details in a request of wanting to get advice. So it isn't that the

01:11:11.100 --> 01:11:17.060
the power differential goes away when you sit in a circle. You can lessen it. But if you

01:11:17.060 --> 01:11:22.140
have the impression that you've now erased it, I think you just fall into another danger.

01:11:22.140 --> 01:11:29.060
And the way I got thinking about this actually came from my work in economics. I said I was

01:11:29.060 --> 01:11:38.900
doing feminist economics, and one of the kinds of standard economics viewpoint of work is

01:11:38.900 --> 01:11:43.780
that you do it for the money. You exchange your labor power, you get a paycheck, and

01:11:43.780 --> 01:11:49.660
then you go and consume, and the consumption is where you get the joy from it, whatever.

01:11:49.660 --> 01:11:54.660
If you look at the kind of work that women have traditionally done, it's been mostly

01:11:54.660 --> 01:12:00.860
taking care of people, taking care of kids, taking care of the sick, educating the young,

01:12:00.860 --> 01:12:08.100
these traditional jobs. And in those jobs, the women were expected to have some emotional

01:12:08.100 --> 01:12:13.380
involvement, some actual feelings of care. Okay, now usually in these situations they also have

01:12:13.380 --> 01:12:17.860
more power than the person they're caring for, the patient in the hospital bed or the child.

01:12:17.860 --> 01:12:22.420
If we think that power differentials are always bad,

01:12:22.420 --> 01:12:27.380
what do we do? Tell the mom just let her kid run on the street because, you know, they're just buddies?

01:12:27.380 --> 01:12:33.860
No, I mean you want some hierarchy of power in that case. You want the mom to be able to,

01:12:33.860 --> 01:12:38.980
you know, keep the kid from running in the street. But you don't want the mom to beat on the kid,

01:12:38.980 --> 01:12:48.100
you know, so you don't want a domination kind of model. So you want it to make the power

01:12:48.100 --> 01:12:57.700
be a power that is enabling and empowering for the person with less power. And so this is,

01:12:58.260 --> 01:13:02.260
I called it asymmetric mutuality and kind of an academic term.

01:13:02.260 --> 01:13:08.500
But can we use power for the sake of the people that want something from us?

01:13:08.500 --> 01:13:12.900
And this is, there's a good old-fashioned word called fiduciary.

01:13:12.900 --> 01:13:17.780
People think of it as just pertaining to money, but a fiduciary relationship is a

01:13:17.780 --> 01:13:21.380
relationship of faithfulness. It's a relationship where someone trusts you for something.

01:13:21.380 --> 01:13:27.380
You know, when I take my car to the mechanic, they're the expert and I'm the dumby who could

01:13:27.380 --> 01:13:33.060
be taken advantage of, right? And when I'm a Zen teacher, people are looking at me, to me as the

01:13:33.060 --> 01:13:40.820
expert, and do I cheat, you know, do I cheat the student, or do I try to make all of my act, or do

01:13:40.820 --> 01:13:45.700
I take advantage of the student in some way, or do I try to make all of my interactions for the benefit

01:13:45.700 --> 01:13:52.820
of that student? And I, you know, I think hierarchy doesn't have to, I mean, Zen has this hugely

01:13:52.820 --> 01:13:58.340
hierarchical lineage construct, which I think accentuates the hierarchy beyond where it

01:13:58.340 --> 01:14:05.220
needs to be. But at the same time, I don't think trying to pretend that we're all equal

01:14:05.220 --> 01:14:06.220
works either.

01:14:06.220 --> 01:14:10.580
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, you were an economics professor and you didn't show

01:14:10.580 --> 01:14:14.220
up at the classroom and say, "Who wants to teach the class today?" or "Who would

01:14:14.220 --> 01:14:17.500
like to grade all the papers?" Something like that.

01:14:17.500 --> 01:14:22.100
Yeah, yeah. I tried to teach for the benefit of the students, but yeah, I was the teacher

01:14:22.100 --> 01:14:27.700
And that's, you know, that's how I actually feel that most Zen spiritual teachers would

01:14:27.700 --> 01:14:31.860
be better off considering themselves to be something like math teachers.

01:14:31.860 --> 01:14:36.860
You know, people with more expertise in some kind of area, but wouldn't expect the math

01:14:36.860 --> 01:14:40.900
teacher to also be the principal in the school board, right?

01:14:40.900 --> 01:14:46.740
And a lot of spiritual teachers set themselves up as the pinnacle of a hierarchy in which

01:14:46.740 --> 01:14:48.740
they're in charge, and that's unhealthy.

01:14:48.740 --> 01:14:49.740
unhealthy.

01:14:49.740 --> 01:14:56.660
Yeah, so maybe one way of putting it is, you know, having some kind of authority as a teacher

01:14:56.660 --> 01:15:07.780
or, you know, in academia or in Zen or whatever, it does endow you with certain, I don't want

01:15:07.780 --> 01:15:08.780
to say power, but...

01:15:08.780 --> 01:15:09.780
It is power.

01:15:09.780 --> 01:15:10.780
I guess it is.

01:15:10.780 --> 01:15:14.180
I think you can name it as power, but then notice that power doesn't necessarily have

01:15:14.180 --> 01:15:15.180
to be...

01:15:15.180 --> 01:15:22.300
power as oppressive, okay? But there's also, I mean, you can use power against people,

01:15:22.300 --> 01:15:27.300
but we can also use power for people. We can have the power to heal. We can have the power

01:15:27.300 --> 01:15:28.780
to do things.

01:15:28.780 --> 01:15:37.660
Right. But then with that comes certain obligations and limitations and responsibilities. You're

01:15:37.660 --> 01:15:41.220
not empowered to do whatever the heck you want with your students.

01:15:41.220 --> 01:15:42.220
No. No.

01:15:42.220 --> 01:15:46.620
And that's where, you know, many teachers have gone wrong.

01:15:46.620 --> 01:15:50.620
You know, they somehow feel like, well, I'm entitled to,

01:15:50.620 --> 01:15:54.320
or, you know, this is, this will be for the students benefit

01:15:54.320 --> 01:15:56.720
if I sleep with them or whatever.

01:15:56.720 --> 01:15:58.320
They get it all twisted around.

01:15:58.320 --> 01:15:59.220
Yeah.

01:15:59.220 --> 01:16:02.520
So just, there aren't the proper boundaries there.

01:16:02.520 --> 01:16:02.920
Right.

01:16:02.920 --> 01:16:07.800
And again, I think there's a syndrome of authority going to

01:16:07.800 --> 01:16:08.520
one's head.

01:16:08.520 --> 01:16:09.520
Yeah, exactly.

01:16:09.520 --> 01:16:18.000
know, it's, I mean, back when I was in my 20s, I was briefly for a short time, one of three directors

01:16:18.000 --> 01:16:24.800
of a large facility in upstate New York, the TM movement had, and as soon as I was made a director,

01:16:24.800 --> 01:16:30.240
and the other two guys, all of a sudden, we felt like we deserved ice cream with every meal,

01:16:30.240 --> 01:16:36.320
or, you know, special treatment in some way, a nicer room, you know, all kinds of things. It just,

01:16:36.320 --> 01:16:41.200
you know, go see your head. Yeah, I mean just little things like yeah, sashin who gets the

01:16:41.200 --> 01:16:46.560
who gets the nicer room. Irene is laughing over here. Who gets the nicer room at a retreat and yeah, no I

01:16:46.560 --> 01:16:51.920
notice all of those those things, yeah. She's saying ice cream is pretty innocent

01:16:51.920 --> 01:16:57.600
compared to some of the obese. That's true. If only it were ice cream. If only it were ice cream, we could

01:16:57.600 --> 01:17:02.640
give all the teachers ice cream and then not have any other problems. Except for obese teachers.

01:17:03.600 --> 01:17:04.100
Yeah.

01:17:04.100 --> 01:17:12.040
Now, there's a whole--

01:17:12.040 --> 01:17:14.880
one more point maybe before we--

01:17:14.880 --> 01:17:15.640
transference.

01:17:15.640 --> 01:17:16.840
Let's talk about transference.

01:17:16.840 --> 01:17:18.360
It's a psychological term, but you

01:17:18.360 --> 01:17:23.440
use it in your book, projecting feelings onto the teacher.

01:17:23.440 --> 01:17:27.880
This is an important aspect of that power.

01:17:27.880 --> 01:17:32.920
I mean, the student is coming to you for something.

01:17:32.920 --> 01:17:40.840
And I mean Robert Aiken, who is a Zen teacher, talked about teachers playing an archetypal role,

01:17:40.840 --> 01:17:46.520
you know, in their students' minds. And so this teacher-student relationship can get

01:17:46.520 --> 01:17:52.840
pulled into all sorts of sort of unfinished psychological projects.

01:17:52.840 --> 01:18:01.160
And very frequently, you know, a student's love for the Dharma will get mistaken for as a love for

01:18:01.160 --> 01:18:08.360
the teacher as a person, you know, or a romantic love, and then the teachers can let that go to

01:18:08.360 --> 01:18:11.880
their head and think the teacher, you know, the student actually loves them rather than

01:18:11.880 --> 01:18:15.480
notice that it's the dharma that they love and they're just deflecting it,

01:18:15.480 --> 01:18:24.520
and teachers should know better, right? And there's also, I mean, one of the cases I saw

01:18:24.520 --> 01:18:33.560
was a case of the teacher reversing roles, a very caring, loving, empathetic student,

01:18:33.560 --> 01:18:40.440
and starts saying, "My marriage isn't going very well, and you're such a great

01:18:40.440 --> 01:18:47.240
listener. Can I confide in you about this?" Absolutely not, from a boundary point of

01:18:47.240 --> 01:18:52.680
view, should they have been doing that. But you get, "Will you care for me? Can I care for you?"

01:18:53.320 --> 01:18:58.360
all sorts of... I mean, so if you as... somebody came to you as a teacher and said that,

01:18:58.360 --> 01:19:03.880
would you just say, "Well, that's not my role. I'm not qualified to do that."

01:19:03.880 --> 01:19:07.720
No, this was the teacher asking the student to listen to their...

01:19:07.720 --> 01:19:10.840
Oh, I see. I thought you were saying a student was saying... Well, either way,

01:19:10.840 --> 01:19:12.920
it seems like they shouldn't have that conversation.

01:19:12.920 --> 01:19:17.480
Yeah, I mean, the students can ask too much of the teachers, but with the teachers turn the tables,

01:19:17.480 --> 01:19:21.480
you know, like that on the student, it was, you know, it was grooming, you know,

01:19:21.480 --> 01:19:28.600
trying to get the student to take care of them. So, and I think this is one of the things that

01:19:28.600 --> 01:19:35.480
teachers need to understand to avoid some of that ego inflation is, you know, when this admiration

01:19:35.480 --> 01:19:43.400
comes, you know, it is coming from, you know, the student looking for something. It is a projection

01:19:43.400 --> 01:19:50.040
on you of something going on with them. They're not in love with you, you know. It's not that you

01:19:50.040 --> 01:19:53.600
you have suddenly turned into this attractive person, right?

01:19:53.600 --> 01:19:58.600
And not understanding that there's projection going,

01:19:58.600 --> 01:20:01.640
transference going on and counter transference,

01:20:01.640 --> 01:20:03.880
as the teacher's own emotional needs

01:20:03.880 --> 01:20:07.000
get reflected onto the student.

01:20:07.000 --> 01:20:09.160
I think there needs to be a lot more

01:20:09.160 --> 01:20:11.360
consciousness about that.

01:20:11.360 --> 01:20:14.720
And you don't need a PhD in psychology.

01:20:14.720 --> 01:20:16.360
And in fact, I've known some people with PhDs

01:20:16.360 --> 01:20:18.120
in psychologies that in the real world

01:20:18.120 --> 01:20:23.880
don't seem to get this.

01:20:23.880 --> 01:20:24.880
Just want to make a quick comment.

01:20:24.880 --> 01:20:28.620
I forgot to mention this at the beginning, but if those listening to the live version

01:20:28.620 --> 01:20:32.980
of this interview, if you'd like to ask a question, look in the description field underneath

01:20:32.980 --> 01:20:37.160
the video, and there's a link to a page through which you can submit your question.

01:20:37.160 --> 01:20:41.840
I do want to throw in, before we run out of time, that one of the things that has been

01:20:41.840 --> 01:20:48.000
most distressing for me to observe is the level of institutional betrayal.

01:20:48.000 --> 01:20:53.760
That is, we know that individual teachers can misbehave, okay, and then what?

01:20:53.760 --> 01:20:59.440
Then institutions try to cover up for them. And then institutions try to cover up for them.

01:20:59.440 --> 01:21:03.680
And teachers... The Catholic Church being a huge example. The Catholic Church being a huge example,

01:21:03.680 --> 01:21:09.440
and I've seen some of that same dynamic going on in Zen. I read a lot of the research, it turns out

01:21:09.440 --> 01:21:17.440
that like therapists very rarely turn in other therapists that they know are engaging misconduct.

01:21:17.440 --> 01:21:23.280
There's a whole kind of in-group. Happens in the military. Yeah. I mean, sexual abuse and then the

01:21:23.280 --> 01:21:29.840
higher-ups, you know, they don't really prosecute the people who should be prosecuted and so on.

01:21:29.840 --> 01:21:36.880
And, you know, supposedly, yeah, and the police forces, you know, the panels that are supposed

01:21:36.880 --> 01:21:41.920
to look at misconduct are made up of other police. So this kind of self-policing thing that these

01:21:41.920 --> 01:21:46.320
groups who supposedly have high ideals, you know, the Roman Catholic Church is supposed to have

01:21:46.320 --> 01:21:53.920
spirituality, Zen teachers groups, you know, police supposed to be about safety and the rest,

01:21:53.920 --> 01:21:59.680
and people don't self-police very well. This is why we have lawsuits and why we have, you know,

01:21:59.680 --> 01:22:06.160
criminal charges going on. And, you know, it's just really disturbing in a religious group,

01:22:06.160 --> 01:22:16.080
because you kind of hope that they would do better. And the institutional behavior, there's a good book

01:22:16.080 --> 01:22:23.680
out on trauma, which I cite in the book, and again, Judith Herman, I think, the author on trauma,

01:22:23.680 --> 01:22:32.160
that with victims of things like sexual misconduct want is not like a restored relationship with the

01:22:32.160 --> 01:22:36.880
teacher. That's kind of the goal of a mediation sort of interpersonal approach. That's not it at all.

01:22:36.880 --> 01:22:43.360
They want to be supported by the community. They don't necessarily even want the perpetrator

01:22:43.360 --> 01:22:50.480
punished so much as they just want to know that this was really not okay and that the community

01:22:50.480 --> 01:22:57.520
backs them up and holds them in this. And when the communities, the sanghas, the boards, the other

01:22:57.520 --> 01:23:03.600
teachers just kind of turn their back and try to ignore it and brush it under the rug.

01:23:03.600 --> 01:23:06.620
It's hugely, hugely painful.

01:23:06.620 --> 01:23:09.580
I can think of two reasons, and maybe you can think of more.

01:23:09.580 --> 01:23:14.460
One is one you just mentioned, which is that, you know, there's kind of a good boy, buddies

01:23:14.460 --> 01:23:20.620
kind of thing going on in the military or the police department or a spiritual community

01:23:20.620 --> 01:23:23.680
where you just don't rat on your buddies.

01:23:23.680 --> 01:23:28.920
And another is maybe, and this is very short-sighted, you don't want the institution to look bad.

01:23:28.920 --> 01:23:29.920
Exactly.

01:23:29.920 --> 01:23:30.920
So you cover it up.

01:23:30.920 --> 01:23:35.840
I mean, look, you know, look at all the cover-ups in the Catholic Church and priests, you know,

01:23:35.840 --> 01:23:39.640
pedophile priests being transferred to other parishes and things like that, thinking that

01:23:39.640 --> 01:23:41.720
the problem was going to go away.

01:23:41.720 --> 01:23:44.520
But it's made the Catholic Church look terrible.

01:23:44.520 --> 01:23:50.280
I mean, people have left in Ireland, for instance, is such a Catholic country, it's diminished

01:23:50.280 --> 01:23:53.440
dramatically in its participation.

01:23:53.440 --> 01:23:58.180
So it backfires if you think you're saving your organization by hiding this stuff rather

01:23:58.180 --> 01:23:59.760
than dealing with it.

01:23:59.760 --> 01:24:00.760
Yeah.

01:24:00.760 --> 01:24:09.800
But yet, it's easy if the people being harmed are weak and have little voice, and the people

01:24:09.800 --> 01:24:12.640
doing the harm are powerful.

01:24:12.640 --> 01:24:18.000
It's easy to, you know, the easy way, the shortcut way is to ignore it and brush it

01:24:18.000 --> 01:24:25.000
And I have personally witnessed that and I personally witnessed a whole lot of shooting the messenger.

01:24:25.000 --> 01:24:28.000
Like you said, I named some names in the book.

01:24:28.000 --> 01:24:36.000
Yeah, I mean, everybody whose name I named in the book, in a negative way, who I knew,

01:24:36.000 --> 01:24:41.000
I sent a copy of the manuscript. I said, you know, "Here's what I'm going to say."

01:24:41.000 --> 01:24:46.000
So I was not at all trying to be sneaky about it.

01:24:46.000 --> 01:24:49.360
ones are just kind of matters of public record. I don't really know the people. I just know that

01:24:49.360 --> 01:24:55.360
this is, you know, what a group did an investigation and made this decision. Or there's, there's,

01:24:55.360 --> 01:24:59.680
you know, public records out there of, you know, incredible abuses.

01:24:59.680 --> 01:25:04.160
And sometimes it's not just a matter of shooting the messenger. It's a matter of shooting the

01:25:04.160 --> 01:25:08.400
victim. You know, like, you know, saying, Oh, this person is crazy. They're a liar.

01:25:08.400 --> 01:25:09.280
All the time.

01:25:09.280 --> 01:25:14.480
This didn't happen. You know, how dare they say they're just trying to drag me down because I'm

01:25:14.480 --> 01:25:16.600
I'm a prominent person, blah, blah, blah.

01:25:16.600 --> 01:25:20.400
- Well, the same person who coined the term

01:25:20.400 --> 01:25:24.280
about institutional, the term is institutional behavior

01:25:24.280 --> 01:25:28.280
has this great acronym, DARVO, D-A-R-V-O.

01:25:28.280 --> 01:25:29.520
- Yeah, I was talking about that.

01:25:29.520 --> 01:25:32.660
- Deny, attack, reverse, victim, and offender.

01:25:32.660 --> 01:25:37.240
And for anybody who's ever thinking about standing up

01:25:37.240 --> 01:25:40.480
to a spiritual authority about misconduct,

01:25:40.480 --> 01:25:43.640
this is really helpful to know, 'cause it'll happen

01:25:43.640 --> 01:25:45.480
and you'll be totally confused by it.

01:25:45.480 --> 01:25:47.520
And it happens all the time.

01:25:47.520 --> 01:25:49.540
They deny or minimize.

01:25:49.540 --> 01:25:53.600
In some cases that I've experienced,

01:25:53.600 --> 01:25:54.600
it was outright denial.

01:25:54.600 --> 01:25:57.240
In other cases, it was, yeah, I made a mistake.

01:25:57.240 --> 01:25:59.800
I'm sorry, life should go on.

01:25:59.800 --> 01:26:01.360
Let's just pick up where we left off,

01:26:01.360 --> 01:26:02.640
minimizing the whole thing.

01:26:02.640 --> 01:26:07.120
So deny, attack, that is, this person is crazy.

01:26:07.120 --> 01:26:09.060
They're insufficiently spiritual.

01:26:09.060 --> 01:26:12.000
I've met with them in Dokusan.

01:26:12.000 --> 01:26:16.000
I know they're a little, you know, that's one-on-one interviews, I know they're a little unstable.

01:26:16.000 --> 01:26:21.000
Yeah, that they're liars, you know, you can just attack all sorts of ways.

01:26:21.000 --> 01:26:23.000
And then reverse victim and offender.

01:26:23.000 --> 01:26:28.000
You know, "Oh, poor me, having to put up with this kind of, you know, stuff."

01:26:28.000 --> 01:26:36.000
Right? Or, you know, "They're being so harsh on me, you know, in trying to, you know, get me to be accountable."

01:26:36.000 --> 01:26:41.000
You're trying to question me, you must, you know, that's really an insult to me.

01:26:41.000 --> 01:26:48.000
That you're thinking of doing some kind of investigation of my conduct. You're insulting me.

01:26:48.000 --> 01:26:55.000
Even in case, you want to have a private conversation about abuses.

01:26:55.000 --> 01:26:59.000
Oh, that is just such a terrible insult that you would want to talk to me about that.

01:26:59.000 --> 01:27:06.000
All this stuff sounds so familiar to me. I've just witnessed and heard about this kind of thing for so many years now.

01:27:06.000 --> 01:27:11.000
That's why we started that organization, just to have some contribution.

01:27:11.000 --> 01:27:16.000
Actually, I started, and a few other people started an organization, not for the teachers.

01:27:16.000 --> 01:27:22.000
And this one is kind of Zen-specific, but I hope it works, and I hope it's a model that could be picked up.

01:27:22.000 --> 01:27:27.000
But there's a real power imbalance between teachers and students, just for the reasons we've talked about.

01:27:27.000 --> 01:27:32.920
about. There's also a power imbalance in terms of knowing and dealing with abuses, because

01:27:32.920 --> 01:27:36.880
the teachers have formed networks among each other, you know, with each other. And the

01:27:36.880 --> 01:27:43.600
teachers and kind of the senior student grapevine knows a lot more about abuses than ever gets,

01:27:43.600 --> 01:27:48.320
than I can put in the book, because, you know, a lot of it is not documented, but it's out

01:27:48.320 --> 01:27:54.200
there. Students, meanwhile, naively wander into these very dangerous sanghas with no warning,

01:27:54.200 --> 01:28:04.200
So I started something called the Zen Learners Association, which anyone who considers themselves to be an ongoing Zen learner is welcome to join.

01:28:04.200 --> 01:28:06.200
That includes teachers as well as students.

01:28:06.200 --> 01:28:17.200
But with the primary goal of making a cross-Sangha network for students to also share their ideas about Zen practice, future of Zen practice,

01:28:17.200 --> 01:28:20.800
warning about what teachers or sanghas to avoid,

01:28:20.800 --> 01:28:22.080
as well as practical stuff.

01:28:22.080 --> 01:28:24.120
Where do I get this kind of gear?

01:28:24.120 --> 01:28:26.920
What's a good book to study for that?

01:28:26.920 --> 01:28:27.440
But that's--

01:28:27.440 --> 01:28:28.320
I think that's great.

01:28:28.320 --> 01:28:31.880
--trying to even this power imbalance a bit.

01:28:31.880 --> 01:28:35.200
Yeah, as I said earlier, I think that it's really important

01:28:35.200 --> 01:28:39.240
that students be more empowered and not

01:28:39.240 --> 01:28:45.800
be intimidated or timid and feel like they're so new.

01:28:45.800 --> 01:28:46.800
What do they know?

01:28:46.800 --> 01:28:53.640
Yeah, it's kind of a dicey point here because on the one hand, it's absolutely the teacher's

01:28:53.640 --> 01:28:58.360
responsibility to hold the boundaries and make the relationship work.

01:28:58.360 --> 01:29:02.520
On the other, and so it's not, when a student becomes abused, it's not in any sense their

01:29:02.520 --> 01:29:06.400
fault for having become vulnerable.

01:29:06.400 --> 01:29:11.520
But if you want to protect yourself, you know, keep your eyes open and, you know, watch for

01:29:11.520 --> 01:29:14.840
some of these things and try not to be overly vulnerable.

01:29:14.840 --> 01:29:24.040
Yeah, yeah, good point. I mean, there's even today, I mean, there are so many strange cults

01:29:24.040 --> 01:29:28.480
in this world, where, you know, the stuff we're talking about here is quite mild by

01:29:28.480 --> 01:29:31.240
comparison to what happens in some of these things.

01:29:31.240 --> 01:29:34.520
Yeah, no, but no Zen teachers ask people to drink the Kool-Aid or, you know.

01:29:34.520 --> 01:29:39.700
Yeah, right, which everybody, in case you, you know, Jim Jones, Jonestown, where people

01:29:39.700 --> 01:29:43.760
literally drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide, that's where that expression came from, for

01:29:43.760 --> 01:29:45.760
those of you who aren't old enough to remember it.

01:29:45.760 --> 01:29:47.760
But, um...

01:29:47.760 --> 01:29:49.760
Oh, I mean, the other thing I

01:29:49.760 --> 01:29:52.760
didn't quite get, we were talking about cultishness earlier.

01:29:52.760 --> 01:29:57.760
Research on cults is that it's most often very idealistic people

01:29:57.760 --> 01:29:59.760
who want to change the world.

01:29:59.760 --> 01:30:01.760
They get drawn to cults.

01:30:01.760 --> 01:30:03.760
Jim Jones attracted a lot of people

01:30:03.760 --> 01:30:05.760
originally to the church in San Francisco

01:30:05.760 --> 01:30:09.760
because of preaching about racial justice

01:30:09.760 --> 01:30:10.760
and this sort of thing.

01:30:10.760 --> 01:30:14.160
including some prominent politicians who thought he was a great guy

01:30:14.160 --> 01:30:19.760
Yeah, yeah, got all sorts of honors and he was, you know, he taught a lot of good things, he inspired people to do

01:30:19.760 --> 01:30:25.960
good things and, you know, overstepped his knowledge and authority in all sorts of ways and ended up

01:30:25.960 --> 01:30:28.760
leading these people to mad... and they gave their children

01:30:28.760 --> 01:30:32.160
finite life to it, just unimaginable stuff.

01:30:32.160 --> 01:30:37.560
And if you didn't take the Kool-Aid, there were guys encircling the compound with machine guns who would

01:30:37.560 --> 01:30:39.560
Yeah, take care of it for you.

01:30:39.560 --> 01:30:43.920
So, I mean, the idea that it's only, you know, people who are kind of, you know, loners that

01:30:43.920 --> 01:30:45.320
might be susceptible to cults.

01:30:45.320 --> 01:30:50.520
That's often very intelligent people and people with the best intentions.

01:30:50.520 --> 01:30:57.320
So you really have to take a look at, you know, how they treat dissent in particular.

01:30:57.320 --> 01:30:58.360
Yeah.

01:30:58.360 --> 01:31:04.200
And Jim Jones reminds me of a point, which is that you don't flip overnight from being

01:31:04.200 --> 01:31:10.440
a pretty, you know, positive influence and saying and doing good things to being a total

01:31:10.440 --> 01:31:16.200
lunatic. It happens incrementally. And I don't think this is a true thing that but there's

01:31:16.200 --> 01:31:22.160
that alleg that metaphor of the frog in slowly heating water, who won't jump out because

01:31:22.160 --> 01:31:26.160
he doesn't notice that it's getting hot versus a frog who would jump out of boiling water,

01:31:26.160 --> 01:31:28.560
I would never throw a frog in boiling water. But

01:31:28.560 --> 01:31:34.320
I use a metaphor in the book that somebody else put together about a cart very slowly going

01:31:34.320 --> 01:31:38.080
up a hill, so you think looking out the window that the ground is level.

01:31:38.080 --> 01:31:41.520
You don't realize you've climbed until it starts to go down, you know, just a gradual

01:31:41.520 --> 01:31:42.520
thing.

01:31:42.520 --> 01:31:50.800
Yeah, so the danger in that is that if you're in a group like that, you don't see the changes

01:31:50.800 --> 01:31:54.040
because they're so incremental, they're so gradual.

01:31:54.040 --> 01:31:57.800
And you know, if somebody comes from the outside, comes in, they might say, "Holy mackerel,

01:31:57.800 --> 01:32:01.920
is a really weird cult you're in here, but it seems normal to you because it changed

01:32:01.920 --> 01:32:04.320
so gradually and you were in the middle of it.

01:32:04.320 --> 01:32:09.720
Yeah, yeah, there's this very subtle... actually, I mean, the interesting thing when I was reading

01:32:09.720 --> 01:32:14.560
about authoritarian... people don't use the word cult so much anymore, but authoritarian

01:32:14.560 --> 01:32:21.280
or charismatic groups, you know, they attract, you know, intelligent, well-intentioned people.

01:32:21.280 --> 01:32:28.520
And then this thought control is very gradual, and it unfortunately, you know, or parallels

01:32:28.520 --> 01:32:34.000
a lot of the things that we actually do in Zen in terms of sort of uniformity of movement,

01:32:34.000 --> 01:32:38.160
chanting together, using words in unusual ways.

01:32:38.160 --> 01:32:40.120
Some of these things are also done in cults.

01:32:40.120 --> 01:32:46.040
You use words in unusual ways because you're twisting them to, you know, do bizarre things.

01:32:46.040 --> 01:32:50.880
if you've ever read any like Dogon in Zen, you know, or looked at Koans, you know, what

01:32:50.880 --> 01:32:56.240
have you got? You've got words being used in unusual ways. So you can't tell just from

01:32:56.240 --> 01:33:02.880
sort of the forms or the outside. You really have to look at, you know, how is, you know,

01:33:02.880 --> 01:33:10.280
is the authority at a level that's appropriate, and are people being treated with respect as,

01:33:10.280 --> 01:33:16.520
know, people with their own minds, or are they being asked to submit to some top authority?

01:33:16.520 --> 01:33:21.980
Yeah. So, as with a lot of the things we're discussing, there could be a perfectly benign

01:33:21.980 --> 01:33:28.720
form of many different things that are healthy and normal and a little unusual, perhaps, but

01:33:28.720 --> 01:33:36.480
not a problem. And then there could be kind of the dark side of that same principle. You

01:33:36.480 --> 01:33:40.320
know, like, for instance, I don't know, just, you know, you

01:33:40.320 --> 01:33:43.360
don't just completely do whatever the heck you want. If

01:33:43.360 --> 01:33:46.680
you're in a group, there's a certain authority structure, and

01:33:46.680 --> 01:33:49.360
you're expected to dress a certain way or behave a certain

01:33:49.360 --> 01:33:52.840
way, and go along with the group to a certain extent. But then

01:33:52.840 --> 01:33:56.320
the dark side of that would be some kind of mind control blind,

01:33:56.320 --> 01:33:59.480
you know, the Reverend sung young moon, you know, marrying

01:33:59.480 --> 01:34:02.560
700 people want to have never met each other, things like

01:34:02.560 --> 01:34:04.320
that. Yeah, yeah.

01:34:04.400 --> 01:34:09.460
I mean, we say we have a bunch of forms in Soto Zen to make kind of a feeling of harmony

01:34:09.460 --> 01:34:10.460
in the Sangha.

01:34:10.460 --> 01:34:15.940
But yeah, I mean, walking in step and this kind of thing is also can be a form of thought

01:34:15.940 --> 01:34:16.940
control.

01:34:16.940 --> 01:34:19.860
So, yeah, interesting.

01:34:19.860 --> 01:34:27.500
I suppose one overarching point to make is that it's always good to exercise discernment

01:34:27.500 --> 01:34:29.860
and discrimination.

01:34:29.860 --> 01:34:32.300
You don't want to be a blind follower.

01:34:32.300 --> 01:34:38.260
You don't want to be a total rebel who doesn't agree with anything or cooperate with anything.

01:34:38.260 --> 01:34:43.000
So you can go along with stuff, but you just want to keep your discernment sharp and continue

01:34:43.000 --> 01:34:44.000
to hone it.

01:34:44.000 --> 01:34:45.000
Yeah.

01:34:45.000 --> 01:34:46.000
Yeah.

01:34:46.000 --> 01:34:48.660
I mean, I know you talked with Mariana Kaplan.

01:34:48.660 --> 01:34:49.660
Eyes wide open.

01:34:49.660 --> 01:34:50.660
Right.

01:34:50.660 --> 01:34:51.660
Yeah.

01:34:51.660 --> 01:34:59.020
I think coming into any spiritual practice, open hearts are required and open eyes are

01:34:59.020 --> 01:35:01.540
required.

01:35:01.540 --> 01:35:05.520
It's never, I mean, I went into Zen practice initially thinking, you know, I can just kind

01:35:05.520 --> 01:35:09.600
of get on this thing and at some point it'll just be on rails and it'll carry itself, right?

01:35:09.600 --> 01:35:13.080
You know, and I don't have to think too hard or, it doesn't work that way.

01:35:13.080 --> 01:35:18.400
This discernment and this waking up is every moment or it's not at all, right?

01:35:18.400 --> 01:35:19.460
Yeah.

01:35:19.460 --> 01:35:26.080
Some traditions, particularly Vedanta, say that ultimately the finest level of discernment

01:35:26.080 --> 01:35:31.280
is that which kind of gets you over the barrier from ignorance

01:35:31.280 --> 01:35:32.360
to enlightenment.

01:35:32.360 --> 01:35:34.840
There's just the subtlest, subtlest intellect

01:35:34.840 --> 01:35:38.360
has been developed through practice and purification

01:35:38.360 --> 01:35:42.360
and focusing on knowledge.

01:35:42.360 --> 01:35:45.280
And that's kind of the thing that kind of pushes you

01:35:45.280 --> 01:35:47.240
over the edge.

01:35:47.240 --> 01:35:49.960
Well, I mean, I think in sort of practical terms,

01:35:49.960 --> 01:35:51.760
if you're checking out a sangha, some things

01:35:51.760 --> 01:35:53.200
like--

01:35:53.200 --> 01:35:56.040
more practical directives like follow the money.

01:35:56.040 --> 01:35:57.040
Yeah, very good.

01:35:57.040 --> 01:35:58.240
Can be helpful in discerning.

01:35:58.240 --> 01:36:03.080
If they're raising money for a project in the inner city,

01:36:03.080 --> 01:36:06.400
but you notice the teacher's driving a Rolls Royce--

01:36:06.400 --> 01:36:09.520
Or 97 Rolls Royces.

01:36:09.520 --> 01:36:13.160
You might want to exercise your discernment.

01:36:13.160 --> 01:36:13.880
Good point.

01:36:13.880 --> 01:36:20.440
Yeah, there's Marianne's book, Eyes Wide Open.

01:36:20.440 --> 01:36:21.160
That's a good one.

01:36:21.160 --> 01:36:24.000
She also wrote one called--

01:36:24.000 --> 01:36:25.000
Halfway Up the Mountain.

01:36:25.000 --> 01:36:29.240
error, yeah, halfway up the mountain, the error of premature claims to awakening.

01:36:29.240 --> 01:36:32.120
Debra Yeah. And I'm not sure that the

01:36:32.120 --> 01:36:38.520
phrasing of that sometimes a little bit, that the, to me, it's, I would phrase it as the delusion of

01:36:38.520 --> 01:36:44.600
thinking that enlightenment is like one and done. That it's permanent, that you can, you know, it's

01:36:44.600 --> 01:36:50.840
not something that can, you know, that you backslide on and happens, you know, have to do.

01:36:50.840 --> 01:36:56.520
Do you think there is such a thing as enlightenment in the sense of some kind of terminus point,

01:36:56.520 --> 01:37:03.320
some final realization beyond which you cannot grow any further in the spiritual sense?

01:37:03.320 --> 01:37:08.560
I mean, I don't do a lot of conjecturing about, like, you know, other realms or something like

01:37:08.560 --> 01:37:13.440
that. That's just where I say, "Heck if I know," you know. But I think among human beings,

01:37:13.440 --> 01:37:22.000
my sense is no. That every human being has so many, carries so much karma in a spiritual

01:37:22.000 --> 01:37:27.360
sense or just habits and conditioning. And not only even just our own conditioning from

01:37:27.360 --> 01:37:32.080
childhood or psychology or whatever, but all of our cultural conditioning, all of the racial

01:37:32.080 --> 01:37:41.840
and ecological and everything else that influences us, that we're never... I don't think, I don't

01:37:41.840 --> 01:37:52.080
if it's humanly possible to have our eyes open in all directions at once.

01:37:52.080 --> 01:37:58.360
It just might be too much for human wetware and bodies to handle.

01:37:58.360 --> 01:38:05.480
But that doesn't mean that we can't go in the direction of this kind of lure for spiritual

01:38:05.480 --> 01:38:10.680
growth and for, yeah, doing the best we can.

01:38:10.680 --> 01:38:18.520
Yeah, there's always room for refinement. One of my favorite quotes is from Saint Teresa of Avila,

01:38:18.520 --> 01:38:21.480
she said, "It appears that God himself is on the journey."

01:38:21.480 --> 01:38:26.040
Yeah, right. Yeah, we're at the end. Well, there's a, I think it was,

01:38:26.040 --> 01:38:31.080
Surya Suzuki that said, "You are all perfect, and you can use-"

01:38:31.080 --> 01:38:33.720
But you can do some improvement, right? Yeah, I love that one.

01:38:33.720 --> 01:38:38.440
consideration of transmission. You know, what in the heck is that and can...

01:38:38.440 --> 01:38:41.000
Always, you know, present.

01:38:41.000 --> 01:38:45.000
Is what we were saying before about paradox or different dimensions. On some level,

01:38:45.000 --> 01:38:48.040
you're perfect. On another level, you never will be.

01:38:48.040 --> 01:38:48.920
Right. Yeah.

01:38:48.920 --> 01:38:52.440
Yeah. It's good. It's good to ponder this stuff.

01:38:52.440 --> 01:39:00.520
Then there's the whole consideration of transmission. You know, what in the heck

01:39:00.520 --> 01:39:09.640
is that and can what can be transmitted from teacher to student and, you know, go ahead.

01:39:09.640 --> 01:39:15.640
- Generally, it's not really about like physical teachings or teaching styles being--

01:39:15.640 --> 01:39:17.320
- Some of the key main points.

01:39:17.320 --> 01:39:21.080
- But the main point, I don't think it's enlightenment. There are people who are

01:39:21.080 --> 01:39:26.760
enlightened and not transmitted. And there's a lot of stories in Zen of enlightenment by

01:39:26.760 --> 01:39:31.960
seeing peach blossoms or hearing a sound. It's not, you know, the teacher giving the student something

01:39:31.960 --> 01:39:36.120
like that. There's some real dangers in thinking of it as being kind of leadership of the sangha.

01:39:36.120 --> 01:39:42.920
It's generally, it's not really about like physical teachings or teaching styles being

01:39:42.920 --> 01:39:47.000
passed along. Once you kind of get rid of all of the things, I think it's not.

01:39:47.000 --> 01:39:52.920
Actually, there's, I may say there's, I'm talking about teaching, I'm talking about what

01:39:52.920 --> 01:39:57.560
goes from teacher to student here, teaching transmission. The teaching transmission is

01:39:57.560 --> 01:40:03.640
entrustment. Okay, it is this, I said, you know, people should really be terrified to be named as

01:40:03.640 --> 01:40:10.360
teachers because you're being trusted with carrying this dharma wisdom that has come down from

01:40:10.360 --> 01:40:19.880
centuries and helping new people who are trusting in you to take their steps on the way.

01:40:21.400 --> 01:40:26.120
And to me the idea of lineage, a whole bunch of teachers behind you, is not that

01:40:26.120 --> 01:40:30.600
now you get a merit badge and you get to step up on the stage with all these other honored teachers,

01:40:30.600 --> 01:40:35.080
but they're all looking at you and they're going to watch and see if you screw, you know,

01:40:35.080 --> 01:40:42.440
screw up. You have responsibility to keep this dharma wheel turning. So it's a real big trust

01:40:42.440 --> 01:40:49.720
thing. In terms of, I mean, the word "transmission," what I think is a better description,

01:40:51.000 --> 01:40:57.400
And so the teaching transmission ceremony should be, I think, on the part of the teacher, a judgment

01:40:57.400 --> 01:41:02.120
that this person is not only spiritually mature, but also emotionally and sexually and all the

01:41:02.120 --> 01:41:06.920
rest mature enough to be able to do this safely. That is what a teaching transmission should be.

01:41:06.920 --> 01:41:13.960
There's another way in which, in Zen we talk about mind, you know, that there's some kind of

01:41:13.960 --> 01:41:22.600
mind-to-mind transmission between teacher and student. But Khezan Jokin, who's one of the

01:41:22.600 --> 01:41:28.680
co-founder of Sodo Zen, wrote about mutual recognition in the room, the room being the

01:41:28.680 --> 01:41:33.800
room where the teacher and student meet. And so I like to think, I think a more modern

01:41:33.800 --> 01:41:42.120
metaphor for transmission is the teacher and the student are both wearing earbuds,

01:41:42.840 --> 01:41:46.040
and they're listening to radio stations and they're dancing and they can't

01:41:46.040 --> 01:41:50.680
communicate verbally to each other what station they're listening to or what song they're listening

01:41:50.680 --> 01:41:56.440
to. But if they can tell by the way they're each dancing that they're they're tuned into the same

01:41:56.440 --> 01:42:02.680
station, that's this mutual recognition in the in the room. Okay, I see my eyes are open, my my

01:42:02.680 --> 01:42:08.440
candle is lit, to use another metaphor, and I see that your candle is lit. Yeah, that's good. I like

01:42:08.440 --> 01:42:10.360
like that metaphor.

01:42:10.360 --> 01:42:12.280
And so that, I think, is what goes--

01:42:12.280 --> 01:42:14.080
the more spiritual dimension of what

01:42:14.080 --> 01:42:16.640
can go on between teacher and student.

01:42:16.640 --> 01:42:19.480
The teaching transmission is about trust.

01:42:19.480 --> 01:42:21.760
Maybe there's a bunch of aspects to it.

01:42:21.760 --> 01:42:25.240
Maybe one way of looking at it is the transmission is not

01:42:25.240 --> 01:42:27.240
like the teacher is zapping the student--

01:42:27.240 --> 01:42:30.280
Right, it's not like--

01:42:30.280 --> 01:42:35.600
Kind of like lighting them up like a lit torch

01:42:35.600 --> 01:42:39.760
lighting another piece of wood on fire or something,

01:42:39.760 --> 01:42:43.360
although that metaphor might be apt in some cases.

01:42:43.360 --> 01:42:44.080
Yeah.

01:42:44.080 --> 01:42:48.720
Some people have experienced this opening experience

01:42:48.720 --> 01:42:50.360
in an interchange with the teacher,

01:42:50.360 --> 01:42:52.080
and a lot of other people haven't.

01:42:52.080 --> 01:42:54.700
So in any case, there's one candle on,

01:42:54.700 --> 01:42:56.680
and then another candle comes on.

01:42:56.680 --> 01:42:58.120
Yeah.

01:42:58.120 --> 01:43:01.520
But one thing I've experienced, and probably you too,

01:43:01.520 --> 01:43:04.760
is that there can be a kind of entrainment

01:43:04.760 --> 01:43:08.340
when the field gets really coherent, you know what I mean?

01:43:08.340 --> 01:43:13.340
And you just, it's elevating because your consciousness

01:43:13.340 --> 01:43:19.420
somehow aligns with the ambient coherence of the field

01:43:19.420 --> 01:43:22.400
and becomes more coherent itself.

01:43:22.400 --> 01:43:24.200
There are examples in nature actually,

01:43:24.200 --> 01:43:27.060
where like 1% of the cells in the heart

01:43:27.060 --> 01:43:28.340
are called pacemaker cells.

01:43:28.340 --> 01:43:30.060
And if they beat coherently,

01:43:30.060 --> 01:43:34.020
they get the whole rest of the cells to beat coherently.

01:43:34.020 --> 01:43:38.980
so your heart beats properly, or in a laser, even the square root of 1% of the photons,

01:43:38.980 --> 01:43:44.780
if they line up coherently, the other photons entrain with them, and the whole thing becomes

01:43:44.780 --> 01:43:47.820
as if one coherent beam of light, a laser.

01:43:47.820 --> 01:43:51.860
That's what I kind of mean by this dancing, you know, dancing to the same music.

01:43:51.860 --> 01:43:55.780
Yeah, yeah, that's it, it reminded me of that when you said that.

01:43:55.780 --> 01:44:01.220
Which again, highlights the importance and value of a sangha, as long as it's a healthy

01:44:01.220 --> 01:44:03.780
Because I suppose it would work both ways.

01:44:03.780 --> 01:44:09.220
If a group is really toxic, you could get sucked into that toxicity.

01:44:09.220 --> 01:44:15.480
And the value of a teacher in this kind of situation, the value of having an authentic

01:44:15.480 --> 01:44:23.480
and trustworthy teacher, if you can find it, is... some of it is in the cultivation and

01:44:23.480 --> 01:44:28.960
encouragement of these openings, and a recognition of a valid opening.

01:44:28.960 --> 01:44:34.120
building a shrine to it, helping people move past that so it's not just a memory that they

01:44:34.120 --> 01:44:39.120
enshrine, but also distinguishing between some things that people sometimes falsely think

01:44:39.120 --> 01:44:45.240
are, you know, something cosmic and it's really just their mind playing tricks or something

01:44:45.240 --> 01:44:51.400
like that. I mean, so spiritual guidance is, can be helpful in sorting out.

01:44:51.400 --> 01:44:58.040
Do you think a qualified teacher could recognize when a student had a genuine awakening? I

01:44:58.040 --> 01:45:00.040
I mean, how did you, what would you look for?

01:45:00.040 --> 01:45:03.040
I hope that that's usually the case.

01:45:03.040 --> 01:45:07.040
And I have, you know, yeah, there's something,

01:45:07.040 --> 01:45:12.040
I think there's some pretty distinguishing signs of,

01:45:12.040 --> 01:45:17.040
you know, a real opening experience.

01:45:17.040 --> 01:45:21.040
Some people say that if you have the eyes to see it, you'll see it.

01:45:21.040 --> 01:45:25.040
You could run into them in an airport concourse and you'd see,

01:45:25.040 --> 01:45:30.080
that person is awake. I actually heard a story from somebody who noticed some guy over by the

01:45:30.080 --> 01:45:35.680
luggage carousel from 40 feet away, and he recognized the guy was awake.

01:45:35.680 --> 01:45:40.960
Yeah, I mean, it could be. I have not had that experience, so I'm not going to

01:45:40.960 --> 01:45:47.360
pass a judgment on it. But in a teacher-student relationship,

01:45:47.360 --> 01:45:52.240
sometimes these relationships, or often these relationships, go on for years.

01:45:52.800 --> 01:45:54.800
and you get to really get to know the person.

01:45:54.800 --> 01:45:56.800
And you get to see, you know, as a teacher

01:45:56.800 --> 01:45:59.800
and, you know, as a student, when I was working with teachers,

01:45:59.800 --> 01:46:01.800
there are certain places you tend to get stuck at.

01:46:01.800 --> 01:46:04.800
And when you become unstuck, it's visible.

01:46:04.800 --> 01:46:08.800
You know, it's palpable to the people who have ethical teachings.

01:46:08.800 --> 01:46:11.800
How is this going for, you know, what is the next step?

01:46:11.800 --> 01:46:13.800
So you don't just kind of build...

01:46:13.800 --> 01:46:16.800
And then, of course, time will tell, you know.

01:46:16.800 --> 01:46:19.800
Yeah, like I said, that experience of opening,

01:46:19.800 --> 01:46:26.800
and it may be helpful to have it, you know, kind of confirmed saying, "Okay, yeah, you

01:46:26.800 --> 01:46:31.240
know, you're right, that is what we've been talking about," you know.

01:46:31.240 --> 01:46:35.480
And equally important to say, you know, "And what about your precept study?

01:46:35.480 --> 01:46:36.780
What about your ethical teachings?

01:46:36.780 --> 01:46:38.040
How is this going for it?"

01:46:38.040 --> 01:46:40.000
You know, "What is the next step?"

01:46:40.000 --> 01:46:44.200
So you don't just kind of build that shrine and spend the next 30 years thinking back

01:46:44.200 --> 01:46:49.640
to that one opening as if that defines your life rather than what you're doing right now.

01:46:49.640 --> 01:46:54.360
Yeah. One point I was discussing with my friends this morning was,

01:46:54.360 --> 01:47:03.240
you know, spiritual growth is incremental, and so we don't generally experience big contrasts,

01:47:03.240 --> 01:47:08.120
although there might be occasional. There can be occasional big ones, but mostly it's slow.

01:47:08.120 --> 01:47:12.600
Yes. Yeah. But you know what I was saying, one thing I was saying to them is that, you know,

01:47:13.400 --> 01:47:18.680
I can regard myself as being in a very different state of mind than I would have been if I

01:47:18.680 --> 01:47:21.920
hadn't been doing spiritual practice all these years.

01:47:21.920 --> 01:47:28.160
And if I suddenly were to snap out of this state to the state I would be in, had I not

01:47:28.160 --> 01:47:31.120
done all that spiritual practice, well, first of all, I'd probably be dead.

01:47:31.120 --> 01:47:36.760
But secondly, it would be an agonizing contrast.

01:47:36.760 --> 01:47:40.160
But it's incremental, so it's normal.

01:47:40.160 --> 01:47:46.920
But there is a cumulative influence, I think, of regular spiritual practice, which just

01:47:46.920 --> 01:47:49.600
is with you, whether or not you notice it.

01:47:49.600 --> 01:47:50.600
Yeah.

01:47:50.600 --> 01:47:51.600
And I think a lot of the...

01:47:51.600 --> 01:47:59.440
I mean, a powerful opening experience is not forgotten, but it's also, you know, it's

01:47:59.440 --> 01:48:02.400
work to integrate that in your life.

01:48:02.400 --> 01:48:06.880
And as you integrate it, you know, certain things that were, you know, just seemed insurmountable,

01:48:06.880 --> 01:48:13.680
know, maybe before this experience and this work at integration, now are not, you know,

01:48:13.680 --> 01:48:18.440
they're molehills, they're not even that. You do gain some liberation, some freedoms.

01:48:18.440 --> 01:48:27.120
Yeah, you gain greater capacity to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

01:48:27.120 --> 01:48:28.120
Yes, yeah.

01:48:28.120 --> 01:48:29.120
Yeah.

01:48:29.120 --> 01:48:38.560
I do think we need to, you know, we were talking about equanimity earlier. You can't rely on

01:48:38.560 --> 01:48:44.120
outside things, you know, even a spiritual teacher in a sangha to give you the kind of

01:48:44.120 --> 01:48:50.600
security you really want, until you find some security in your heart and innermost being.

01:48:50.600 --> 01:48:53.920
Oh yeah, can't come from the outside.

01:48:53.920 --> 01:48:57.760
you have to, you know, and that's what, you know, we, our sangha has really learned over these,

01:48:57.760 --> 01:49:03.280
you know, deep betray, I would wish these kind of deep betrayals on no one,

01:49:03.280 --> 01:49:08.240
but they also make you, you know, really go to the heart of your practice.

01:49:08.240 --> 01:49:17.760
Yeah. Another thing, just to run by quickly, is, you know, being, we mentioned sexual

01:49:17.760 --> 01:49:22.720
misbehaviors, but also a lot of times students are overworked, you know,

01:49:23.520 --> 01:49:27.960
to the point of sleep deprivation with no compensation.

01:49:27.960 --> 01:49:32.400
And meanwhile, the teachers live high on the hog.

01:49:32.400 --> 01:49:37.760
Or perhaps they are literally divested of their life savings

01:49:37.760 --> 01:49:39.080
or large amounts of money.

01:49:39.080 --> 01:49:41.200
I can think of several examples, people

01:49:41.200 --> 01:49:44.680
who I actually interviewed, whose interviews I took down

01:49:44.680 --> 01:49:48.000
when I discovered that had been happening.

01:49:48.000 --> 01:49:53.400
And so that's just another thing to be cautious of if you're

01:49:53.400 --> 01:49:57.200
getting involved with a spiritual teacher, you shouldn't be.

01:49:57.200 --> 01:50:04.360
I have a friend who has had chronic fatigue syndrome for decades because he was pulling

01:50:04.360 --> 01:50:10.800
like three all-nighters in a row and stuff working on projects in the TM movement, and

01:50:10.800 --> 01:50:13.480
it really damaged his nervous system.

01:50:13.480 --> 01:50:22.640
So there needs to be... it's just a danger sign when that kind of thing is happening.

01:50:22.640 --> 01:50:28.720
And unfortunately, we've had it, you know, I mean, sometimes the teachers in our troubled

01:50:28.720 --> 01:50:35.040
sangha history were asking too much, but then when there is teacher misconduct, the amount

01:50:35.040 --> 01:50:41.080
of work that that board had to put in to do the right thing was just exhausting.

01:50:41.080 --> 01:50:47.240
And so we've had to deal with, repetitively, with issues of board burnout in dealing with

01:50:47.240 --> 01:50:50.080
the misconduct and continuing on as a sangha.

01:50:50.080 --> 01:50:52.080
And it's a real thing because you can't

01:50:52.080 --> 01:50:56.640
Yeah again, you know, it's much easier. It would have been much easier and we'd have you know

01:50:56.640 --> 01:51:01.200
More people willing to be board members if we'd swept it under the rug like every other sangha, right?

01:51:01.200 --> 01:51:04.240
Um, so how do you balance?

01:51:04.240 --> 01:51:09.680
It's tough

01:51:09.680 --> 01:51:14.720
It's tough and so yeah, it is so bad and we have in if yes, some people have

01:51:14.720 --> 01:51:17.600
gone through that and um

01:51:17.840 --> 01:51:25.680
I would say everybody still has has come through who got burned out by dealing with the misconduct have come through with a spiritual life

01:51:25.680 --> 01:51:28.320
Uh, but people have gone different directions

01:51:28.320 --> 01:51:30.800
Yeah

01:51:30.800 --> 01:51:33.920
Of course as as I as we're talking about this I think of you know

01:51:33.920 --> 01:51:37.920
legitimate professions such as teaching or police or

01:51:37.920 --> 01:51:44.640
Met the medical profession where burnout is a problem because there's so much demand is placed upon a person

01:51:44.640 --> 01:51:46.320
but um

01:51:46.320 --> 01:51:47.760
you know

01:51:47.760 --> 01:51:58.760
where it becomes unethical is where people are being used as slaves to do all kinds of labor for the benefit of the teacher.

01:51:58.760 --> 01:52:03.760
I think our board was actually kind of burned out for ethical reasons.

01:52:03.760 --> 01:52:05.760
Yeah, you kind of burned yourselves out.

01:52:05.760 --> 01:52:07.760
Which was not a waste, you know, I mean, their efforts.

01:52:07.760 --> 01:52:08.760
Voluntarily, right.

01:52:08.760 --> 01:52:13.760
I think their efforts were much for the good, but it still, you know, it was, they paid a high cost.

01:52:13.760 --> 01:52:19.320
high cost. But yeah, the burnout for not, you know, yeah, if you're sacrificing yourself

01:52:19.320 --> 01:52:26.160
and the leader's driving a Rolls, you know, there's something wrong.

01:52:26.160 --> 01:52:31.160
Every time I mention one of these points, specific instances come to mind of this actually

01:52:31.160 --> 01:52:35.480
happening and with this or that teacher, you know, so we're not just speaking abstractly

01:52:35.480 --> 01:52:36.480
here.

01:52:36.480 --> 01:52:41.540
My experiences were not with, you know, the Rolls-Royce driving teachers, but I was financially

01:52:41.540 --> 01:52:47.620
taken advantage of in the first of the betrayals I describe in the book, where money was raised

01:52:47.620 --> 01:52:53.900
to create a retreat center for a larger group, and then later on some people decided to have

01:52:53.900 --> 01:52:56.380
it just for them.

01:52:56.380 --> 01:53:02.380
I no longer had access to the place I'd put in work, and what was for me a chunk of change,

01:53:02.380 --> 01:53:05.740
not my life savings, but something I could easily spare.

01:53:05.740 --> 01:53:16.740
That happened in the TM movement too. People would donate to buy a center, you know, and then the organization would decide to sell the center and the money would go overseas to who knows what.

01:53:16.740 --> 01:53:19.740
And, hey, you want another center? Donate more money.

01:53:19.740 --> 01:53:20.740
Yeah, yeah.

01:53:20.740 --> 01:53:32.740
Okay, so let's see. You mentioned, what did you mean by this? What's wrong with the bad apple understanding of teacher abuses? I think this is a huge obstacle to effectively tackling the problem.

01:53:32.740 --> 01:53:47.740
I've seen this a lot among both students and teachers in Zen, is that somebody behaves in some certifiably misconduct kind of way.

01:53:47.740 --> 01:53:56.740
And everybody around makes it a personal thing about that person's failing or mistake.

01:53:56.740 --> 01:54:01.740
as if it really doesn't have to do with me, it's not my responsibility,

01:54:01.740 --> 01:54:04.740
you know, this was just kind of a fluke, you know,

01:54:04.740 --> 01:54:08.740
we seem to have an awful lot of flukes in spiritual communities, right?

01:54:08.740 --> 01:54:11.740
You know, because this stuff comes up so often.

01:54:11.740 --> 01:54:16.740
And I think the much better understanding of this is that we,

01:54:16.740 --> 01:54:19.740
actually I heard one person describe it as,

01:54:19.740 --> 01:54:23.740
you know, it's not that there's just a few narcissistic psychopaths out there

01:54:23.740 --> 01:54:25.740
waiting to take advantage of you,

01:54:25.740 --> 01:54:28.740
is that we cultivate narcissistic psychopaths.

01:54:28.740 --> 01:54:33.740
That is, that this slow creep of ego inflation

01:54:33.740 --> 01:54:35.740
and pride and arrogance

01:54:35.740 --> 01:54:38.740
makes us a much more homegrown problem.

01:54:38.740 --> 01:54:41.740
And it's not a problem just out there for a few people,

01:54:41.740 --> 01:54:45.740
you know, an isolated individual,

01:54:45.740 --> 01:54:47.740
isolated bad apple here and there.

01:54:47.740 --> 01:54:52.740
Great anger and great hatred and delusion are in all of us.

01:54:52.740 --> 01:55:02.740
And if we don't recognize that, and one of the things I write about in terms of sort of boundary violations in teachers,

01:55:02.740 --> 01:55:10.740
and you know, teachers not taking adequate account of their trust, the trust the students put in them,

01:55:10.740 --> 01:55:21.740
and inadvertently doing things that harm the students, was a very trivial thing about an academic arranging lunch for a visiting speaker.

01:55:21.740 --> 01:55:26.780
and asked, this was in the case of a therapist, who asked one of their clients to go to the lunch,

01:55:26.780 --> 01:55:33.420
and the client read all sorts of things into that invitation for lunch when the therapist was just

01:55:33.420 --> 01:55:39.100
trying to fill up the table, right? So it's not that this therapist was a bad person in any kind

01:55:39.100 --> 01:55:45.340
of way, but they did a thing that harmed their relationship with the student. In other words,

01:55:45.340 --> 01:55:48.540
the student thought they were special because they had been invited to this lunch.

01:55:48.540 --> 01:55:54.040
and then didn't realize that the teacher hadn't intended all of that stuff.

01:55:54.040 --> 01:55:58.540
So the teacher really had to backtrack and apologize to the student for all of this.

01:55:58.540 --> 01:56:03.040
And the student had to realize they'd been idealizing the therapist.

01:56:03.040 --> 01:56:12.040
So it created this whole sense of misunderstanding and betrayal over this very simple thing.

01:56:12.040 --> 01:56:17.540
So these kinds of ways in which teachers can misuse power and harm their students

01:56:17.540 --> 01:56:25.340
You know, the cases that make the newspaper, you know, are just the tip of the iceberg.

01:56:25.340 --> 01:56:28.500
The rest of it runs through all of us as human beings.

01:56:28.500 --> 01:56:29.500
Yeah.

01:56:29.500 --> 01:56:35.460
And, you know, this therapist was, you know, conscious enough to be able to apologize and,

01:56:35.460 --> 01:56:40.580
you know, recreate the relationship on a new basis of trust, but it took work for her, even

01:56:40.580 --> 01:56:41.580
in that trivial case.

01:56:41.580 --> 01:56:45.540
You know, how much more for the rest of us that can screw up here and there.

01:56:45.540 --> 01:56:47.540
That's what I mean.

01:56:47.540 --> 01:56:51.540
We shouldn't expect the teacher to be a paragon of absolute virtue,

01:56:51.540 --> 01:56:55.540
but we should expect them to have basically good behavior

01:56:55.540 --> 01:57:01.540
and the humility to atone and do restitution

01:57:01.540 --> 01:57:03.540
when they realize they've made a mistake.

01:57:03.540 --> 01:57:05.540
Yep.

01:57:05.540 --> 01:57:09.540
Well, it's a work in progress, as are we all.

01:57:09.540 --> 01:57:13.540
And I'd say by way of a concluding point,

01:57:13.540 --> 01:57:18.660
point is that, you know, you and I agree that there's something very valuable in all this.

01:57:18.660 --> 01:57:27.540
It's precious. It's really the most precious thing in life, you know, what spiritual development has

01:57:27.540 --> 01:57:34.820
to offer. And so people shouldn't be disillusioned or discouraged by all this talk of corrupt

01:57:34.820 --> 01:57:42.900
teachers and everything that we've been having. But you just have to kind of realize it is a bit

01:57:42.900 --> 01:57:52.540
bit of a razor's edge, this path, and you have to be on your toes and be wise. What did Jesus

01:57:52.540 --> 01:57:56.980
say to his disciples? Be wise as serpents, but gentle as doves.

01:57:56.980 --> 01:57:57.980
Innocent as doves.

01:57:57.980 --> 01:57:58.980
Innocent as doves.

01:57:58.980 --> 01:58:03.580
Yeah, so open heart, you know, definitely, and it's well worth bringing your heart to

01:58:03.580 --> 01:58:06.340
and keep your eyes open.

01:58:06.340 --> 01:58:08.180
Yeah.

01:58:08.180 --> 01:58:10.580
Any other concluding remarks you want to make?

01:58:10.580 --> 01:58:18.100
I think that's a question just came in. Let's just see what this question is. Yeah, one just came in.

01:58:18.100 --> 01:58:28.020
This is from Parchi Dixit in Torrance, California. Okay, we were talking about this a little bit,

01:58:28.020 --> 01:58:33.140
but maybe you can elaborate. What are the signs you look for in a student to recognize awakening?

01:58:37.380 --> 01:58:45.380
Actually, one of the things that seems to spontaneously arise in any set of opening, I would say, is gratitude.

01:58:45.380 --> 01:58:59.380
A real feeling of gratitude. And a lack of self-consciousness, a lack of intellectualization, a lack of distancing, lack of arrogance and pride.

01:58:59.380 --> 01:59:11.380
a being able to go past some kind of stuck spot, you know, exactly what that is will depend on what has come out in previous parts of that relationship.

01:59:11.380 --> 01:59:19.380
And a real shift.

01:59:19.380 --> 01:59:24.500
you know, often describe, sometimes describe through metaphors, sometimes just described,

01:59:24.500 --> 01:59:29.220
particularly in Soto Zen, they say you can sometimes just tell from someone's demeanor.

01:59:29.220 --> 01:59:39.420
And you can see someone almost visibly lightening up, often when they've had some kind of experience.

01:59:39.420 --> 01:59:47.220
They are just a lighter, more erect, more present person, you know, they might just kind of come in,

01:59:47.220 --> 01:59:54.740
kind of dance all the time before. Yeah, that's good. Irene and I have been going through the

01:59:54.740 --> 02:00:01.540
YouTube thumbnail images for all the 700 plus interviews because we have a whole new website

02:00:01.540 --> 02:00:07.140
with a new design, so the thumbnails have been redesigned. And Irene commented the other day

02:00:07.140 --> 02:00:12.420
that just looking at all these pictures as she puts together these thumbnails, impressed upon

02:00:12.420 --> 02:00:18.020
her how much presence is common among so many of the people. There's just something in the faces

02:00:18.020 --> 02:00:23.780
that you can see. It was a similar thing, but I told you I was an economist and did feminist

02:00:23.780 --> 02:00:29.700
economics and that was not a friendly environment. Economics tends to be pretty hard on women in

02:00:29.700 --> 02:00:34.020
general, much less feminists. But one time I was, for some reason, I was cruising a lot of departmental

02:00:34.020 --> 02:00:38.980
websites. And a lot of the women had the same strange expression.

02:00:38.980 --> 02:00:46.340
I mean, it was just physically there. I'm in a hostile environment and I've got to play like

02:00:46.340 --> 02:00:49.540
the guys. Yeah. Interesting.

02:00:49.540 --> 02:00:56.500
Although I have to say, I find the, I was a place that where they had a wall of pictures

02:00:56.500 --> 02:01:02.820
of their spiritual luminaries. Yes. Please don't use that kind of picture with the soft focus.

02:01:03.620 --> 02:01:05.620
We won't, we're not.

02:01:05.620 --> 02:01:08.980
So,

02:01:08.980 --> 02:01:13.220
aside from having written a book, which I recommend people read, is it out yet or is it coming out?

02:01:13.220 --> 02:01:17.780
It's coming out June 10th. It's available for pre-order at IndiePubs.

02:01:17.780 --> 02:01:20.900
Name it, it's "Practicing Safe Zen,

02:01:20.900 --> 02:01:23.720
Navigating the Pitfalls on the Road to Liberation."

02:01:23.720 --> 02:01:29.140
Okay, I think it's available for pre-order on Amazon, too. Yeah, I think it's cheaper actually on IndiePubs.

02:01:29.780 --> 02:01:30.900
Okay, indie pubs.

02:01:30.900 --> 02:01:33.140
And you're also supporting independent bookstores.

02:01:33.140 --> 02:01:33.700
Yeah.

02:01:33.700 --> 02:01:37.220
If you want to send me a link to that, I'll put it on your Bath Cap page so people can

02:01:37.220 --> 02:01:41.060
go to that, your particular book on indie pubs. I'd never heard of indie pubs.

02:01:41.060 --> 02:01:49.540
And so aside from that, and you live in New Hampshire now, you still are a Zen teacher,

02:01:49.540 --> 02:01:52.020
so you're meeting with, you have a sangha of some sort.

02:01:52.020 --> 02:01:56.260
Yes and no. It's kind of a complicated situation.

02:01:57.460 --> 02:02:02.420
I became a transmitted teacher in the middle of the second of the three big waves of

02:02:02.420 --> 02:02:05.220
uh of betrayal by teachers

02:02:05.220 --> 02:02:08.500
At the

02:02:08.500 --> 02:02:09.940
third wave

02:02:09.940 --> 02:02:13.460
And I was teaching meeting with some people individually and i'm still i've all

02:02:13.460 --> 02:02:16.760
All along i've been meeting with a handful of people individually

02:02:16.760 --> 02:02:21.300
Uh mostly on zoom but as part of the third wave of teacher abuse

02:02:21.540 --> 02:02:28.260
we'd been so beat up by teachers that I resigned as an official teacher at Greater Boston Zen Center.

02:02:28.260 --> 02:02:34.340
It's still my home sangha. I've been acting there as a practice leader and member of some working

02:02:34.340 --> 02:02:41.300
group type things, but I have not, the sangha has had no teacher because we've just been so beat up.

02:02:41.300 --> 02:02:47.300
We just recently had a membership vote because there are some people who feel so bit up,

02:02:47.300 --> 02:02:51.620
bit up at teachers, they wanted to try this kind of radically egalitarian, we'll all just sit in a

02:02:51.620 --> 02:02:58.740
circle mode. And then I and some other people wanted to say, no, can we use power, you know,

02:02:58.740 --> 02:03:04.420
can we recognize it and use it for good rather than trying to pretend it's not there? And there

02:03:04.420 --> 02:03:09.780
was just a membership vote and it's taken a long time to get to this clarity. It's a long story,

02:03:09.780 --> 02:03:13.620
because mainly these threats of litigation and everything else are just a nightmare.

02:03:15.220 --> 02:03:20.660
Anyway, the vote went towards the Sangha. Having teachers there is a service role.

02:03:20.660 --> 02:03:26.500
We call it a Sangha-led Sangha. I am not the leader of the Greater Boston Zen Center Sangha,

02:03:26.500 --> 02:03:30.820
even after... I'll probably be reinstated as a teacher in July. I mean, we have to... we want

02:03:30.820 --> 02:03:35.940
to put together the new bylaws and go through all the hoops, but I will not be leading the Sangha.

02:03:35.940 --> 02:03:41.380
I will be offering teacher services to the Sangha, and the Sangha is run by the membership via the

02:03:41.380 --> 02:03:47.940
board. So most of the people watching this don't live anywhere near Boston. Is there anything you

02:03:47.940 --> 02:03:53.540
do that people who live far away can participate in, like you mentioned, Zoom sessions? Yeah, we do.

02:03:53.540 --> 02:03:58.980
We do sits, generally hybrid, and we just lost our lease on our permanent place and haven't found a

02:03:58.980 --> 02:04:05.300
new one yet. So the next few weeks probably be only on Zoom until a new physical location is found.

02:04:05.940 --> 02:04:12.820
We also do book groups and the precept study groups that I mentioned have been exclusively online ever

02:04:12.820 --> 02:04:16.740
since we discovered during COVID how much better that works for that kind of thing.

02:04:16.740 --> 02:04:18.020
Great.

02:04:18.020 --> 02:04:21.060
Exclusively online you're seeing everybody's faces, you can talk.

02:04:21.060 --> 02:04:27.460
Our zendo practice includes chanting and that's really hard to do over Zoom and you know still

02:04:27.460 --> 02:04:34.420
get the same effect. I'm also hoping that we will restart having Sashin's residential retreats,

02:04:34.420 --> 02:04:36.540
But those are only in person.

02:04:36.540 --> 02:04:37.900
So anyway, there's this mix.

02:04:37.900 --> 02:04:39.740
And all this will be on your website, right?

02:04:39.740 --> 02:04:41.700
Yeah, the Greater Boston Zen Center website

02:04:41.700 --> 02:04:43.740
has links to the series.

02:04:43.740 --> 02:04:45.860
Well, make sure I have that, because I think I just have a

02:04:45.860 --> 02:04:46.900
Julia Nelson website.

02:04:46.900 --> 02:04:50.340
Yeah, julianelson.com has, I think, on the About page,

02:04:50.340 --> 02:04:52.340
it links to the Greater Boston website,

02:04:52.340 --> 02:04:56.460
and also has ways of contacting me directly.

02:04:56.460 --> 02:04:58.220
That's my blog site.

02:04:58.220 --> 02:04:59.180
OK, great.

02:04:59.180 --> 02:05:01.220
Well, if people know how to get in touch with you,

02:05:01.220 --> 02:05:03.900
then I'll have that on your Backgap page.

02:05:03.900 --> 02:05:06.100
It's been great fun talking with you.

02:05:06.100 --> 02:05:06.900
Yeah, thanks, Julie.

02:05:06.900 --> 02:05:08.700
I've really enjoyed it.

02:05:08.700 --> 02:05:12.140
And there are a couple of technical screw-ups

02:05:12.140 --> 02:05:14.540
in the beginning, but we worked it out.

02:05:14.540 --> 02:05:15.780
OK, great.

02:05:15.780 --> 02:05:17.900
All right, so thanks to those who've been listening

02:05:17.900 --> 02:05:18.500
or watching.

02:05:18.500 --> 02:05:21.300
And my next guest--

02:05:21.300 --> 02:05:22.680
I hope I can pronounce his name.

02:05:22.680 --> 02:05:25.900
It's something like Diyamud Omuchu.

02:05:25.900 --> 02:05:31.020
And he's an Irish, rather mystical priest,

02:05:31.020 --> 02:05:36.380
kind of in the vein of Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeaud,

02:05:36.380 --> 02:05:41.340
Elia Deleu, people like that. And I'm reading several of his books right now,

02:05:41.340 --> 02:05:46.060
well one at a time, and I think you guys are going to enjoy that one. So

02:05:46.060 --> 02:05:48.860
stay tuned. Thanks.

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