ON SUBSTACK: Dear Zen

My first advice column responding to readers' questions

A while back, I put a call out on social media for questions people would like me to answer if I had an advice column. Within just a few minutes, I received two questions that I, indeed, had a lot to say about. I'm excited to share one of them with you today.

Do you have something you want me to weigh in on? Email me your questions and I will try my best to respond.

The first question that came in was from Jakob Lagerstedt, an entrepreneur leading a new tech startup:

Upon further discussion, Jakob described himself as a "fledgling Zen student who has gotten a lot better bringing my practice off the cushion into daily life." However, he also struggles given the fast-paced nature and high demands of his work to feel the "spaciousness" and "beginner's mind" he wants. Instead, he feels stuck in a state of reactivity, sometimes knee-jerk.

For anyone who has been reading this newsletter for a while, you'll know that my answer to these kinds of questions is usually the same: training.

Here's what I mean by that. When we've trained in the right way, we can respond to and be the master of any circumstance, even in a hyper growth company moving at the speed of light. Even when a memo gets leaked from the highest court in the land with wide ranging and life-and-death consequences, as it did recently. In other words, when we're well-trained, we have the clarity to think strategically and the courage to act.

It's worth saying that training is different from practice, a more common way to think about spirituality these days. Practice has connotations of something that is linear, repeats, and is never-ending. It also gives rise to the word practices—i.e., the mindfulness and breathing exercises Jakob might have been looking for when he posed his question.

Training is also lifelong and involves a lot of repetition. However, it's focused foremost on preparation. And not just preparation for preparation's sake but preparing for something. That's why many of us already associate the word training with things that are hard, requiring diligence, drive, determination, and ferocious energy in a way that we just don't associate with practice.

Zen training in particular is about changing and honing how you see things and how you respond to different situations. But, most of all, it's about changing who you are. And in that way, spiritual training in general can prepare you for the most challenging of situations, helping to ensure that you're going to respond in the way you want and can still be the person you want to be.

Sun Tzu's Art of War, the 5th century BCE treatise that's cited everywhere from military academies to corporate boardrooms, puts a fine point on the importance of the quality of one's person. Even in matters of warfare—truly life or death—it says that before we consider the technical aspects of our situation (the weather, the terrain, the team, and tactics), we as leaders have to have the ability to think and perceive clearly. This means not being blinded by our own baggage or ego desires. Only by truly knowing ourselves can we remain focused on our true goal rather than getting diverted by anger, or by expending energy to avoid immediate losses or chase short term gains. 

And, according to The Art of War, our true goal should be the most expansive and farthest reaching imaginable—not just winning the battle or the war, but paving the way for harmony. Pyrrhic victories and scorched earth, in other words, aren't real victories. When we are pursuing harmony, even through warfare, we strive to take as much as possible whole and intact, whether that's companies and the market, relationships and families, the republic, or the planet. In order to do that, we have to be a certain kind of person: a person who has trained their whole lives.

So, here's the bad news, Jakob: It’s clear that your training up until now has been insufficient for how you want to lead and be today. 

But there is, of course, also good news: It's not too late to start training for tomorrow, developing the courage, clarity, and strategic vision you'll need in the days to come. 

I recommend seeking out a training method with a long and proven lineage, something that is deep, varied, dynamic, and flexible. Martial arts are particularly effective, especially ones where you have to respond to an opponent in real time like in boxing, Kendo, or Jiu Jitsu. 

But training doesn't have to be confined to a gym or a Dojo. It can be present throughout our lives, even in ways that can seem mundane and, if we didn't approach it as training, trivial. Training, for example, can also look like cooking for a large group with a limited budget, tight timelines, and changing conditions. Or firing a wood-fired ceramics kiln like we did last week at Chozen-ji, preparing the pieces for months and then spending 36 hours stoking the kiln up to 2300 degrees. Or building things. Or just pursuing some seemingly impossible goal like swinging a sword 1,000 times a day, drawing the same picture 1,000 times until you've mastered it, or writing every single day.

What matters is that, in these situations, the stakes aren't actually high. And while the pressure is more or less manufactured, that doesn't mean that how you perform is unimportant. To be effective, this kind of training requires creativity (often on the spot), resourcefulness, and clearly defined outcomes.

Through training, it's possible to go really deep into knowing ourselves. By design this means unearthing the habits, attachments, and patterns of thinking that hold us back the most. And then, seeing them, we have a shot at transcending them. 

The most beautiful thing about training? When training becomes life and life becomes training, it's possible to see any challenge as a means for self development. That means that the very things we think are holding us back from being the compassionate leader of a company moving at light speed become the means by which to become that leader. 

Training makes it possible to see even the hardest things in life this way, as opportunities to live transcendently, where even pain, discomfort, and failure can be made to have a purpose. Because, as Shakyamuni Buddha famously taught long ago, suffering is a feature (not a bug) of existence. And yet, as the poet Mary Oliver said, this one life we have is wild and precious. It's up to us to decide what to do with it.