Leadership on the Eightfold Path

Shakyamuni Buddha taught the Eightfold Path of practice as the Fourth Noble Truth, as a path of liberation from suffering. Though this occurred more than two millennia ago, these teachings are relevant to leadership in modern times.

NOTE: The word “right” is the usual translation of the Sanskrit word “samma,” but that is a bit rough. The word samma does not have the understanding of right versus wrong. It has the meaning of integral or whole. Some have used the word “sound” as a translation. As in, “that is a sound decision.” This more closely reflects the sense of skillfulness that arises from the Path.

Right View – Our way of being in the world can be a way that increases our suffering, reduces our suffering, or liberates us from suffering. It is our fundamental view of the world, of our experience, that makes the difference. The Buddha taught that the view which would liberate us from suffering, rather than make it worse or mitigate it temporarily, is the view of emptiness. When Buddhists speak of emptiness it simply means empty of inherent existence, empty of the ability to arise completely independently. This makes sense intuitively. All things arise due to causes and conditions. They cannot come into being or cease to be without reliance on causes and conditions. Then, from this standpoint, you can begin to see why the corollary to emptiness is impermanence, the fact that people and things are always changing. The conditions of each instant are shifting and moving, in ways that you can see and in imperceptible ways. The ability to accept change, and understand that it is inevitable and neutral, is the starting point for sound leadership. That is, sound leadership accepts that change will occur. Sound leadership incorporates this fact in planning and makes the most of change.

Example: State governments requiring electric companies to develop wind turbine farms.

V838 c. NASA

Right Intention – Naturally, it is not enough to know how to view the world. You must put it into action, but action stems from intention; it starts with our motivation. A great practitioner once famously said that he wakes up every day and cultivates his motivation. This is because actions and speech reflect intention, even when you don’t want them to. So it is important to establish right intention, which stems from the fundamental acceptance of change and the vow to work in harmony with it. This is not passivity, but rather seeing clearly what actually is, so that you can respond most skillfully. Right intention is based in the ability to respond, rather than react. Sound leadership flows from the motivation not to ignore or resist change, but to respond in a skillful manner.

Example: Establishing Virgin Galactic even while developing Virgin Atlantic.

Right Speech – The extent to which your words express acceptance of what is, and an intentional response, is the extent to which those words express right speech. There is a lot that can be said about right speech, but the Buddha offered five simple guidelines. He said that right speech is timely, truthful, kind, and not spoken from ill will. These aspects of right speech remind you that words are meaningful, and it is important to consider their impact, both on yourself and on those who hear them. Sound leadership knows the impact of speech and uses it skillfully, to express an understanding of impermanence and an intention to harmonize with it. It uses speech to bring clarity to any situation.

Example: “Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.” – James Thurber

Right Action – Based upon a sound view of emptiness and impermanence, and a sound intention to live in accord with that view, your actions must also be in accord with the Way. As with speech, right action will provide clarity and harmony. Thus, right action is usually associated with ethical action. It involves finding a skillful way to operate in the world, guided by what is most fundamental. It acknowledges ambiguity, and does not use it as an excuse to set aside the necessity to respond. This is why the Buddhist precepts, or moral guidelines, are not commandments but rather vows, expressions of your underlying intention. Sound leadership recognizes ethics as an integral aspect of life. It acts in harmony with life.

Example: After finding a handful of bottles poisoned, Johnson & Johnson pulled Tylenol off the shelves.

Right Livelihood – This teaching is specifically about work. It is based on the understanding that, in emptiness, each instant contains within it the causes and conditions for the next instant. So this is the teaching that the work that you do has consequences, and it is important to consider those consequences and ensure that they create harmony in the world. Sound leadership recognizes that work is not different from other action. Sound leadership takes responsibility for its results.

Example: If you are a fisherman, not fishing a particular species into extinction.

Right Effort – This is the teaching of sustainability. The Buddha practiced asceticism to the point of death, and then realized that this kind of effort would not lead to liberation from suffering. So he taught the Middle Way. This is the way of wholehearted engagement, because anything less than that is not enough. Yet, it is also the way of embracing limitations, because your effort should not damage your capacity. It must be sustainable, or it misses the mark, risking the full rewards due to shortsightedness. Sound leadership knows that effort must be balanced in order to be effective.

Example: Staying home sick, instead of vomiting at a fancy dinner.

Right Mindfulness – While much of the Eightfold path is focused on activity, right mindfulness is about finding the still point in each moment. It is discovering the inherent steadiness of the mind, and the way that can be a foundation for everything else. This teaching is typically associated with meditation, stripping away momentary distractions to encounter the essence of what is already there. It is pausing to gather the mind, living in the present moment. Sound leadership values steadiness and a clear head.

Example: Phil Jackson teaching the Bulls basketball players to gather themselves before a game.

Sunrise c. NASA

Right Awakening – The teaching of Buddhist wisdom is that this very life can be one of awakening to your innate freedom and the abundance of the world. It is within your capabilities, if you are willing to live in the present moment and respond skillfully, in harmony with the natural function of cause and effect. Wisdom is not something that can be given to you, yet it is manifest in relation to others. In Zen it is sometimes expressed as “not one, not two.” Wisdom is both an individual experience and a group function, and it is based in true discernment. Sound leaders are like great conductors, they help to make a symphony by energizing many individuals.

Example: Cooperative competition all over Silicon Valley.

 

Getting Up from Your Seat

It is said that the Buddha did not immediately begin teaching after he awakened to ultimate wisdom. Several weeks passed before the Buddha arose from his seat, and it is believed to have been several months after that before he offered his first talk. Yet arise he did. And, in doing so, he again expressed his own unshakeable conviction that mankind is fully capable of transcendent compassion and inconceivable wisdom.

This is an important point to remember these days, when I often encounter people who worry about the state of the world and the people in it. They read the newspaper, watch television and talk to their neighbors and co-workers about unspeakable acts of violence and terrible natural disasters. They hear of murder and rape, and of theft on a scale so large that it becomes unimaginable. They talk of hurricanes, and earthquakes, and floods, and all manner of disease. They say to one another, “These things are wrong. The people who do these things are evil and the world is getting darker every day.”

Yet this is the same world that Shakyamuni Buddha spoke of when he said, “I and all beings are fully awakened on this day,” a day that is now celebrated as Bodhi Day, December 8th. He was not speaking of some world outside of this one. The beings that the Buddha spoke of are all beings; those of the past, present and future; those with and without understanding; those male, female and something else; those who are good and those who are bad.

So how do we discover this teaching for ourselves, right in the midst of so much troubling news? How do we learn to see the Buddha in every face, no matter how contorted or stunningly beautiful? In the 13th Century Dogen Zenji, a Japanese Zen Master, said “Without exception everyone is a vessel. Do not ever think that you are not a vessel,” expressing the same understanding as the Buddha, but in a different way. That is, Dogen was pointing at each and every being as an expression of the great teachings of impermanence, emptiness and freedom from suffering. But you might say that you don’t feel free from this realm, that you are completely trapped in this world full of troubles and people with intent to kill. In one sense that is true; you are a function of millions and millions of conditions that happen in each instant, each dependent on the others. You exist only to the extent that you interact with the world around you, within you. Yet it is precisely because of this state of being caused and created by the myriad things that you are also completely free of them in each moment. That is, as an expression of the fully interconnected universe you are, in essence, stillness in the midst of motion. There is nothing you have to do to make this true. However, that truth explains why we sit zazen, the form of meditation which allows for transcendence of the moment through complete presence in the moment.

Now all of this may be starting to sound very theoretical. So I’ll offer an example. Take the example of spitting. Once I was walking along the street very early in the morning. It was dark, and I was in a town that I don’t live in, visiting a family member. I was wearing my work clothes, which to many people look like a karate outfit, and I had my hair shaved to something like 1/8th of an inch, what is referred to by folks in the armed forces as “high and tight.” A man was walking toward me in the opposite direction. I could tell that when he looked at me he didn’t like what he saw. I was a bit nervous as he approached, but decided that he didn’t look like he would get violent. Still, he came closer and yelled at me, “Go home, alien,” as he continued to walk past me on my left. Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw him turn his head toward me and spit. Thankfully it didn’t reach me. Yet it left a very strong impression. I have thought about that morning many, many times. And I’ve seen others spat upon. What is an appropriate response? Would it be different if it were a woman? Certainly, when someone spits at you, you might have thoughts of retaliating in some form. Certainly you can be expected to feel some “fight or flight” energy. But, actually, you express and experience the most freedom when you do not do anything. By not attacking the person or groveling to the person, you simply stand still and express your own powerful ability to be the skillful response. You allow that person who spit at you to completely receive their own consequences. You kill them with kindness.

This is not to say that the appropriate response is always to do nothing. Sometimes the most skillful thing is to do or say something. However, even then, you cannot relinquish your potential to express the stillness of the moment. Even then, you do not relinquish your authority to express the freedom that interconnectedness allows. Sometimes kindness expresses itself by not yelling at a spitter, and sometimes kindness expresses itself by stopping someone from shooting more innocent people. I’m reminded of an attack that took place at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee a number of years ago. The Rev. Chris Buice, pastor of the church, said of the shooter who had been subdued by the churchgoers that day, “He was a victim of his own hatred.”

So, when you learn about people that are doing great harm in the world, you can ask yourself what kind of response you want to offer. You can ask yourself whether you want to respond by offering kindness, freedom and skillful means to everyone you encounter, or by offering worry, and a sense of further separation and judgement. You can ask yourself how to best express your interconnectedness to them and to those that they harm. Then, just be it, knowing that the Buddha has already said that you can, knowing that the Buddha has already said you are.

The Gift for All Seasons

The “Paramitas,” sometimes translated as “perfections,” are six in number and they can be thought of as different perspectives of life – like looking at a jewel, in this case the jewel of life, through six different facets. The first of these facets is Giving (in Sanskrit “Dana”), and it is the first because all practice must begin with generosity. In particular, I believe that all practice must start with the gift of generosity toward oneself.

To some this might seem to be a narcissistic way of thinking, but it’s really necessary if you are to persevere at Buddhist practice. This is because, if you are practicing the study of the impermanent self, then you will encounter over and over again the gap between your intention and your actions. You will be faced, time and time again, with the difference between your ideal and what you are trying to accomplish; between your vision of practice and the actuality of how you think, act and don’t act; between your idea of true self and your mundane reality. If you don’t apply generosity for yourself in those moments, it can be devastating.

Turning this around, it seems to me that this dynamic is also behind the tendency to criticize others. That is, you can look at others and see their gaps, their failure to live up to your ideal or their own ideals. And seeing that happening, you want to criticize them because that’s what you do with yourself. You find that want to be stingy with them for not being the person they could be.

It reminds me of something that occurred when I was new to Tassajara, the Zen monastery and retreat center in Carmel Valley, California. I had been given a job that included bringing in and taking out the garbage cans to prevent racoons from making a mess during the night. So, in the evening, I brought the trash cans to the shack where they were kept. However, in the morning, when I went to take them out again, they were already out. Suddenly I was irritated. I didn’t focus on the fact that someone might have been trying to be helpful, or someone might have been impatient about having them out at a certain time. Instead, I had the thought that someone thought I wasn’t competent to do the full job. Or that someone assumed I’d forget, and didn’t give me a chance to get it right. I sat on my cushion and considered this series of events. I even thought of making a community announcement. It was then that I was struck by the absurdity of it all. To think that I might make an announcement complaining about someone having helped me, however intentionally or unintentionally. Then I had the thought, “Oh Sweetie! Look at what you are thinking. How silly is that?!” So, for me, those moments are now called “Oh Sweetie” moments, the moments of realizing how comparing mind takes my thoughts, feelings, actions and inaction, and creates suffering. And I’ve learned that even just naming them “Oh Sweetie” moments is a form of generosity toward myself, allowing me to hold lightly the so-called mistakes.

In truth there is no gap between our actual and our true self. Whether you are perfectly equanimous or you are “messing up,” your true self is always expressing itself as the you of that moment. It’s just that in the mundane reality of day-to-day life, you can and should discern between skillful and unskillful actions of body, speech and mind. This act of discernment is the second Paramita, Ethics (in Sanskrit “Sila”). It is the activity that helps to reduce the hindrances. In his “Instructions to the Tenzo,” Zen Master Dogen says that the Head of the Kitchen of any practice center must have joyful mind, vast mind, and nurturing mind. While vast mind is expressing the way of sameness, nurturing mind is expressing the way of difference.

Therefore, watching over water and over grain, shouldn’t everyone maintain the affection and kindness of nourishing children?

So, even as you disappoint yourself, please be generous with yourself – just as you would be kind to water and to grain and to children. This is the true gift for all seasons, and one which we would do well to give ourselves and others.

 

The Bird and the Ox on Waking Up

Last weekend I was enjoying a discussion about ego with the Dharma en Español group, a gathering of practitioners who study the Spanish translation of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind at SFZC City Center on Saturday mornings. We were exploring the ways in which our views about the world reinforce the idea of a separate self, which is THE fundamental delusion of our lives. Eventually an example was needed, and I offered this one:

You are sitting zazen, and begin to hear the chirping of a bird. You think to yourself, “Ah, this bird is trying to help me wake up!”

Can you find the ego-self in this scenario? It reminds me of the 10 Oxherding pictures – particularly number 9, which appears after the empty frame…

Ox herding picture no. 9

Do you see the bird? Do you see the one who sees the bird? Or the one who hears it? Which is to say, the bird does not appear to arise in order to teach you something. The bird is simply bird; it is there to be the bird it must be, due to the coming together of the particular set of circumstances of the moment. The same applies for the hearer, who is an aggregation of a set of circumstances of the moment, which include a bird sound. This is not to say that the bird and the hearer do not influence one another. They most certainly do if there is any sense contact, or even thought of sense contact. So it is clear that they do not apparently arise independent of each other in the moment of contact. They co-arise in the moment. Yet, there is an aspect of the unknown. The hearer cannot know all of the conditions which appear to create bird or even appear to create self in that moment. This is what Dogen meant when he said, “When one side is illuminated, the other is dark.”

The difference between a deluded view of this event and an awakened view of the event is the perspective. One perspective thinks that the bird exists only in relation to the hearer. The other perspective is that the bird and hearer are in relation to one another and to the myriad circumstances of the universe, with neither apparently arising solely based on itself or the other. So the hearer cannot hear oneself in relation to bird. One can only hear bird. And at the moment of hearing bird, the hearer is one with bird, inseparable from bird, and from all the other conditions of the moment.

This phenomena is especially important to consider when dealing with other people. We can have a perspective of them which is totally caught up in the way we believe that they are serving us, or not serving us, rather than taking the view that we are together co-arising in the moment. In fact, our view of them is as much a factor in each others co-arising as some physical factors.

This kind of discovery happened to a friend of mine who recently wrote to me about his practice. His intention was not to be a cause of suffering for others. He had this wonderful intention, and was very aware of it in his day-to-day life. However, one day it dawned on him that this view was based on his idea that he could control the suffering of others. It became instantly clear that this was an ego-based intention. So, acknowledging that error, my friend could take up the same vow but with Right View, the view of the fundamental interconnected, and yet unknowable nature of those he wants to serve. Now that intention can take flight!

 

Ice Cream Won’t Help

A few days ago I read an article which stated that fully two-thirds of the American population is overweight and one-third is obese, and also stated that these figures are likely to rise in the future. This is a problem, one which is directly addressed in Zen practice.

Many Americans seem to be trying to feel better by eating too much. The problem is one of overwhelming the body with excessive consumption of food and drink. It is a problem which points to a nation of people who are reacting to their suffering by overwhelming their senses. These are people who are trying to put out a fire by eating, who are trying to stop their pain by putting greater quantities of food and less nutritious food in their mouths. However, what people generally experience when they try this method of managing suffering is that it is only temporary. You may momentarily feel less anxiety while you are eating the pint of ice cream, but a few hours or minutes later, it will be back. So then you feel the need to do it even more, and you learn that the suffering you are experiencing burns and burns no matter how much ice cream you throw at it.

Buddhism’s answer to this issue is to stop trying to end suffering by increasing desire. If you think about it that way, it seems completely illogical in the first place. How could you end suffering by increasing desire? And yet, that’s what seems to be happening here. The Buddha in the most basic of teachings suggests that suffering can only be addressed by finding some way other than reactivity. You have to find a way to respond, instead of reacting, and in order to do that you have to be able to slow down enough to see how your desire is a reaction to your suffering. This is what he revealed in the Four Noble Truths.

1) There is suffering. 2) Suffering is caused by a mistaken way of understanding the world. 3) There is a way to resolve suffering. 4) The way to resolve suffering is by applying practices that help you to respond to things more appropriately because you see how they really are.

This is where Zen comes in. Zen puts you into situation where things are simple enough that you can start to see how they really are. Zen asks you to be present in a place and in a way that minimizes the amount of sensory input you receive. The point is not to deprive you of anything, but rather to heighten your awareness, so that you can begin to understand what you are encountering and how you respond to it.

Think about it this way: In Zen, you sit in a silent room to minimize sound input. You sit facing a wall to minimize visual input. You sit still to minimize touch input. You don’t eat or drink anything while sitting, to minimize taste input. You even go so far as to train your mind to focus on your breath or on simply being present with your sensations and thoughts, to minimize thought inputs. Why? Because there is something to be said for not overwhelming the senses. There is something to discover in the mind that is sheer presence, something that cannot be discovered by simply adding more and more sensations, tasty as they may be.