Mindful Leadership

If you go to see people speak at a conference on "Mindful Leadership," you are probably a follower.  If you think the speakers are "thought leaders" on "mindful leadership" then you really aren't being a mindful leader, even if you fork over approximately 400 bucks for the "early adopter fee."

If you think:

Workplace leadership is all about growing the business, meeting the deadline, closing the deal, and finishing the project. And the speed and pace can be intense - getting it done faster, better, cheaper and smarter. Such a work style with all its ambition and energy has its benefits no doubt, but it also has a profound blind spot: in our relentless pursuit of ‘success’, we often forget to live our lives. When we lead a career that is excessively focused on being more successful, more admired or just more comfortable, we can deceive ourselves into neglecting the world around us, where we end up managing our lives rather than actually living them. 

and you're not some guy named Michael Carroll, that's another person's narrative, somebody else's picture of a rice cake, so to speak. 

Where do you find yourself?

The conversation moves on...

I was sitting the first mini-retreat I'd been able to have in years  - or returning therefrom - when Joshu Sasaki died.

Brad Warner somewhere talks about saying something about Sasaki and getting a bunch of vitriol in return.

The vitriol was in hindsight reasonable to have been expected.

But...  the retreat....

We have an essence that is fundamentally empty and awake, and we can know that fundamental emptiness and awareness of subject and object, host and guest,  ailing and caregiver.  Putting all thoughts and conceptions away - including the one about putting all thoughts and conceptions away - is key to this awareness.

This awareness is very....important...it's sort of the thing that is.

In view of that, your transgressions, my transgressions, Joshu Sasaki's transgressions are not excused,  and are certainly not condoned or encouraged, but they're also ... harmonized, or in a sense "justified."  By justified I don't mean that it was in any way morally or ethically correct for any of us to transgress, but rather by justified I mean that word in the sense that the transgressions are exactly in the place and time they are in, and in the presence of boundless compassion, are not really so problematic.

It presents a couple of new koans though... such as OK, so we're all awake fundamentally, so what to do with perpetrators of transgressions, those who've done things significantly more harmful than dropping cigarette ashes on a stone Buddha?  And what to do with those who can't even get to the vantage point to be able to ask the last question?

It's why I had some questions recently about some teachers' "teaching," in response to the scandal thing.

But I must say I don't have great pat one-size-fits-all answers to those questions, and perhaps we're not supposed to have them.  Your view? 

36 Hour Tahoma Sesshin

Just enough for legs.

Very long ferry line on the way.

Clouds on Tahoma.

People are actually asking this question?

"Will enlightenment save the world?"

I find it very difficult to think that in this day and age people have to address these issues, though I'm kind of glad Warner did - though I did not read all the way through.

Though any reference to Eckart Tolle should tell you enough (though again I am supportive of the sentiments of the author of that last linked piece too.)

But...Eckart Tolle is not what Zen Buddhism is about.   As to the author of that piece writing this:

This was the case with Zen Buddhism in Japan during and before WWII, the cultivation of stillness, compassion and love can co-exist with the worst fascism and imperialism. The entire institution of Zen Buddhism – the masters, monks and professors supported the cruel and colonizing efforts of the state and emperor. They defended the “wars of compassion,” gorged themselves in killing and advocated merging the small self with the larger self of the state. This was all done within the monastical, academic and ethical systems of Zen Buddhism.

Some of it was.   Some of those folks lacked ethics and some did not.   This does not mean those who lacked a practice of ethics were not Zen Buddhists; but the ethics is a real thing with Zen Buddhism.

But let's put it this way: when one has understanding - which is one way in which awakening is put - one really can move about the world in a way to more effectively help people - or hurt them if one lacks an ethical practice.

If you're relying on Eckart Tolle for any kind of "wisdom" you already have difficulties.  Not only because of what Warner & Ms. Scofield say, but rather because things like what Tolle is saying have nothing to do with awakening, as far as I can tell.

I disagree with Warner though - meditation by itself won't save the world.   It can help, for sure, but it's in the day-to-day conscious life practice that world changing actually happens.