Three Zen Minds of Work

Big Mind, Parental Mind and Joyful Mind

I hope everyone is finding fulfillment in whatever you are doing in these warming days of late Spring. I traveled from Colorado to Texas on Friday to help Aria take care of some family business, and have felt assaulted by the stagnant Texas heat. Yikes! (And we are not even in the heat dome that’s parked over the West…..)

A welcome to new Subscribers, and a special offer before I get to today’s Newsletter.

For those new to my work, my main vocation is as Spiritual Director and Teacher at the Eon Zen Center, which I founded in 2015,after receiving formal teaching authorization (“dharma transmission”) from my teachers.

My main professional work is through my Zen@Work program, which applies Zen practices and principles to the challenges of our modern work lives (what I call “work-in-the-world”), helping individuals and teams find joy, meaning and flow in their work and careers.

My offer today is a discounted rate on my one-month “Karmic Accelerator”, which includes four weekly sessions with me and Voxer contact. I’ll guide you through my Four Vows process to uncover the spiritual, personal, relational and work commitments that are directing your life energies. After the program, you will gain clarity and conviction in place of any confusions and resistances (fear, stuckness) that are cobwebbing (or worse) your life force. You will feel empowered and inspired about the next stage of your life.

We are all directed by inner commitments in these four areas. In fact, your thoughts and feelings follow these commitments, whether you know it or not. Most of us are only partly conscious of them. To the degree we are unconscious of our commitments, we struggle. (Trauma has been called a “pre-cognitive commitment.”)

My one-on-one work is a form of Zen inquiry based on thousands of sessions I’ve held with teachers, mentors, students and clients. I can help you transform your own karma — the unique circumstances of your life, your body, your mind, your emotions, your inheritances, your intergenerational gifts, wounds and debts — to intentional and creative purpose.

I’m offering this one-month program at a special discount. If this sounds interesting to you, sign up for a Free Discovery session on my website. In the “Name of person who referred you?” box, put “Karmic Accelerator.” We’ll book a twenty-minute call to make sure the program is a good fit.

In my work and teachings, I only talk about my experience. That is the Zen way. Now it might sound woo-woo, but I can attest from personal experience that when you make a move in the direction of this work — sign up for a session with me, commit to a program — the universe shifts to support you.

Earlier in my life when I heard people talk like that I did not believe them. I thought it was a marketing trick. (And maybe for some it was). But I know now there is a spiritual truth at play here, one that Goethe spoke of in his magnificent reflection:

“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would come your way.”

I have seen this happen countless times over the last few years with people who have come to me. It happened last week when a new client got two interviews in the first two weeks after we started a three-month program.

It is not me doing it, it is you inviting the universe to support you. That’s the important thing.

And now …. I want to share some wisdom from Zen Master Dogen, whose words about holding qualities of mind in our work are as essential and relevant as they were when he wrote them 800 years ago.

• Paul

Three Zen Minds of Work

In his “Instructions to the Cook” (Tenzo Kyokun), Dogen talks about the three essential “minds” that — when we apply them to our work — bring about lasting fulfillment.

I think of these “minds” as “qualities of attention.” Attention is not always neutral. It can have a strong feeling component together with an internalized understanding of what’s important in the object of our attention.

For example, the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki said that we should meditate with “warm-hearted mind.” Now I can’t tell you exactly what that is, but I think you intrinsically know.

In the same way, I think the descriptions of Big Mind, Elder’s Mind and Joyful Mind will ring familiar to all of us.

If we can cultivate these minds in all the work we do, we will uncover the deep channels that make our work meaningful and flowing.

1. Big Mind - “Zoom out” to see the big picture. Establish a wider perspective in both space and time. Include the interests and opinions of a widening circle of affected people and places. Consider the history of what you are doing and the potential consequences into the future. If you are still activated or confused… zoom out further. Even your smallest actions have context in the great story of your life, and the tapestry of collective history of which you are a part.
   
   Dogen says: “Big Mind is, in its spirit, like a great mountain or a great sea: it has no partiality and no factionalism. Lifting an ounce, it does not consider it light; hefting a stone, it does not consider it heavy. Being drawn by the voices of spring, it does not wander into the swamp of spring. Although it sees the colors of autumn, it has nothing whatsoever of the spirit of autumn. It contrasts the four seasons against the backdrop of a single vista.”
   

2. Elder’s Mind - Treat every aspect of your work as if you were taking care of one of your children, even a part of your own body.
   
   Dogen says, “Elder's Mind is the spirit of fathers and mothers. It is, for example, like a father and mother who dote on an only child: one's thoughts are like their concentration on that one child. Even if they are poor or desparate, they strongly love and nurture that single child. People who are outsiders cannot understand what their state of mind is like; they can only understand it when they themselves become fathers or mothers. Without regard for their own poverty or wealth, [parents] earnestly turn their thoughts toward raising their child. Without regard for whether they themselves are cold or hot, they shade the child or cover the child. We may regard this as affectionate thinking at its most intense. A person who arouses this spirit is fully conscious of it. A person who cultivates this spirit is one who truly awakens to it. Therefore, when [the cook] watches over water and watches over grain, in every case he should sustain the caring and warmth of child-rearing!

3. Joyful Mind - Find the pleasure and joy available to you being alive in a body doing what you are doing.
   
   Dogen says, “Joyful Mind is the spirit of happiness….How happy a birth! How happy a body! It is the good karmic result of kalpas vast and great. It is merit that cannot decay. When you prepare food and cook it you should do so with the aspiration of taking tens of thousands of births and concentrating them into this one day, this one time, that you may be able to bind together in good karmic result the bodies of millions of [past] births. A mind that contemplates and understands things in this way is a joyful mind.”

Have a great week!

---

Illustration by Ray Fenwick, appearing in Lion’s Roar Magazine: https://www.lionsroar.com/what-are-the-three-minds/