share with you. Our speaker today is Mark Lesser, who came to Zen Center in 1974. He held various positions at Green Gulch Farm. He was director at Tassajara and in 1983 went to NYU for a Master's in Business Administration. He returned to the Bay Area and started Brush Dance. It's really a pleasure to be here. Can everybody hear me? Is this working okay? Mel, thank you very much. It's an honor. I wanted to frame what I'm gonna talk about by using two different koans from the Mu Man Kan collection from China, from the, it's from the,

[01:31]

6th and 7th century. And the first, it's actually very, very simple. And it's one of the things I like about it so much. It's the case says, a monk said to Zhao Zhao, I've just entered this monastery. Please teach me. And Zhao Zhao said, have you eaten your rice gruel? The monk said, yes, I have. Jiaojiao said, wash your bowl. And the monk nodded like he understood. And that's the whole case, that's it. I think it's particularly powerful and important and relevant quote and koan lesson in our lives today just this, have you eaten your rice? Well, wash your bowl.

[02:33]

And well, what does that mean and how is that relevant? I think that in a kind of literal way, how often these days we don't have the time to wash our bowls, or we have machines do it, or have other people do it, and we miss that part of our lives. I just returned from a weekend in Las Vegas where it was a gift from a friend of mine My brother and his wife, they love being in Las Vegas and they wanted to share it with us. And actually the last time I was in Las Vegas was when I was a student at Tassajara and my parents came to visit me and they didn't really like Tassajara that much but then we went to where they wanted to be and that was Las Vegas.

[03:36]

So that's where we went. And actually then, when I was in business school, I wrote a paper on the similarities between a Zen monastery and a gambling casino. And part of it is that in both places, there's everyone is clear about what the intention is. In a monastery, everyone's clear that it's about letting go of greed. And in Las Vegas, everyone's clear that it's about greed. And also, in Las Vegas now, they've created an environment where you never have to wash your bowl. And there's never any, there's, you know, this washing your bowl means really looking at the details of our lives. It means looking at all of it, at the messy stuff.

[04:41]

You know, washing bowls is kind of messy, you know, because bowls are dirty. And even if you don't eat in them, you just leave it around, in a few days it's kind of dusty and it needs to be washed again and again. And what does it mean to really be right there with our bowls? It might be that you may start your day, as I often do, with your to-do list of all the things that need to be accomplished for the day. And there's never on there, washing your bowls is never on that to-do list, I find. It's one of those things that just doesn't fit. It's kind of an unnameable thing. And actually, if you pay attention, I think you'll start to notice that all of the things that really matter in our lives aren't on our to-do lists.

[05:45]

And one of the things that's problematic about these to-do lists and the way that we often live our lives is that we can put on our to-do list our friends and family members and our children or our parents become things on our to-do list and they feel that. And it isn't the kind of relationships that we want and we lose, it's so easy to lose that sense of immediacy and intimacy that comes with that feeling of just washing your bowls. And so I think that's what I think that's what Zhaozhao is saying when the monk enters the monastery and says, please teach me. And this teaching and this simple wash your bowls can be a very profound kind of life teaching.

[06:54]

It's traditional that with these koans, there's a verse that goes with it that the collector of the koans, koan collection wrote, and the verse that goes with this one says, because it's so very clear, it takes so long to realize. If you just know that flame is fire, you'll find your rice has long been cooked. This verse reminds me a lot of a, there's a Rumi poem in which he says something like, why is it that you spend all of your time looking for a loaf of bread when you have a bakery sitting on top of your head? And this quote, this again, because it's so very clear, it takes so long to realize if you just know that flame is fire, you'll find your rice has long been cooked. So pretty, I think pretty wonderful, beautiful, challenging.

[08:02]

What does that mean if you know that your flame is fire? I think for me, It means that if you know that in the simplest of activities, like washing your bowl, you can bring that activity alive. That you, we each have the ability to bring whatever we're doing, we can bring it alive. I want to, it's a David White poem that I want to read that I think really says this beautifully. When your eyes are tired, the world is tired also. When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you.

[09:03]

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn. Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. So there's two parts to this poem I want to kind of go back to. One, this line that says, you must learn one thing. I heard David White speaking about his process of writing this poem and talking about he was by himself and it was a rainy night.

[10:12]

and he was in a cabin in the woods and he started writing this poem and he got to that line, you must learn one thing. And he looked down at the paper and it was blank. He didn't know what that one thing was. And he describes how hair stood up on the back of his neck as he then wrote the line, the world was made to be free in. Which again, I think is the message underlying what Zhaozhao is telling this young monk, if you want to find freedom, if you want to find how to make things alive, go wash your bowl. And this other line where he says, Sometimes it takes darkness and sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. So if you're like me, your first reaction might be, well, let's see what people and things don't bring me alive that I want to get rid of.

[11:16]

And that's the meaning here is how is it that we bring things alive. We have within us the ability to bring any relationship, any meeting with anything, we can bring it alive. It's not about something out there. And it's also not about It's not about waiting for the right thing to come along. That's something else that I noticed many of us have this tendency to do, of thinking that if we only had the right practice, or the right relationship, or the right job, that it's always kind of waiting for that next thing before we can really find real aliveness and real intimacy in our lives.

[12:17]

And again, this koan is giving us, I think, really powerful, wonderful instruction. It says, you know, go wash your bowl, which again could mean many, many things. It could mean, you know, bring whatever is right in front of you alive. And as David White is advising here, that may mean really going inward, going in and having some time. Again, this is a, one of the things that I've been I've been doing recently is coaching people, people in business and people who are in transition. And I've kind of come up with a formula for certain basic things that I think everyone should do in order to have a chance at living a real, alive life. And I say that everyone should have a meditation practice, that people should sit, find a way to sit every morning.

[13:18]

Everyone should be part of some kind of community to get some kind of real feedback from other people. Everyone should have a coach in their lives, someone who's there to help them, guide them, cheerlead them. And everyone should have a therapist. That if you have these, with these four things, I think, you have a chance at, you know, But I think these are all just ways to help us to learn to wash our bowls. It's okay. I just need to be more careful. I was also, Mel was asking me before I came in what I'm doing and I was saying how I'm in the process of reinventing myself after having been

[14:42]

CEO of a publishing company called Brushdance for the last 15 years and suddenly I'm not, I'm not in that job or that, I don't have that role or that title. And it reminds me a lot of when I, after I lived at Zen Center for 10 years, you know, when I was, I lived at Zen Center from when I was like 21 to when I was 31 and my Last year of living at Zen Center, I was director of Tassajara, and I had no idea how attached I had become to being a Zen student, and attached to being a certain role. As director of Tassajara, doctors and lawyers and all kinds of professionals would often look up to me, and they wished they could do something that they thought was that bold and courageous, but I left and went to New York City to go to business school, but I hadn't even finished my undergraduate degree, and I found myself completely without any kind of identity, and in fact, I found out that having lived at Zen Center for 10 years didn't open lots of doors in New York City.

[16:08]

In fact, I did need to get a job. One of the things I thought was, well, I used to wait tables at Tassajara, so I'll get a job as a waiter. And I went to a restaurant that said they were looking for an experienced waiter. And they hired me. And I got fired within two hours. Because they said, you're not an experienced waiter. They could see that I was just, you know, I thought, well, I'm a smart guy. I'll figure this out. It was extremely, extremely humiliating and difficult. And of course, one of those experiences that's just wonderful to look back at. And also, but in a way, in a different version, I'm going through that now, and I think, and I want to suggest that we all find ways to go through that, to, you know,

[17:18]

Because again, it's living, it was very, even though it was very painful, it was extremely enlivening and powerful. And the word, none of us want to be humiliated, but the word humiliate and humble and humor, they're all kind of, they have this base of earth, you know, They're very much about returning to the earth words and this instructions of Jiaojiao to wash your bowl again has this sense of humility, of really finding our real humility. And again, it's not very popular in our culture right now to you know, to be humble and to just be completely real, open, exposed with your own truth.

[18:23]

And so much, it's so unpopular that we often forget just how to do it in our most intimate relationships, like with our spouses or friends, you know, that just to make that time, just to start a sentence with, I'd really like to talk to you, or I'd really like to express how important a person you are in my life. I think of, I've been leading, Norman Fisher and I have been co-leading retreats for business people at Green Gulch. for the past seven or eight years now and We had a one-day retreat recently in which you have a room of about 30 or 35 business people. We usually start the day by, each person will introduce themselves and say their name and where they work and something about what they do.

[19:30]

And as you go around, it's all very impressive. It's kind of what every person does and where they work. And in some way, I think everyone is completely envious of everyone else. And then you get into small groups and after talking about Zen practice some and spirituality and kind of soften people up a little bit and create a safe environment. And in these small groups, as soon as you start to talk to people, you find out that everyone's life is a mess. all of these people who you were just envying, you find out that they don't know what the hell they're doing, and they don't really like the job that they're in, and their family situation is difficult, and that that's part of the, that's why people come to these retreats, is to be able to talk openly with people who are not part of their lives, where they can form a community in just completely opening up and it's a way, it's a very humbling and very enlivening situation.

[20:39]

I was also thinking as I was driving over here, I was remembering that a fabulous trip to Japan that I went on, I guess it's, I don't know if it's two years ago or three years ago, several years ago. And this was to celebrate the 33rd memorial of Suzuki Roshi's death. And that was taking place in Japan at Rinzō-in, the temple that Suzuki Roshi ran and that now his son, Hojo-san, is now caring for. And I signed up for this trip not having any idea who else was going. I thought it would be a big group. And it turned out that it was just Mel and Blanche, one of the senior teachers at the San Francisco Zen Center, and me. And just a It was wonderful having 10 hours on an airplane sitting in between Mel and Blanche.

[21:46]

I was kind of the referee, actually. But it was just something so fabulous about it, and many stories I could tell about that. And I suppose all of them will relate to this cone and what I'm talking about in some way. But one, and I'm curious, C. Mel, if you remember this, but Mel and I were roommates staying in a little tea house right next to the Zendo. And it was just all so magical. To me, it was all so alive and magical and otherworldly and very intimate, just being in this little space. hanging out with Mel in that way and then we would get up early in the morning and I would follow Mel over in the darkness through these kind of pathways and to the zendo and we would sit down and Hojo-san would come in

[23:03]

and, you know, offer, do bows and offer incense and ring the bell and the period would end and we'd go and do service and we, this would happen day after day just, you know, just like that, like clockwork. And one morning we came in and Hojo-san wasn't there and So as I recall, Mel got up and got the bell and put it next to his seat and rang the bell to begin the period of meditation. And then, I don't know, five or ten minutes later, Hojasan came in and he came in and offered incense and sat down and I think he saw that the bell had rang for the beginning of the period. So we just sat, and we sat, and we sat. And I don't really know what, I didn't know what was happening.

[24:06]

I just knew that we were sitting for a long time. And my legs were really aching. And at some point, Hojo-san blurted out, finish! And I thought he was beginning a lecture. And I thought he had said fish. And I thought, yes, this is a fishing village that we're in. He's going to talk about fish. This should be really interesting. And then, I don't know, 30 or 45 seconds went by, and the bell rang, Mel rang the bell to finish the period. And I realized, oh, he said finish. And that, I assume that Mel must have felt that, you know, it was up to Hojo-san to finish the period. So that was, that's one, one of hundreds of incidents like that during our,

[25:08]

during our time in Japan. Oh, one thing I wanted to just mention is I've been learning a lot lately from, I've been taking improv classes, which actually I think are just wonderful kind of way to, well, for me, wonderful way to be terrified. And to put, and to, as though, I think sometimes, why do I keep looking for these situations that I'm terrified in? But I have, as though I have to create new ones that don't already exist, but improv is one that I've been just learning so much from improv, and I think there's a particular, game that we did the other day that kind of reminds me of the spirit and message of this koan.

[26:17]

And the game is that if I'm, I'll be standing here on one side of the room, and on the other side of the room, we'll put some object, like a cup or a bottle or something, and kind of stand there, pay a lot of attention to this object on the other side of the room. And then you close your eyes and walk. The instructions are to walk with gusto and determination towards where you think that bottle is and stop and just pick it up. That's the exercise. And whether you pick it up or not is irrelevant. If you happen to pick it up, you celebrate. And if you don't pick it up, you celebrate. That these were the instructions. So we did this, I did this at a class with Sue a couple months ago or I don't know, sometime.

[27:19]

And these of course were instructions for how to walk on stage in improv that you never know what's going to happen. You never know who you're going to be in an improv situation. You suddenly might find yourself being a grandmother or a little boy or a waitress or anything that is completely unpredictable. So your eyes are closed, and yet the spirit is that whatever it is, you approach it with real gusto and real aliveness. And I, of course, immediately thought, well, this feels a lot like how my life is and how our lives are, that we're always walking onto that stage and we never know. We just never know. The truth is we never know what's gonna happen in our lives. And what if we just practiced walking out in whatever we do, meeting whatever happens in our lives with that kind of gusto and determination, and to celebrate both, to celebrate whatever happens, whether it's something that we wanted to happen and that is joyous, and we can also kind of celebrate or at least appreciate when things happen that are not what we might have imagined.

[28:43]

wanted or might not be how we would have arranged them, but again to come back to this wash your bowls spirit of whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever life brings us to just wash our bowls. I'll say one other thing and then I'll have some time for questions, I think. I also thought of, I was having lunch the other day and someone mentioned to me that one of their heroes was Abraham Maslow, who was a, one of the early kind of humanistic psychology pioneers back in the early 70s, and it reminded me of how reading Abraham Maslow was so life-changing for me in that he made it his life's work to study what was it that made certain people

[29:48]

more alive than others? What was it? Why was it that certain people had more joy and vigor and gusto and pain and difficulty, that there was just something... He developed this whole language for it. He called it peak experiences. And it's a kind of... You know, it was very, very powerful for me to, this was a book that I read when I was, before I came to Zen Center. I think of this as being one of the most powerful experiences for me that brought me to practice Zen was just this idea that people were different and that you could work on yourself and that this whole idea of aliveness was, was something that you could cultivate through some kind of practice and through some kind of awareness. I'll read one last thing.

[30:52]

This is a book that I wrote called ZBA, Zen of Business Administration. And yes, it's kind of, the title was a joke. It was kind of like, I was once introduced as having my ZBA degree. And I just want to read, I'll read one section, which again, I think, hopefully you'll see how it relates to this koan of wash your bowls, Last summer, my 21-year-old son, Jason, worked in the Brush Dance Warehouse. I received the benefit of his insights about the company, as well as his suggestions for improvements. Fairly often, Jason would suggest that I take him to lunch. And though this meant spending more money than I normally would, the opportunity made me happy. During one of our many lunch discussions, he asked me, This wasn't what I was planning to read.

[32:02]

But I will anyhow. OK. Here we go. Improv. During one of our many lunch discussions, he asked me, do you think of yourself as a confident person? This was the day before I was scheduled to give a lecture at Green Gulch Farm. He went on to say that he was trying to understand how I could be giving lectures, teaching, and running a company. He saw me as somewhat quiet and shy and had a difficult time seeing me as a teacher. After all, you've never taught me anything. He blurted out. After my initial surprise at hearing these words, I teased him by responding that I had been planning a lecture series for him. which was scheduled to begin the following week. I went on to explain that as a Zen teacher and as a businessman, my confidence lies in the knowledge that I'm certain of nothing.

[33:13]

I have no idea where I came from or where I am going. I have no idea what will happen to brush dance in the future. Realizing and facing this directly, how do we find our own calm, flexibility and freedom? I think this is the kind of confidence that Zen students and business people are constantly cultivating. Tremendous confidence and trust in our own sincerity, in our effort, in our ability to meet whatever comes our way. The confidence in our ability not to get in the way of our deepest intentions. And I think, again, I think over and over again, washing our bowls is the way to do that. Do we have time for questions? Who's in charge here? The clock's in charge. And it's 5 o'clock, 11, and we try to end around 11 o'clock. So it's just how the energy is.

[34:17]

OK. Thanks. So we have a few minutes if there's comments, anything anybody wants to say or ask. Yes. Well, I'm familiar with that calling briefly. And each time that I hear it, I'm or any con, there is an understanding which is different, could be different from time to time. And when you read it this morning, my first thought was that him asking, have you eaten yet, is as important I think that's the usual way that we look at it, which is, here's the medicine for you to take. Here's the advice for you to take. But by putting them together, that's what he, this morning, what it sounded like to me, was what he's conveying is, put them both together.

[35:26]

Yes, I think every, you know, these koans, they're so dense. I mean, even, you could focus your life on the first line, you know, please, you know, give me your teaching, right? And then there's, right, have you, so there's so much happening here, and yes, you know, yeah, I agree, thank you. Yes. Thank you for your talk. I was curious about this sense of identity that we find ourselves with if we're at a job for a long time or a relationship for a long time and then that ends. We had to find a new identity, which is always exciting and challenging. I'm wondering what you could say to encourage people not to leave relationship or a job, but actually how do we re-identify or let go of our identity? for us. Yeah, this is that, I think of it as the paradox in business or in our life about, I think of it as the, one way to talk about it is in achievement and letting go.

[37:01]

So, you know, I'm, I mean, I'm a big proponent of, you know, you know, setting goals and strategies and, you know, I also wear that hat as a business guy who helps people, you know, be very clear about roles and relationships and identities. But the paradox in it is that, you know, it's also just as important, equally important, to be able to let go of it all and to not be lulled into thinking that these things are solid and real and that they're really held by, you know, What this koan teaches us is that our lives are, we're stardust, we're mystery. So in fact, the first image when you asked the question, I thought, was spend time looking at the stars.

[38:05]

Kind of identify with the stars. If we could identify with the stars, or with the ocean, or the bowl. Although we don't want, you know, it's much too, it's much too either simple or abstract, but it's more real than the things that, the kinds of, you know, the things that we call real, like our job title or, I mean, those things are just complete, they are completely transient and will change and do. You know, every, Every company that now exists will one day not exist. Thank you. Well, thank you all very much.

[38:56]

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