This month marks the fourth anniversary of my marriage to Aria. Since I’ve more than doubled my subscribers since last year, I wanted to once again reprise the newsletter I sent shortly after my wedding, which is still my most popular post in terms of views (over 11,000).
I suspect its popularity has something to do with the photos of our wedding, but that’s ok. It’s not about me. :)
I made a few edits to this year’s post. But first, a few things.
If you are interested in straight-up Zen practice and teachings, I invite you to sign up for the Eon Zen newsletter. (Subscribe at the bottom of the Eon Zen Home page.) Our weekly newsletter has some dharma words, plus links to dharma talks by me and my senior students on YouTube, and of course announcements about our retreats and Zen activities, many of which you can join virtually. You can also subscribe to the Eon Zen YouTube channel directly.
I have a few spots available for one-on-one work. My best work is with high-functioning individuals who are experiencing challenges in showing up with full clarity and purpose in work and relationships. This often happens when our three contracts are not in conscious alignment. (It’s especially acute during work transitions since the terms of your sacred contract to Work are being re-set.)
That’s when our (mal)adaptive tendencies kick in, like workaholism, analysis-paralysis, isolating, and catastrophizing. If you want to find your power by bringing your personal, professional and spiritual lives into closer alignment, I can help you. Sign up for a free Discovery session with me and we can explore how.
Be well,
Paul
A Larger Life
Bodhisattvas don’t mind much what happens to them. Their lives are larger than the plans they may have had for them. - Zen Teacher and poet Norman Fischer.
Close the gap between Yourself and yourself. - Maezumi Roshi
Don’t take anything personally. - Shishin Roshi
Personal goals and milestones are important and meaningful. My marriage vows and bond with Aria have given me profound depth and joy that I have never experienced before. (Not to mention an insta-family in the form of her five remarkable kids!) My life has changed in amazing ways that have deepened my experience of truth and love.
These things are joyfully, unutterably true. And …
There is a big difference between taking your personal life truthfully and taking your true life personally.
Zen teaches that our true life is not limited to the collection of experiences, interests, aptitudes and affinities that we normally think of as “Me”.
That’s our personal life: we’re born, we experience, we grow and we eventually pass away. We need to take our personal lives truthfully — feeling our feelings, acting and speaking with integrity, understanding ourselves as deeply as we can — in order to be in full alignment with the Great Reality, our Buddha Nature.
The Great Reality is the Tao, the Way, our Big Self.
Zen is about becoming intimate with our Big Self through the material of our personal lives. Maezumi Roshi expressed it as “closing the gap between Yourself and yourself.”
We can’t close the gap if we don’t have some experience of our Big Selves, and we definitely can’t have an experience of Big Self if we are constantly focused on our small personal selves.
One of the final direct teachings Shishin Roshi gave me after transmitting me as an independent Zen teacher was “Don’t take anything personally.” This is easier to do when on a retreat, when we are all focused on our practice, and we’ve put aside our worldly lives for a time.
But it is much, much more difficult to practice in the every day, in the midst of work and relationships. How do we not take things personally when we are feeling happiness and hurt? How do we do it when we are working on a professional dream, and we feel thwarted or blocked?
How do we not take it personally when everything in our lives is, well …. personal?
The key is to understand where to put your focus, to see where the center of the matter truly lies. When we put our focus on our personal lives at the center, we are easily thrown off-kilter. We get upset, lose our equanimity, and lose capacity to meet others with intimacy and openness.
More deeply, we experience considerable doubt about the purpose of our lives. If it is all about our personal happiness, accomplishment and attainment, then why should we care about others? And yet we DO care about others. So right from the beginning we find that putting ourselves at the center does not work.
All ideologies, spiritual teachings and theories of altruism aside, putting ourselves at the center is simply not in accord with our own experience of ourselves. And that leads to confusion and malaise. Making a marriage vow is a huge step away from the self-centered dream, and helps us “get real” in the best sense.
When we put Big Self at the center, we are unruffled by the small things, as an ocean liner is unaffected by waves that would topple a canoe. Living from Big Self, we feel supported by the universe, as an active participant, even a companion, in our paths.
Zen Teacher and poet Norman Fischer expressed this beautifully in his marvelous book on the Buddhist paramitas, “The World Could Be Otherwise” He writes:
Bodhisattvas don’t mind much what happens to them. Their lives are larger than the plans they may have had for them.
We each can find this larger life by directing our concern away from the exclusive focus on our own conditions and towards the larger venture, project or vow that calls to us.
One of my students related her account of how she came to embark on a new direction in her life. Years into a successful career as a designer, teacher, and mentor, she was offered the opportunity to help create an innovative center for college students in recovery.
She was intrigued by the proposition and had a clear vision but for four months wrestled with the decision. Was this the next step she wanted to take with her life? What kind of a commitment would it involve? Did she have what it took? Where should she start? Who to talk to? What about resources?
Finally, after months of struggle, a message came to her while in meditation that blew through her blockage. The inner voice said, “It’s not about you.”
Those words were all it took for her to realize that all of her questioning and uncertainty was centered on what SHE was facing and how it was going to affect HER life.
Of course, this is natural, as we are all tranced into believing that we must have all the answers, that we have to do everything ourselves, that we are independent agents of our destiny and we are personally responsible for our conditions and ends.
We are tranced into believing that we SHOULD take everything personally.
After hearing these words, she was able to see very simply what needed to be done to manifest the vision, and, one step at a time, in collaboration with others, she did each thing. Within three months, the Center was open, and for the next six years she ran the operation as one of the founders.
Over the course of that time the Center served hundreds of students, and has saved many lives, becoming a model for similar centers on other campuses in the region and throughout the country.
If you can take this attitude toward your work, you’ll find happiness, joy and meaning. Tell yourself that your work “is not about you,” and then immediately ask yourself "what is it about?” Perhaps the answer comes right away: it is about a dream of service or manifestation that you truly believe in, something bigger than yourself.
If it does not come right away, then you have located the koan of your Purpose. Living this koan is how you close the gap between Yourself and yourself.
[Originally published August 2020. Edited August 2024.]
Postscript. August 2024. The person whose experience I shared in the account above ended up leaving the recovery center to co-found an environmental arts center, which she ran for several years. She is now two years into a personal pilgrimage that has taken her around the country. When you look at your life in the bigger picture, you realize that things are always changing, and you never know what’s going to happen. This gives you great freedom to try new things, always.
Some photos from our wedding, taken by my sister-in-law, Mara Steckling at Evie Photography. (Thanks, Mara!)
