A Zen Handbook for Sanity in an Era of Uncertainty | Jiryu Rutschman-Byler

It is okay—and even beautiful—to be the idiot you are. Jiryu Rutschman-Byler https://nozeninthewest.com/ is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest and teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, with dharma transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman. Jiryu has trained residentially in Zen temples since 1996, and currently serves as a co-Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center https://www.sfzc.org/ through his role as Abiding Abbot of Green Gulch Farm Zen Center https://www.sfzc.org/locations/green-gulch-farm. Jiryu is the final editor of legendary Zen master Shunryu Suzuki's Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/777757/becoming-yourself-by-shunryu-suzuki-edited-by-jiryu-rutschman-byler-and-sojun-mel-weitsman/. In this episode we talk about: The legacy and teachings of legendary Zen master Shunryo Suzuki. What is Zen How to work with your day to day problems — and also life and death problems How to soften the mind Whether to meditate with your eyes open or closed What does it really mean to become "one" with everything Why life isn't something to be "figured out" The connection between the oft-misunderstood concept of "allowing" and being more effective in your life The concept and practice of faith The magic of the universe Related Episodes: The Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, Annaka Harris https://www.danharris.com/p/the-fundamental-mystery-of-the-mind-d10?utm_source=publication-search A Radical Question To Put Your Problems Into Perspective | Annaka Harris https://www.danharris.com/p/a-radical-question-to-put-your-problems?utm_source=publication-search Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Your joints help you keep doing what you love. Give them daily support with Ancient Nutrition Multi-Collagen Protein. Two scoops deliver 20 grams of collagen from 10 types, including clinically studied eggshell membrane, plus vitamin C and probiotics to support skin, hair, nails, and joint health. Visit ancientnutrition.com/protein and use code PROTEIN for $15 off. That's ancientnutrition.com code PROTEIN.

• 0:31Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:46Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. How we doing? My whole life, going back to when I was a kid, I can remember always feeling like I have some problem or set of problems that I've got to deal with. The subconscious lie I've always told myself is that as soon as I get whatever problem is currently on my plate, off my plate, everything will be great. The Elysian fields in perpetuity. But as my friend and teacher, Joseph Goldstein, often says, if it's not one thing, it's another. We're always going to have problems. The question is, how do you deal with them effectively? Today, we're going to get the Zen recipe for handling all of life's inevitable problems.

• 1:30Dan Harris?

  My guest is Jiryu Rushman-Byler, a Soto Zen Buddhist priest and teacher. He is the co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and the abiding abbot of the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. He recently edited a book of teachings by his root teacher, the legendary Zen master Shunryu Suzuki. Shunryu Suzuki was one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the 20th century. He was a founding father of Zen in America, a fascinating dude, and you'll learn a little bit more about him. Other topics we hit in the interview include what is Zen? How to work with your day-to-day problems from a Zen perspective? How to soften the mind? Whether to meditate with your eyes open or closed? What it really means to become one with everything?

• 2:15Dan Harris?

  Why life is not something to be figured out? The connection between the oft misunderstood concept of allowing? And being more effective in your life, the concept and practice of faith and the magic of the universe. If softening your mind and becoming one with everything sounds interesting but esoteric, you really should check out our latest meditation, which drops today from my friend Jeff Warren, who's our teacher of the month over on danharris.com. It's all about how practically to actually relax the mind and body and connect to everything that's happening all around you. You can access it by signing up over at danharris.com.

• 2:57Dan Harris?

  If you sign up, you'll also get invited to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at four. DanHarris.com, check it out. Okay, we'll get started with Jiryu Rushman-Byler right after this. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity and an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend.

• 3:42Dan Harris?

  This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity and an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week.

• 4:27Dan Harris?

  The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or Watching right now, that really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. Jerry U. Ruchman-Byler, welcome to the show.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having me.

• 5:07Dan Harris?

  I'm happy to have you here. I thought maybe it would be good to get started with some basic information for people who are not familiar with Suzuki Roshi or Shunryu Suzuki. I have to say, I tried to look at Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, early in my practice and couldn't grok it. And now that I'm sitting with you and intrigued to go back and take a look at it. Can you just give us a little background on the man himself?

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, sounds like maybe the way where it went a little off is the trying to grok. So Shunryu Suzuki Roshi as a Zen priest, really his whole life was in Zen. He was actually born in a Zen temple. It's kind of typical in the Japanese Buddhist thing for temples to kind of have families and temples to pass from father to son. So Shunryu Suzuki Roshi was born in 1904 in Japan, but then in 1959, he came to the United States and founded really a major stream of Zen and became one of the people who you could say are the grandfathers or founders of Zen in the West.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Buddhism generally, you know, the idea of meditation and Buddhist practice and things like this podcast, you know, really were unthinkable. And people like Suzuki Roshi really planted those seeds. So an early and important founder of American Buddhism. You mentioned Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. That's kind of his very famous book. He also founded the San Francisco Zen Center, which has these three big residential temples and 70 or 80 affiliate groups. So he founded one of the major lineages of Zen practice in the West.

• 6:51Dan Harris?

  There is a critique that I think is fair and accurate. Critique of people like me who tend to tell the story of Buddhism in the West as. Being largely, if not wholly, the result of the so-called Jewboos, young Jewish kids, mostly from the New York City area, who ended up in Asia in the late 60s and early 70s, and then came home and became prominent teachers, in the case of Joseph Goldstein, or Sharon Salzberg, or Jack Kornfield, or became prominent scientists like Richie Davidson, or Daniel Goldman, or John Kabat-Zinn, who was both. And that's all true to a certain extent. I think those guys played a major role in bringing the Dharma to the West.

• 7:35Dan Harris?

  But Shunryo Suzuki was before them. And as I think about the causes and conditions that have led to my being able to have a practice, which has revolutionized my inner and outer life, and a second career, Shunryo Suzuki, notwithstanding my lack of familiarity with him, is one of those major causes and conditions.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so 1959, he arrived. There really had not been much in the United States outside of the Asian immigrant communities or scholarly approaches. So the actual embodied practice has a possibility, a possibility for ordinary people living ordinary lives to bring this meditation practice, as you say, this kind of revolutionary, transformative possibility of just sitting down, and in our case, facing the wall. So yeah, there's been a few. I mean, that's a wonderful and fascinating topic in itself. You know, how Buddhism got here to the West and all the different streams and threads there.

• 8:38Dan Harris?

  Yeah, there's a good book on the subject, How the Swans Came to the Lake, that I recommend. But back to you and your teacher. When did he die? Did you get to spend much time with him? And what was he like?

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Shunryo Suzuki Roshi, I did not get to spend time with him. He died in 1971.

• 8:54Dan Harris?

  Oh, okay.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  And I was born in 1976, so we missed. We missed by a little bit.

• 9:00Dan Harris?

  Okay, you're younger than me.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  So my teacher, and my many teachers that I've had over the many years here at the San Francisco Zen Center, Temple of Tassahara, and Greenwich Farms Zen Center, and San Francisco Zen Center in the city. Many of the teachers that kind of made that place what it's become, knew him and loved him and were trained by him, including my core teacher, Sojun Mel Weitzman Roshi, who was ordained as a priest by Suzuki Roshi and was very close with him in his life. I'm appreciating, one of the things as I study Suzuki Roshi more deeply, even though he was just born and bred in Buddhism his whole life, you know, all the way through, he was also a little bit suspicious of it, you know? He was a little bit skeptical.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  He was ambivalent about, you know, in this new book, Becoming Yourself, and you see it throughout his teaching. He's always kind of like, when he gets an opportunity to take a little jab, you know, at Buddhism, and he sees this beautiful thing in the tradition. And then he sees all the ways that a religious tradition can get stuck and go wrong and get power and get hierarchy and get confused. And so it's this kind of love hate. And I think that is part of what really made him so appealing as a teacher, you know, especially in the 1960s, San Francisco. You know, this is not a group of people that were like, hey, let's go find an organized religion to be a part of. They were like, let's be free of all this. And somehow this very traditional guy could just speak right to these people who wanted to be free of everything.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  And he was teaching them formal stuff, you know, like how to hold their hands and, you know, how to do these kinds of Zen ritual things. But he did it with this kind of warm heart and simplicity, directness and love, I think that's the main thing. You know, when I hear people talk about the experience of being with him, it's just like unconditional love. And this practice, you know, of really including everything as it is, welcoming everything, people really felt that from him, like that they, with all of their anxieties or confusion or tangles, were just totally welcome, totally seen as what they are, you know, which is life itself. His warm heart really is the feature that I've sort of absorbed most

• 11:12Speaker 02

  as impactful to the people who I know who were able to train with him.

• 11:16Dan Harris?

  Before we get to the new book, which as you said is called Becoming Yourself, and I have a million questions about it, including what the title means in a Buddhist context. But before we get to that, I'd just be curious to hear a little bit more about you. How did you get interested in the Dharma? So interested that you dedicated your whole life to it?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, like all of us, right? Like the path traditionally unfolds, starts with you notice suffering.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  You notice suffering and realize that just plowing head in the usual way that you've been plowing head is not actually needing or touching or healing the suffering. So for me, you know, as a young adult, there are some mental health things I was confused about. You could say what was real and what wasn't real. I wasn't so grounded. I wasn't so here. So I turned to spirituality, you know, I had a, I had some important experiences of sort of opening to that kind of vastness of what we are or what this life is, you know, it's a total mystery and miracle. We go along like it's just an ordinary, usual thing, you know.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  But being alive is like, what? So I really was starting to feel that and turn towards that and, oh, okay, right. This is what spirituality gets at. Spirituality is a place where we can get together and look at each other and say, this is crazy, you guys, that there's anything that we're alive. The problem is the kind of spirituality that I started to look to were sort of like, yeah, life is so big, you know, and there's like the cosmos and spiritual energies. And I was already a little bit ungrounded, you know, a little bit unclear about what was real and what wasn't. And sometimes hearing things that weren't there. Then getting into spiritual practice and like, right, yeah, there's all these invisible spirits and you're,

• 13:03Speaker 02

  that's somehow these unknown dimensions of being or something. And it was kind of exciting, but it was also really ungrounded, you know. The more I kind of tried to get big and connected with the vastness, the less was here. It was not helping my mental health. It was not helping my being here in this body, in this place. When I finally encountered Zen practice in a direct way, it was really amazing to me to notice and appreciate in the Zen practice, it's totally embodied. You know, we say chop wood and carry water. There's a lot of talk about teacups, you know, like how you hold the teacup. It is how you hold your hands, you know, how you move your body, how you sweep the leaves. It's this totally embodied, grounded.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Way as also having the vastness, right? So I thought, oh, the big spiritual thing is up in the air and I kind of have to leave here to get there. And the Zen teaching is all about just come right into what this body is to the objects, you know, to the space that you're in, just as they are. Let it be that kind of small thing and just totally be that. And there's all this freedom and space there. So I was just totally hooked really, you know? I had a chance to do some sitting meditation and pretty soon into my practice, a seven day retreat. And I just felt like this has what I need. There's a lineage of teaching. There's, we call a sangha, you know, there's people supporting me, not just like alone in my room,

• 14:33Speaker 02

  communing with spirits that are there. No, it's not so good for you. And a meditation practice that helps me be in my body and really right here and try to open my loving heart and appreciate the magic of being alive.

• 14:48Dan Harris?

  You talked about spirits. I'm not a student of Zen, but is there a lot of influence on other worldly spirits in that tradition?

• 14:57Speaker 02

  No, no, not really at all. I'm saying before I came to Zen, I got quite confused by doing that sort of practice.

• 15:04Dan Harris?

  I see.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  It's in the background, you know, Zen is so old and goes way back into history. And so all of that stuff is kind of like in the background of the tradition. But in terms of the actual practice, you know, Suzuki Roshi had no time or interest in any of that. And for me, the important thing about Zen was that it's not about anything far out or woo woo. It's just exactly about how am I using my body? How am I finding softening my, uh, my mind really, opening my mind? Kind of trying to wake this a little more intuitive way of being that's not so mental. It's not so much like separate, you know, I'm over here, everything else is out there. I have to do something to it. So, no, for me, the spirits is like what I had to recover, recover from.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  That just played right into the confusion I already had, yeah.

• 15:52Dan Harris?

  So we'll get into the how of the chop wood, carry water ethos in a second. Before we get there, I just want to ask a question based on something you said. You were talking about.

• 16:07Dan Harris?

  How it's so easy, as we trudge through life, to lose sight of the fact that this whole fucking thing is a mystery, is a marvel. It's wild. You don't have to believe in spirits to understand that all of this is magic. Everything that's happening right now is riding on this unfathomable ocean of prior conditions. This is all crazy. And yet somehow, our busy prefrontal cortices shut out the glory and we're focused on our to-do list instead. And we're bored, or we're nursing a grudge, or whatever it is. So just very practically, how do you inject awe into

• 16:52Dan Harris?

  the course of your day?

• 16:55Speaker 02

  It is a miracle. And spirits, I mean, this end tradition is so clear about this. Thinking that there's a miracle, like spirits or something are a miracle, are you kidding? Like, the out breath is a miracle, you know? The water coming into your lips is a miracle. You don't know what it is. The mind cannot grasp. Science, you can figure out what it is. You can do physics, you can map the thing. But the feeling, the fact of being alive, there was, I can't remember her name now. I was listening to a podcast about consciousness, and this woman had just this beautiful example of this. She was saying, as a kid, you know, all of the adults around are teaching you, like, how to brush your teeth, and how to do math and stuff. And she was sort of waiting, like, is anybody gonna mention, you know,

• 17:38Speaker 02

  that this is like totally crazy that we're here and alive? And this kid just kind of waiting for someone to point out the obvious of like, hey, kid, like, we don't know what's going on, you know? We all just kind of got here, and we're trying to figure it out. We're trying to do our best. But instead, it's just like, oh, here's how you do math, here's how you brush your teeth. So yeah, and that that's not, it's not separate, of course, it's not separate. So one of my favorite lines from Suzuki Roshi, which isn't written down, but a student of his said, remembers really clearly him saying, which is, "You're more concerned with your problem than with the fact that you're alive." And I just love that, you know? Like, I'm so involved in my today problem, you know?

• 18:22Speaker 02

  That I'm kind of like losing this, just this little stepping back. It's not different from that. I mean, it's not like the fact that I'm alive is like different than my problem. It's just the kind of background, the thing in which I'm having a problem, you know, the being alive, the being alive together. The Zen practice, the meditation practice is just a kind of touching in or a, an alignment with or a training in a kind of quieting the foreground, you know, you said the kind of frontal thing doing the thing of fixating, making the world small and kind of focusing on a problem. But the sitting is a kind of stepping back, taking in a little bit more of the background, you know, you could say the background fact of what is this, you know?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  And then that supports us, that just creates a little bit of ground or a little bit of space or a little bit of ease with which we then meet our problems. That's the only thing to do, you know, it's not like, they're not so separate. In the embodied kind of everyday way, you know, it means kind of exhaling. For me, it means kind of coming into my belly in the Zen practice. There's kind of this emphasis on what we call the hara or the little belly, this kind of like core embodied place where we're sort of trying to come a little bit down from our head and just into the feeling in our body of being here. And then just kind of opening the eyes and trying to widen the attention a little bit, you know, just like step back from the fixation on the thing

• 19:50Speaker 02

  and just notice, okay, there's a whole context here. How is it for you? How do you find that, that kind of awe? I like to use that word awe. Someone said, if you're not in awe, you're not paying attention, you know?

• 20:03Dan Harris?

  Or you're paying attention to the wrong things.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:06Dan Harris?

  Well, I don't want to claim that I'm very good at this, although I do think there are lots of modalities. I'll give you one that just comes to mind. When you were talking about Suzuki Roshi, teaching students in the sixties in the San Francisco Zen Center, all these hippies who are coming in with their problems. I just think about the fact that to those people.

• 20:32Dan Harris?

  Sixty years ago, their problems blotted out the sun. It just seemed like, God, when's my draft number coming up? My dad won't let me pursue the career I wanted to pursue. They must have seemed like really big problems. Where are they now? And the same is true of my problems.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  That's beautiful, Dan. Thank you. That's a beautiful reflection. You don't have to wait sixty years, you know, just like even the next morning. Isn't that amazing? At night, you know, it's like, oh, my God, you know, a big problem. Looking at my calendar, I'm quite busy in this position of the abbot here at Greenwich Farms Zen Center, which is one of our three San Francisco Zen Center temples. So co-abbot of this really big and vast Zen Center complex, three temples and a wide, you know, non-residential sangha. So my calendar is a mess. And I look at my calendar and I get this just kind of gripped, you know, impossible sort of feeling. And that's so real, you know, when it's real. And and then just something shifts. The next morning, you just look at the same calendar and it's like,

• 21:34Speaker 02

  it's fine. Yeah, sixty years later, I think, and that's so wonderful about spending time with older people, you know, just that context. Well, we can do it now, you know, just a little bit of stepping back and appreciating that we're alive while we're alive, you know. The problem, the thing that we're caught up in is not in the way of our being alive. The feeling is like, I have to get over this. I have to get through this, you know, and then then I'll be alive or something. Then I'll be okay. Then I'll be able to have my joy. Then I'll be able to thrive and it's just a series of problems. The problem's not in the way of anything. It just is our life. So versus Ikirashi to be telling these kids, you know, young people,

• 22:16Speaker 02

  don't miss that you're alive and let's do that together, you know. And that's not to minimize or dismiss the problem. It's just, it's like the background

• 22:26Speaker 02

  or the context or the space it's all happening in.

• 22:30Dan Harris?

  Well, let me just get right to what you said there, but let's not minimize or dismiss the problem because I can imagine people listening to this and thinking, well, you guys just listed some problems, but they don't compare to my problem. Like, my kid just got a terminal diagnosis, or I just got a terminal diagnosis, or you name it. There are problems that are, I don't know, all caps problems, you know, stop the presses

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:54Dan Harris?

  type of stuff. So, does this feel the breath at the south of the belly button? Or contemplate the fact that billions of people have preceded you on this planet and they've had problems? This stuff might sound nice, but you know, when it's up against something that's like headline news, maybe not so actionable.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. Big, deep problems. The whole world suffering, our own struggles, our families, aging, death. I mean, there's life and death problems, you know? I know those too.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Suzuki Roshi says, you know, kind of like, actually, the bigger the problem is, the more important it is that we actually find some place in our being that can hold and be with a big problem, you know? Like, we use the examples of the little problems, but in a way, the little problems, the thinking mind, the dualistic mind, can usually figure its way out through the little problems. The thinking mind, that either or, the what should I do, the separate, you know, I'm over here, it's over here, it's over there, what do I do to it? That kind of mental either or should based approach is like, it can't include everything that we need to include when we're meeting a really big, deep problem.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  So Suzuki Roshi says, the more you realize how difficult, you know, it is, it's what the Buddha said, do. When you really realize how difficult, how deep the suffering goes, you need some other tool, you know? The way I think of it is like, okay, if I have a little problem, I can give it to this chaotic childish mind, right? When I have a really big problem, I need to give it to the adult, you know, to the thing that's bigger and more grounded. A big problem needs a big self, you could say, a big caretaker. And for me, kind of in my practice and the Zen training, that's like, This embodied wisdom, you know, our mind can't hold all of the contradictions that a

• 24:53Speaker 02

  real problem has. It's like, I like it, I don't like it, I want it, I don't want it, it's okay, it's not okay. None of the things I can do makes sense.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  The mind is trying to figure out like what to do in that, but the kind of quieting the mind and just including all of that in a kind of presence or in a kind of spaciousness,

• 25:16Speaker 02

  even though it's all contradictory, even though it's all a swirl of impossible obstacles or problems, you know, this kind of bigger presence actually can be the ground from which to meet it. And I think we kind of have this experience all the time. It's like when we're thinking about something, it's hard to find our way through and then we just relax and take some breaths and then it's like boom, right, I'm gonna go left, not right. I'm gonna go right, not left. I'm gonna say yes and not no. And then there's even this idea, right, that that action or that decision, I don't know, you've maybe talked to neuroscientists or whatever, there is this idea, that action is coming a little

• 25:57Speaker 02

  bit before we have like decided with our mind, right? So there's something about trusting and the Zen training is about kind of like trusting whether it's a big problem or a little problem, can I rely a little more on this kind of presence that includes everything, the soft mind that's just intimate and open and not really knowing? Can I trust that that will be a ground of action? Or do I need to be using my kind of manipulative, separate thinking mind and just try it out in little ways?

• 26:27Speaker 02

  A million examples of this, you know, in our life where we can just try to soften the mind and come more into that intuitive wisdom and then just see, just check it out, see is that trustworthy? Did that work? And then gradually, in the language of Zen, you know, we sort of build our faith, our confidence in, I can bear to empty my mind a little bit. I'm gonna be actually okay if I soften and empty my mind a little bit because I have what I need to be connected and to respond with wisdom and compassion and that's in the embodied presence. I'm gonna rely on that more and rely on my dualistic, confused, tangled mind a little bit less.

• 27:08Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Jiryu Rushman-Byler talks about the what and how of softening the mind and working with your problems, whether you should meditate with your eyes open or closed, and what it really means to become one with everything.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 27:55Speaker 04

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 28:14Speaker 05

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on Community Organizations. Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• 28:27Dan Harris?

  I love how in Zen world and in the Buddhist world writ large, there's a kind of retaking of the fraught word of faith in Western culture. As you know, faith is often used as kind of weaponized, you believe in this dogma or you're a sinner. But faith in the Buddhist Zen and in the overall Buddhist senses is, as you said, confidence and that you can build through your own direct experience. And in this case, we're talking about the direct experience of shifting into a different mindset instead of handing all of your problems over to, I think you referred to it as our childish dualistic mind. So let me then follow up with a really practical question. This thing you're describing,

• 29:11Dan Harris?

  which sounds great to soften the mind, to empty the mind, to inhabit a kind of embodied presence, what does that mean actually and how does one do it actually?

• 29:25Speaker 02

  So actually, it means, you know, seeing. So in our sitting practice, sitting practice in Zen is not the point, really. Sitting practice is like, what my teachers called it, training wheels. I was so into what we call zazen, seated meditation. And I was maybe 20 and I was at our, our more monastic training place. And I was so into, you know, the sitting and just the more you sit, the better. You know, you gotta sit all the time. And this wonderful teacher said, that's the training wheels. No, I thought I was doing some heroic, awesome thing by all this sitting. And she was like, yeah, that's just the training wheels. The point of the sitting is to help us balance the bike, just to help us live our life.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  So the sitting is a kind of a good practice area, practice range for us to experiment with and take even tentative steps into what's it like to relax the mind a little bit, to soften some of the thinking. Can I trust that? Can I try that? So practically, you know, it is helpful to sit even just now and then for a few minutes. And the way we do that is to take an upright posture and kind of align our spine and head and body so that the breath can go down into the belly again, this kind of belly center. So we just breathe, you know, all the way out from the lower belly.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  And then all the way in from the lower belly. And already right there, concentration is not like some impossible thing. We know how to concentrate. It's kind of our birth rate. Even just for a moment, concentrating on that breath, it's like, the thinking is there, ready to rush right back in, you know? But just even for a second, you know, we can just breathe out.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  And then the mind, you know, tries to come back in. So in Zen, then we

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Try to relax the mind, try to let go of some of the thinking by feeling that feeling of the breath. And then there's a step that I think is kind of the basis of almost all the meditation techniques and all the different Buddhist schools. And then in the Zen way, we open our eyes a little bit and we kind of open our ears and we get curious about what's happening around us. That's also a wonderful way to cut through the thinking. When there's something interesting happening, we're not thinking about something else. Well, we're talking to our friend who we really love and they're telling us something important. We're probably not thinking as much as when we're just wandering mind because something important and interesting is happening, right? So we're kind of like, we're sort of there for it.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  And part of being there for it means other things, other kinds of thoughts other than about this situation now, you know, talking to my friend. They kind of don't have a place and it's not that I'm pushing them away. It's just I'm interested in what my friend is saying. I want to be here with them. So the Zen idea, Suzuki Roshi's idea, is kind of like our surroundings, our life, the light and the sound and the things happening around us also are kind of like very interesting. They're trying to share their feelings, kind of a funny poetic way to put it. But that's what Suzuki Roshi says, you're kind of, the space that we're in is trying to share its feeling with us as a kind of metaphor for this intimacy. I don't know if that sounds practical.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  The point is to come into the body, come into the breath and then just see, you know, focusing on the breath and opening the eyes and just noticing that something interesting is happening around. So sometimes we say, and Suzuki Roshi does make this point, you know, when the mind is crowded with all this rubbish, it's hard to really feel the feeling of life and to feel how that being alive is like really pretty intimate with everything that's around it. You know, sometimes even like painfully intimate. We're so, so together with everything, really. So the mind is just so, so full and so it's hard to appreciate the feeling of where we are. But we really can let some of that thinking quiet.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  And part of how we can do that is by remembering, finding in ourselves, inquiring in ourselves, you know, are we curious? Do we want to be connected with what's around? And then just attending to what's around us? Does that make sense, Dan?

• 33:45Dan Harris?

  It makes sense to me. I think it makes sense to me, but I'm going to try to repeat some of it back to you and ask some clarifying questions in service of making sure that I actually got it. And more importantly, making sure that the listener can understand it and deploy it in his or her own life. How does that sound?

• 34:05Speaker 02

  That's wonderful, Dan. I really appreciate that.

• 34:08Dan Harris?

  So I think what you were teaching us there is zazen, the Zen style of seated meditation. The goal of which is not to get better at zazen per se. It's to get better at navigating life and your problems. But this is a foundational training. And so in zazen, I think what you're describing is it starts, eyes closed, with a feeling of the breath coming in and out at the hara, which is kind of a little bit south of the belly button. And then one might open the eyes. Often in zazen meditation, you're actually kind of sitting in front of a wall. You might take in the wall, the light around you.

• 34:50Dan Harris?

  So it's a way of sharpening the mind a little bit on the grounding and honing the attention through paying attention to the breath. Then you open up a little bit by opening the eyes and seeing if you can be aware of your surroundings. And of course, every time you get distracted, just start again. Is that a decent recapitulation?

• 35:10Speaker 02

  It's wonderful. And when you put it that way, you know, it does sound kind of hard. So I'm sorry that it's hard, you know? It's hard to be alive. So like, I mean, we're already doing something hard, right? That's what Suzuki Roshi says. If you think that your life isn't already hard, then why would you do something hard, like try to meditate? But when you get that your life is hard, so you might have to do something hard to figure out how to cope with your hard life. The Buddha's not saying like, oh, we could do something easy, but I'm making up something hard for us to do randomly. He's saying, life is really, really hard. And I'm actually, even though it's crazy to say, I'm actually offering something that in the long run is easier, you know?

• 35:54Speaker 02

  The way Suzuki Roshi most talks about, for beginners, the way he most talks about zazen or seated meditation is counting the breath. If we can just feel ourself, there's just something about planting our feet in the feeling of being alive, and maybe somebody has this by walking, maybe somebody has this by doing some other kind of physical practice, running, or some sport, or just something that's embodied where you're not so much in your head. And so in the sitting, it's this, Suzuki Roshi, when he talks about the hara, you know, he doesn't get too kind of specific or esoteric about it. It's more just like letting the breath fall, drop into the belly, you know, you can just

• 36:38Speaker 02

  feel your belly kind of going out and in, just trying to take a few deep breaths. And so then in the sitting, we just count each of those out breaths, one to 10, and usually we just count around three, no, two or three. And then, no matter how long we're gone for, we just come back again to one. And the most important thing in the coming back to one is that we're just happy and grateful to be coming back to one, you know? When it's like, I'm such a bad meditator, I've just was gone, was it five minutes? Was it 10 minutes? Forget it. It's just like, as soon as you come back to your senses, right? As soon as you kind of come back to life, remember you're in a room and have this idea

• 37:20Speaker 02

  of meditating, you just come back to one with some joy, some gratitude, like, yeah, one, what a wonderful thing to be back in the breath. That moment is so important, you know? Because if we're harsh with ourselves, if we're like, you idiot, how can you get confused at three again? Who wants to come home to that, you know? So we just come back to the one, like, right, doesn't matter how long, you know, we're looking for just these moments of being fully alive. It doesn't matter how much time is between them. When we kind of come back to life, we can just be grateful and joyful. So he says, you know, we just count our breath, and then, as we count our breath...

• 38:00Speaker 02

  The mind starts to quiet down. And then if the mind is quiet, quiet some, and we don't need to be counting anymore for the mind not to be so crazy, then we can stop counting and just be with the flow of our breath. And then try to include more and more. See if we can include more and more, you know, of what's happening around us without kind of rushing back into that tense evaluating, calculating, inside, outside, self, other, either or, mental thing. So even just to count a few breaths and just clear the mind for a little bit, I really believe that we all have that capacity. And then it just is refreshing, you know, it creates a new ground, even if our mind fills up again.

• 38:43Dan Harris?

  Two very practical clarifying questions. You mentioned at some point taking a deep breath, but my understanding is one might start with some deep breaths, but the counting of the breath is you're counting the breath as it naturally occurs, not deep breathing. Am I right about that?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. To do kind of like deep breathing, you kind of get out of breath after a few breaths. It's not so sustainable, but there's something about taking in the kind of traditional formal Zen meditation instruction, you take a couple of deep breaths to start to just kind of like reset, reset the body. I think of it as like primed the breath or just make a little bit of a forceful kind of expression of intention here like, okay, I'm coming into my breath, I'm coming into my body. So a few strong breaths. And then just breathing naturally. The thing is, when we're relaxed, natural breathing kind of is in our belly. Like a baby is kind of breathes in a belly or somebody in a really relaxed state, you know.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  The breath naturally actually wants to be in the belly. So it's not like we're forcing it there, pushing it there. It's just as we relax, we might notice that that's where it likes to be. So we might give it some encouragement at the start of our sitting, just to remind it that sometimes it likes to be in the belly. But yeah, the focus is natural breathing, just as the Buddha said, when it's long, it's long. And that's this, that's our life and it's amazing. And when it's short, it's short and that's our life and it's amazing.

• 40:11Dan Harris?

  The other practical question is, do you do zazen the entire time with your eyes open? Or do you open them once you feel like you've got a base of focus and concentration?

• 40:23Speaker 02

  The traditional instruction is open the whole time.

• 40:26Dan Harris?

  Interesting.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  But when I'm taking a few breaths and trying to concentrate, I do find, yes, an interesting question. I feel like if you keep your eyes closed for too long, you start daydreaming.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Or dreaming, you know, and you're kind of separating, you're kind of going in. In the old Zen tradition, they call it the ghost cave, the demon cave. You're withdrawing into this deep, dark cave. And I'm here separate, my depth, my meditation. And Zen is about the intimacy, the, like, forgive the expression, but becoming one with our surroundings, being intimate. So to have our eyes open is more like, right, what we're trying to practice is being one with our surroundings, not kind of going into this inner kind of place. So I find like for one or two breaths, to close the eyes kind of helps with the concentration, but any more than that. But that's just kind of how I'm putting it today. Generally, we keep the eyes open.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  And it kind of becomes an important point in Zen meditation instruction because of what that signals about. The point of this practice is not for you to go into some deep state in yourself.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  The point is to like soften a little bit this rigid, fixed inside and outside separation thing. So with our eyes open, it's kind of like, right, the light and ears open and the sound and the heart open, all the feeling, all the sensation. Kind of being the whole field of being alive. So the eyes open, you know, just signifies that. You don't need to be dogmatic about it, but it can be a little more helpful if the eyes are open to have that feeling of, right, I'm trying to connect with my surroundings in a more deep and open way. As the Sikkurish says, I'm trying to feel the feeling of being in the woods when I'm in the woods. And so I want my eyes to be open. I want to feel the feeling of my friend. So I want to be looking at them, you know, to feel, to be intimate.

• 42:14Dan Harris?

  I want to pick up on that word intimacy because it is a major topic in the book. And you've brought it up. And it's linked to another phrase that is prominent in the book and that you've also brought up, which is this idea of meditation being a source of sharing the feeling. That was a phrase used earlier and a phrase that Suzuki Roshi used. When I hear you talk, and I'm imagining when the listeners hear you talk about being intimate or one with all of, all of our surroundings, with everything, you know, it's-

• 42:47Speaker 02

  The old hot dog joke, yeah.

• 42:49Dan Harris?

  Exactly, or the ordering the pizza, you know, the Dalai Lama ordering a pizza. I'll take one with everything.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  I, you know, we maybe shouldn't use that. It's very seventies to say become one with everything. So I try to avoid it, but it's also like, it's a beautiful idea. It's a beautiful idea to just, for the intimacy, you know. But sorry, what's, what's your question?

• 43:10Dan Harris?

  No, I love everything you're saying. I just, so we're both establishing that this is a very common trope in spiritual circles. It's maybe the apex predator of meditation cliches. And yet, like, what does it really mean? And how do we know if we're achieving it, you know? I mean, I feel like sometimes I'm on a retreat or especially in my early years, like I'm staring at the trees and how can I be one with these fucking trees? Like I'm still me, they're over there. Like, so can you help us like break it down so that we can understand it?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this is Zen in a nutshell, right? Is the more you're trying to like be one with the tree, that's ridiculous. You're standing there looking at the tree. Like, the point is, the tree is not actually separate from your life. And when I say that, it might sound mystical, so I just want to be really clear. This is not like the tree that you're looking at, or say the computer that you're looking at. The table that you're looking at, the steering wheel that you're looking at, is not actually different from your life. That kind of, once you just sort of appreciate that, or just make this little shift, I think these teachings start to make a lot more sense. Where is that steering wheel happening? Where is that tree happening? They're happening in damn.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  I mean, the whole thing that your life is, is like, everything that's appearing in your life is your life.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  I use this image for that. Every time I use it, I say, I gotta stop using this, but I can't find a better one for now, which is like, a dream. And the reason I hesitate to use this is because I don't think we're dreaming. I don't have this idea like, reality is a dream. I think that's dumb. I think that's like, not helpful. And I think it's not true. Who cares if it's a dream or not? Dream or not, I mean, from the Zen point, it's like, what are you talking about? That's, we don't actually know what it is enough to know, you know, to say anything about it, like dream or not dream. So it's not that it's not real. And it's not that there's not real things that are other than you. Like, you are really there, I'm really here. It's not like a weird and dangerous idea, like, I'm the only one that exists.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  But in a dream, but it's a good example, or kind of metaphor. Everything that I encounter in the dream, what is it made of?

• 45:27Speaker 02

  It's just my own mind, right? It's my own being. I see someone, or I climb some mountain, or I see some monster in my dream. It's just made out of my own dream. If that's a way that can land for you to put it. In my life, everything that I'm experiencing in my life just is my life. Nothing is in the way of my life. Nothing is really separate from my life. As soon as I'm experiencing something, it's in the field of what my life is. It's right here. That's what I mean, it's so intimate. You might get a little uncomfortable even when you start to appreciate, like, these people around me, you know, walking, walking down the sidewalk. These people around me are actually... They're my own life.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  That's not like, yes, sometimes, you know, the Buddha or somebody. Suzuki Roshi said the beautiful thing about the Buddha and the morning star, you know, they shared their feeling with each other. So, and that was the Buddha's enlightenment, you know, wow, I'm not separate and the star is not separate. Sometimes that happens in this kind of dramatic, intense feeling of like, oh, my God, oh, no, I'm actually one. Things are not separate, but even just in a more basic way, like, right, everything, I'm walking down the street. Me walking down the street includes all of this stuff. This stuff isn't separate. It is, the whole sidewalk is me walking down the street. Am I like off the rails? Are you with me, Dan? Or do you think your audiences can appreciate that? Or does it sound like mystical or strange?

• 46:56Dan Harris?

  No, I think you're doing great. And I think it lands for me, so I'll say it out loud and make sure it really does. But everything that I see or hear or smell is not a separate thing invading my space. It is in my mind, therefore it is in my life. And so we may feel separate from the gum on the sidewalk and the person whose outfit we don't like stepping on the gum on the sidewalk. We may feel like we're this separate ego fretfully navigating the world, but anything that's in your mind is non-negotiablely part of your life. And so you aren't separate fundamentally. Is that what you're saying?

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a wonderful way to put it. My only quibble maybe would be, I don't so much like the word mind.

• 47:45Dan Harris?

  Interesting.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Because it makes it seem like a mental thing in a way. And maybe it's just, you know, this end training is more like coming into the body. So it's like just everything that's in your life, just everything that's appearing in your life, everything that you see or hear is your own self. And so Suzuki Roshi says, and you asked about becoming yourself, right? He says this funny thing. So becoming yourself in a practical way, in the most kind of basic way, just means, oh, I get to be who I am. I don't have to try to be anybody other than who I am. Like, I can't anyway, you know? We know this is like typical advice, right? It's just be yourself and stop trying to be something else.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  And then you can kind of like more fully be with what's here and be more creative and be more spacious and be more present. So it just kind of means, you know, be the idiot you are. Let that be okay. And then there's a kind of wisdom there. But it also means, in Suzuki Roshi's teaching, he says, becoming yourself, when you are you yourself. And I appreciate that you said, you know, I couldn't grok any, I tried to read the Zen My Beginner's Mind. I couldn't really grok it. He's speaking to the kind of intuitive thing. And it's in a way, this is like the insight versus Zen approaches too, within Buddhism. It's a little bit more linear or instructional versus a little more poetic or kind of speaking to the intuition. So he says, when you are really you yourself, you include everything.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  So for him, becoming yourself is like becoming this life itself, becoming the life that you are. And then everything is included in that. So being yourself doesn't mean I'm myself, not you. It's like being myself is being the fullness of my experience of my being alive, which everything is part of. So he says, when you're really yourself, you include everything. So then being that, living in that way where everything is included, things aren't so separate. It's softening this fixed view of inside and outside. And then just meeting our life from that is trustworthy. It's a little bit better ground.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  We can be a good father, husband, partner, friend, worker.

• 50:01Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Jerry talks about why life is not something to be figured out, the connection between intimacy and allowing and being more effective in your life.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 50:45Speaker 04

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 51:05Speaker 05

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on "Community Organizations." Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• 51:17Dan Harris?

  Let me see if I can respond to what you said in order. First, I love your quibbles. Please always include them because, I mean, that's the very purpose of my restating what I've heard from you is that I want you to correct me. You did make a reference, and I just want to clarify it for listeners. You made a reference to the difference between the insight tradition versus the Zen tradition. And for those of you who are not well-versed on all of the Dharma combat that exists among the various schools of meditation, insight meditation is sometimes referred to as Theravada meditation is literally the oldest school of Buddhism, and it really is taught in quite a linear way, which is why it's so congenial to sort of Western minds like mine.

• 52:00Dan Harris?

  That's why I've spent a lot of time in the insider Theravada tradition. The Zen tradition, which is a later innovation within the multi-century progression of Buddhism, is a little bit more poetic and nonlinear. So what you were saying, I believe, is that the reason why people like me might struggle with some of Suzuki Roshi's writings is it's not speaking to your prefrontal cortex. It's speaking to some, a deeper part of the mind and the brain. And then just to get back to your core point about intimacy, I used a bit of a trigger word, being slightly facetious here earlier, when I said it's... Everything you see is happening in your mind. You change that, I think, helpfully, at least for me, to happening in your life.

• 52:43Dan Harris?

  And so there's nothing that you're experiencing that is outside of your life. And if you can navigate the world with that attitude of, yeah, this is all part of it. It's all included. That doesn't mean you're doormat or resigned to things that you see that are unacceptable, but at least you're not at war with reality and you don't feel separate from everything that's happening.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  Thank you. Yeah, nothing to do, this teaching has nothing to do with being resigned to things. The flow of your life naturally, you know, we're part of it. We're responding, we're engaged, you know? Some meditation teachers talk about mind or talk about awareness. I'm a little bit allergic to that language. I appreciate people who go deep through that gate, you know? I think arrive at a wonderful place and I don't think it's different from what I'm talking about. But awareness, I just get a little tangled up, like what's the awareness? Find the awareness, be the awareness. Like what? I guess it makes me kind of back in my head. Whereas the just being alive, to me, makes a lot of sense. And that what am I? Who am I? This is also kind of Zen question, right? Frustrates the intellect. Who am I?

• 53:50Speaker 02

  So people, you know, in like the Renzen Zen tradition, I'm part of the Soto Zen tradition, but our friends in other areas of the Zen teaching like to ask these intense questions and just sit with them for a week, you know, in a room, you know? Who am I? What is this? So what am I, you know? And our Soto Zen, we just like, stop making such a big deal, you know? Just to be it, just to be it. You're not going to be able to figure it out. You can't actually figure it out. Suzuki Kurosaki says, if you really want to be yourself, don't try to figure it out. Figuring it out, now you're separating from it, seeing it as an object and trying to get a handle on it. The point is that being alive doesn't have any handles. The being alive is, it's like the feeling of I.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  So for me to say what I am, who I am, is just life itself. That's not like an accomplishment or that's not like a special fancy thing. It's just the obvious fact. I am life.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  I didn't make that, and that life that I am, that's not separate from any of the other life. It's just, it's actually just one thing, you know? Suzuki Roshi says, and again, maybe this is also a little far out, but he says, you know, you're not just part of this thing. You're not just part of this thing. You are this thing. We are life. And to be that self, even just to appreciate, or just to even have that idea and breathe out with that idea, like, right, I'm just life, you know? Creates this kind of ease and opening and softening that, again, just really is good ground for our chopping wood and carrying water and going to work and solving our problems and trying to help the world. It's not instead of any of that. It's just kind of being honest

• 55:29Speaker 02

  about what's happening, which is, we are life itself.

• 55:35Dan Harris?

  Let me try something and see how it goes over with you. This may or may not go over well with you, given that the source is an insight meditation teacher, but there's

• 55:42Speaker 02

  a No, I love the teachings. We need each other.

• 55:45Dan Harris?

  I'm just kidding.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  We all keep each other honest, you know?

• 55:48Dan Harris?

  I hope. One of my favorite things to say about enlightenment is, as soon as you're talking about enlightenment, you're in an argument, you know, because everybody, there's all these different views on what enlightenment is or means, or, but anyway, setting that aside, the phrase that I'm going to run by you comes from a Burmese master who I've never met. I'd love to meet him. His name is Sayadaw Utejanea. And one of his instructions to his students is while you're meditating, just to eventually, to occasionally drop these three words into your mind. This is nature.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  Beautiful. It's the same teaching. The teachings are all the same teaching. It's just different gates for different minds, you know, or different aspects. So, this is nature. Is that what you said? Drop those three words into your mind. This is nature. One of the, kind of the basic feeling of our being separate. So Suzuki Roshi is talking about intimacy or sharing the feeling and sharing our feeling with things that are around us. Being in the woods, we really just feel the feeling of being in the woods. Washing the dishes in our kitchen, we just feel that feeling of being in our kitchen, washing the dishes. And he says, when you feel the feeling of being in the kitchen or being in the woods, that's tazazen.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  In that kind of way of immediate, direct, just being our life, it's not like me plus nature, right? Like, me plus the universe. Suzuki Roshi says, "When you think you're acting on the universe, like you're outside it, what's outside the universe? You must be a ghost. If you're acting on the universe, you're a ghost, because where are you standing? So this is nature, this is life, you know? It's not me plus life, it's not me plus the universe. It's not even me plus you, you know?

• 57:37Speaker 02

  And we don't need to understand that with our mind. I think something about these teachings is like they can resonate and we can appreciate their resonating and we can kind of like align with them without really understanding it. You know, I was sharing some Suzuki Roshi with another Zen teacher the other day. I said, you know, Suzuki Roshi has this saying that, you know, when you're just yourself, then Zen is Zen. And I said, "I never, I never understood, what does that mean?" She said, "Yeah, I never understood what that means either, but I like how it makes me feel." You know? There's something about like letting these teachings talk to the part that understands them that... I remember long ago, so I was at our kind of more monastic training place deep in the

• 58:20Speaker 02

  mountains around Big Sur in California and doing this training. And during the summer, we have a kind of open time at Tassahara where guests come in. And my mom visited and we have our morning kind of sitting and then we do our morning services, you know, this chanting. And that day that she was there, we were chanting this very obscure text by this 13th century Zen guy named Togan Zenji. And this very poetic, weird text about zazen, you know? It's like, "Oh no, I'm trying to like make a good impression." My mom, she thinks I'm not doing something weird and here we're reading this text that's like... She, afterwards, she was kind of like, "Yeah."

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Something like, "Right."

• 59:06Speaker 02

  She couldn't have explained it, you know, or she didn't then like give me a three-point thing that it meant, but right, like, something was true about that kind of poetic way of putting what this being alive is and what our path as human beings is, to appreciate Suzuki Roshi, even though he does have lots of practical instructions, like, you know, count the breath, but he's more like inviting us into a way of being that's a little less mental.

• 59:32Dan Harris?

  Well, I'm going to violate the spirit of this conversation and ask you a very practical question.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Please do. I want that.

• 59:39Dan Harris?

  I'm curious about the order of operations here, or the connection between intimacy and allowing and understanding that everything that enters our life is part of our life, that we're not separate from it. How does that help us chop wood and carry water, by which I mean, how does that help us be more effective in our life, especially as we're dealing with problems?

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  When we're allowing ourselves to be a little more connected, a little more intimate with what's happening around us. Zen talks about the appropriate response. So, the appropriate response, or this kind of great activity it's sometimes called, the appropriate response is like, the appropriate response. An ancient Zen teacher was asked, you know, what's the teaching of your whole lifetime? And I think this was Yunmen, and he said, an appropriate response. So just that ability to be actually present with and responsive to what's happening around us. So, for example, I'm talking to my friend who's having a hard time. I may have

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  all kinds of ideas about their life, right? And what they should do, how they're doing life wrong, you know, and that's what their problem is, and they've got to hear it from me, you know. So I have some idea, I kind of have something figured out, they're over there, I'm over here, I know something, and I'm going to tell them, I'm going to do something to them, you know, like tell them how to get their life together. We maybe know, you know, that kind of way is likely to not be so helpful. Suzuki Roshi says, when you're in that kind of separation, it's going to be really hard to help people because you're not actually letting them help you. It's a little bit of a different topic, but a beautiful thing he says, you can't help somebody if you're not letting everything be helping you. You can't be intimate one direction, you know? I'm going to help you, but not let you help me.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  It's like, no, either the window's open or it's closed, you know? So I'm talking to my friend. When I can actually just settle my mind a little bit, feel that natural warmth, you know, that innate love that we have. This is part of our faith, part of the teachings, and we love each other. We love everything. We get that all covered over and tangled up, you know? And get confused into thinking that we hate, but we actually, in our being, you know, we are not separate from each other and we know that. And we love each other. We have this inherent innate living heart. So here intimate with my friend who's telling me something, feeling their presence, letting the thoughts quiet down. I don't know what the response is going to be. When you're talking to someone, say a loved one or a friend,

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  wouldn't you like them to not know what they're going to say back to you already? You want them to actually be present, listening. And neither of you know what they're going to say. Because what they're going to say back to you is like related to what you said to them. It's not related to all your ideas or moral code or system of understanding, the three-point thing they're supposed to do. It's going to come from a responsiveness, like I'm right here with you, I hear you. And now, wow, look, without necessarily thinking about it, something of my intuitive wisdom, my whole life experience, meeting your pain in your words now, something just happened together. And so I'm responding. I think we can all feel that difference,

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  where sometimes we're even a little bit surprised by something that we say, you know? Because it was like, it wasn't coming from my prior idea. It was actually coming from a kind of presence in the moment. But we don't trust that. We don't trust that. We think like, no, you don't understand. I really need all my thinking to get through the day. So that's why we just try it in little ways. And the teaching is actually you, you will have what you need. You'll be more effective if you're actually more in touch with what's in the room. So like I'm in meetings all the time, you know, maybe people think the abbot is like sitting meditation all the time. But I'm like in meetings all the time, you know?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  And if I kind of know how that's going to go, or I know my approach, or I know the problem, or I know what that person needs to be doing different or whatever. And then I'm coming in with that. It's not going to be as helpful as if, yeah, I have my, all my views, you know, sure, I was thinking about it all day yesterday because it's a stressful thing. So I'm coming in, I have all my ideas about it. But then when I'm there with the person, if I can actually just let all that quiet down and really try to be listening and present and intimate. This all included in my own life and I just am curious about it and here with it and now

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  something can happen. It might be the same thing that I had planned to say. But it's with a kind of presence. Or, you know, I'm in traffic and I'm like

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  just that feeling of all of these people are impinging on my life. All of these people are keeping me from, you know, where I'm supposed to be getting. As opposed to like, right, actually these, I mean, in the Buddhist sense, right? Without these people around you, you're not alive. There's no life without this traffic. In that moment of traffic, the only way you're alive is with the traffic, you know? So that right, okay, all of this is my life. Sixty years from now, I'll have wished I was present, you know, in the car with this not against me. So then, yeah, I mean, how does that help? I don't like lay on the horn and stick my head out the window and like rage at the people because it's like welcome, like included a little more. And again, it's not an either or like either you're raging or you're like one with everything.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  It's just a kind of softening, a little bit more in the direction towards breathing out, really.

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Everything welcome, everything included.

• 1:05:17Dan Harris?

  So if we can allow ourselves to be in this intimate receptive mode, which again, we can train through zazen. Well, then, when quote unquote, "problems" emerge, like traffic, we can view them with more wisdom and handle them more effectively. And we're responding not from a place of our prior ideas, which were all coming from the demon cave, but in fact, from this mysterious ineffable wisdom to which we all have access if we can drop out of our thinking dualistic minds.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, in traffic and also with my kid is having a mental health crisis. You know, my mom is dying, you know, the pain of the world. To let, you could say innate wisdom, you know, and that might, somebody might say, "Well, that sounds good, you know, but I don't have that." Another way to say it is kind of like the wisdom of the whole situation. So Zen is kind of like softening and becoming sort of, I don't know, maybe we shouldn't say, but becoming one or just including everything, including everything. And then there's a kind of a wisdom that comes from that whole situation. That's a little more than what I myself was bringing. The thing that I figured out and that I'm bringing is not complete. And when I'm open to the whole situation,

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  some kind of responsiveness or something can happen. It's more connected and complete. So maybe to say this ineffable intuitive wisdom makes it sound fancy. It's more just, we can trust ourselves to know what to do when it's time to do something. And we've experienced that really in a daily way. We just know, you know, somebody needs something. We know what to do without thinking about it. That happens all the time. And yet still, in a pinch, we clench around the thinking. So it's just more like trust this thing that you already know, that you have, which is the kind of gut, you know? We're talking about hara or belly. We have this gut kind of feeling like we, we kind of know what to do. And that's an amazing thing about being a human being. We don't know how we got here.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  We don't quite know what it is, but we know what to do.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  And it's a mess, you know? It's a mess. It's all kind of pain and suffering and struggle. But to say, "Right, I don't have to figure out what to do. I have to figure out how to be born," you know? Then have to figure out, you know, how to grow up. I have what I need and I'm ready to say I'm sorry, you know? That's not like, oh, I'm using ineffable intuitive wisdom. Everything I do is perfect now. It's the feeling. Zuki Roshi has a beautiful thing. He's talking about the precepts, right? The ethical precepts. And he says, do not kill is like a dead precept. The living precept is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, you know? It's not like, oh, I'm ineffable wisdom. I'm beyond reproach. It's like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm just here alive, trying to do my best.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  But not do my best by figuring it all out. Do my best by breathing out and trying to touch into this just love and connection. That's, that's just what we already are.

• 1:08:28Dan Harris?

  So I have this, I think, somewhat incurable linear way of thinking, which I'm going to, like the Kool-Aid man, come bursting through the wall and ruin all of this poetry. But I'm making a little map on my notes in front of me, but it feels like the order of operations, and again, please quibble, is something like we develop this capacity we have to be intimate or receptive, inclusive in our mind. That then allows us to respond with authenticity or spontaneity from our gut, rather than from our preconceived notions. From this, you're correct to point out that terms like embodied wisdom or innate wisdom sound a little grandiose. It's more just like the fact that we often know what to do.

• 1:09:13Dan Harris?

  So that leads to an appropriate response, which then leads to a perpetual willingness to admit when you fucked up, when the response wasn't appropriate. Therefore, you say the words, I'm sorry a lot.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  That's the next appropriate response, right? Is to say, I'm sorry.

• 1:09:31Dan Harris?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  And it's not, you know, even to say unappropriate response. It's just a little bit more appropriate than the response I was going to do. You know, again, it's not black and white. It's just about, this is just a little bit more reliable a way. Or the word I say to my friend will be a little bit more helpful if I'm actually feeling present with them. It still might not be helpful because I'm actually an idiot and I don't know what they're going through. Whatever, it's just, it's a little bit more helpful than if I had come and just sticking to my ideas. So we don't have to get into the extremes. It's just a little more reliable, a little more helpful, a little more appropriate. If we're a little bit less in our mind and a little bit more and the feeling of being alive that everything is included in.

• 1:10:15Dan Harris?

  You just used the word idiot and I thought you used it earlier, but I didn't know if I was hearing correctly. I love the word and I think it's hilarious that you're using it. I think you said something earlier and maybe this is me just restating it inaccurately, but something like authenticity is the okayness to be the idiot that you already are.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, at one level, yeah, and that idiot turns out is life itself.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  You didn't make yourself an idiot, you know, everything in the whole universe since beginningless time made you an idiot, you know? So just be that, all the wisdom is there and all the confusion is there, all the conditioning is there. And you don't have to fight against it. And that doesn't mean you're just like not working on it because also what you are is someone who wants to be doing better.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  We have this kind of natural wish to improve, you know, that's just part of what we are as human beings. So if we misunderstand this, we might kind of get stubborn and say like, well, I'm supposed to be an idiot. And I'm not going to try to learn more or be less of an idiot because I'm just accepting that I'm an idiot, but that's not authentic. We are an idiot and we want to not be an idiot. That's like true about us.

• 1:11:25Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  And so to say like, I just let myself be an idiot or people say, oh, Zen says you just accept everything. So then you stop working for things to be better. That is so crazy to me. It's just so not the point. The point is to be yourself as you are. You want to be better and you want to help others around you. It's not like you're cutting that part of yourself off. On the contrary, you're becoming more of that whole person that you are, which is I hate everybody and I love everybody. I'm an idiot and I want to be better. All of that is included and all of that is kind of a gift and a miracle. We don't need to quite clamp down, you know? I think we're driving it. We can be a little more easeful and feel.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  As we exhale, you know, Suzuki Roshi also has this beautiful thing. You just exhale all the way. And then sometimes you can notice breathing in. You didn't do that. You didn't make that. You don't have to be driving your life all the time. You can actually just like ride the wave a little bit sometimes. Let the life be moving you, you know? That's a little bit more like the intuitive present ways. Not separate from the thing, driving the thing. And it's so stressful to be driving our life because, you know, am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? We had that side. We include that side, but right. I feel that way. And also I can trust that I'm being carried here by everything. This is a miracle from the moment I was born.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  I've been carried even that I was born. So this is a gift moment after moment.

• 1:13:01Dan Harris?

  I'm being carried and yet I do have some agency and some desire to learn and grow. But that too is an expression of the universe.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. To take just one side and then say, now I'm just going to not move. Zen throughout the long centuries of tradition is like, don't be blocking anything. If you think you're supposed to be blocking some natural aspiration or natural ambition or natural self-expression, you're missing the point, you know? It's to be, to use a more Daoist image, you know? It's kind of, yeah, just to be that flow of life, to be that flow of nature.

• 1:13:37Dan Harris?

  I can't remember who said it. Maybe it was your Suzuki Roshi, but some Zen teacher said, and I love this statement of the paradox, that you're perfect and you could use a little improvement.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:51Dan Harris?

  So to be okay with your inner idiot is not to say, it's not resignation. It's you're an idiot in that we're all flawed and we all want to grow. We all naturally want to grow and improve. And can we just be okay with both sides of that?

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think of it as like more and more we include. So you hear this teaching, like include everything. You go, okay, right. So I include that I'm an idiot. Yes, but also keep including, don't stop there. You know, keep including, keep including. And you're also like in the Buddhist language, you know, you're also Buddha. You're also life itself.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  And then those things, you don't need to pick between them. You don't need to have them fight it out. Or, you know, in terms of like ethical practice, in terms of how we live in the world. And that's a big part of becoming yourself. This book by Suzuki Roshi that we just put out is because we wanted to have a book by Suzuki Roshi that has at least some chapters that are more specifically about ethics or kind of like how we conduct ourselves in our life. And the example of, well, I want to lie. I want to be divisive. I want to kill. I want to hate. It's like, yeah, you can include that. You can welcome that. You don't have to be afraid of that or push that away or try to get rid of that. Welcome, yeah, I really want to kill. I really want to hate.

• 1:15:07Speaker 02

  Welcome that, include that, but also keep including. And we include more and more of who we are. It's like, right, also, I really love everybody fundamentally. Also, I really don't want to lie, you know? That's all included too. And we don't have to then pick, oh, what am I going to do? We just let all of that be there. And then again, this appropriate response or this kind of like something unfolding from the totality, from the wholeness. Then whether I go left or right, right or left, everything was included. I didn't cut something off to hold on to something. I don't know if that makes sense. Cut something off, like when I have a decision, I think I've got to cut one thing off and pick the other thing. Then even if I go left instead of right, there's this feeling that I had to cut one of those things off. And so it's not such a whole thing.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  Whereas in the process of the discernment or the decision, if everything was included, then there's a kind of wholeness. Of course, I'm going to go left and right. I can't actually go left and right, you know? But I kind of did it in a way that included right and left.

• 1:16:07Dan Harris?

  Well, I guess where I get hung up is I think you are making a choice. You are being okay with your inner idiot and with your inner Buddha. You're including all of it. But ultimately, you are, the appropriate response, as I understand it, would be to make a choice, usually to go in the Buddha direction rather than the idiot direction.

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Well, going back to this appropriate response thing, or what we're talking about, about decision is like, and I don't know if you've looked into this some, or if it's even true, but this idea of like, you're starting to move before the decision is made. Mm hmm. I think that's actually true neuroscientifically, but you have to make the choice. I mean, come on, come on, Jerry. At the end of the day, you have to make the choice. And it's like, okay, yeah, we could say in a practical way, it's sort of like, the way I think of it is, when I think I have to make a choice, then I have to make a choice, you know, I'm on the hook. But actually, if I can bear to stay in the not knowing and the presence, did I make the choice? I don't know. Did I make the choice

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  to marry my wife? Did I make the choice to move to the Zen Center? Did I make the choice to, you know, have green tea instead of black tea? Yeah, I did. All those were choice points. And also, there's a kind of unfolding. Yeah, when we think we have to make a choice, we have to be sincere with that. Absolutely. But I think part of this training that I'm talking about, or part of this learning to trust that things can unfold a little bit more naturally, a little bit less from our either or mind, does kind of mean softening a little bit, this sense of like, I have to choose, and a little more like, I wonder what he's gonna do, you know? And I care, and I'm present, and I don't,

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  I have all these thoughts, it's all included. So they don't have to fight these parts of ourselves, you know, this including everything for me, especially with regard to ethics or decision making or problems. It's like, all of it can be included, all of the parts of ourselves, all the our idiot self and our Buddha self, and all that can be included. And we don't have to get into like, killing one and empowering the other. We could just let that whole thing be there and trust that they'll work it out, you know? Another part of the faith that like Suzuki Roshi has, that's a big part of how he teaches ethics and becoming yourself, is like, the Buddha part, you know, when we really include everything, that Buddha nature, you know, that innate love and inherent intimacy we have with everything,

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  that's kind of gonna win, you know? If we include everything, it's just a bigger, it's kind of like the sun in a candle, you know, my wanting to hate, my wanting to kill, and my actual innate love for things. They don't have to fight it. They can fight it out, but like, the love is more like what I actually am. But people might doubt that, and that's fair to doubt. But it's just, you know, dip your toes and see if you can trust, if you can appreciate a little bit, these teachings.

• 1:19:05Dan Harris?

  Check it out, and you may build some faith or confidence. That's a great place to leave it, I think, Jiryu. I do want to recommend, before I let you go, I just want to remind everybody that you've edited a new book that you, we've referenced repeatedly, Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life, which is a compilation of the teachings of your teacher, Shunryu Suzuki, who you never got to meet, but is nonetheless a major influential force in your mind. We'll put links, if people want to get the book, and if they want to check out the San Francisco Zen Center, or the residential centers that are under it, we'll put some resources in the show notes if people want to go deeper. But in the meantime, Jiryu, a total pleasure to meet you. Thank you for your time. You did a great job with

• 1:19:50Dan Harris?

  us.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  Likewise, Dan. Thanks so much. Again, I really appreciate what you're bringing and who you're trying to reach. And it's been special. It's been enjoyable to be with you. Thanks for your wonderful questions.

• 1:20:03Dan Harris?

  Thank you.

• 1:20:07Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Jiryu Rushman-Byler. Just to say, we got a follow-up from Jiryu after we recorded the conversation. As you might have heard, he mentioned a story about a kid asking, how come no one is mentioning how nuts it is that we're all alive? As you may remember, he forgot who said that. Then it came to him after we stopped recording, and the person who said it was Annaka Harris. And that's funny, that that's who he was referring to, because that's the name that came to my mind as possibly being the person who said that. Annika has been on the show several times. I'll drop some links in the show notes to her appearances on this show. She has written an amazing book about consciousness, and then followed it up with a fantastic audio documentary on the same subject called Lights On. Also, she's a great friend.

• 1:20:52Dan Harris?

  Don't forget that there's a companion meditation that comes with this podcast episode. It comes from our Teacher of the Month, Jeff Warren, and it's all about taking this concept of oneness and making it actionable. You can get it if you sign up at danharris.com. If you sign up, you'll also get invited to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions. The next one will feature both me and Jeff. We do these every Tuesday at four. DanHarris.com. Go check it out. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Island wrote our theme.

• 1:21:51Speaker 06

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:22:21Speaker 04

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 1:22:41Speaker 05

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on Community Organizations. Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.