Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser Author of Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen

So beginner's mind is not being so sure about anything, especially this question about reality. You know, so here we are in this reality that no one could, you know, probably would have predicted that it would look and feel like this. But in general, our brains like to predict reality. We like to be sure. We like to know. So, so this practice, to me, it's Zen practice is just a fancy word for human practice, right? The human, human practice. Or, you know, Abraham Maslow called it, called it, you know, self-actualization. Zen calls it finding real freedom. And paradoxically, our freedom lies in letting go of what we think we know and looking, looking at things with a much more fresh Presha hai.

Welcome to RxChill Pill, the podcast that strengthens your resilient mind every time you listen to the extraordinary stories, expert tips, and meditations to elicit your relaxation response, the antidote to your stress response. I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD. I'm a physician and mom specializing in mind-body and lifestyle medicine. Find out more about me, My personalized online courses on procrastination and mindset coaching for kids, teens, and adults at mindbodyspace.com. What could your work and your life look like if you knew how to stay focused yet flexible? If you got more of the right things done? And if you were helping to create a more peaceful world at the same time? That's the question Mark Lesser would like you to ask yourself. He's an author, speaker, Zen teacher, and entrepreneur, and my guest today. He says that today's leaders are challenged with a complexity that can lead to stress and burnout. Mark believes that mindfulness can give a leader skills to move beyond fear, anxiety, nagging self-doubt, and the feeling of constant overwhelm. And he says that this may be one of the most important competencies in business Today I'm so happy to have Mark here today. He's going to share tips on how to not only manage uncertainty, but to understand that uncertainty is a constant truth in life, and that as long as we don't resist it, we can be in harmony with not knowing, not knowing anything with absolute certainty. We discuss his story of how he found Zen in college eventually staying at a Zen monastery for 10 years. Then he became the owner of 3 businesses and finally came full circle back, merging his Zen roots with business by bringing mindfulness into the corporate world and becoming the co-founder of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, founded at Google. Marcus taught his 7-step proven method to leaders at Google, Facebook, and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies for over 20 years. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Hi, Marc.

Hi, Juna Bobby MD.

Thank you for spending your time with me today. My pleasure. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure, really.

I'm here with Marc Lesser. Your latest book published in 2019 is called Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery.

And a Zen monastery kitchen, yes.

I wanted to start with a quote from your practice number 1, It's called Love the Work. This quote struck me because of the times we're living in now. You wrote, "Reality has an irritating habit of shifting and changing, totally undermining our hopes and dreams and fantasies. When our ideas and plans collide with reality, reality generally wins." Whether it's the reality of our aging bodies and minds, of our mercurial emotions, of upheavals in business world, or of the shifting priorities and feeling of other people. Those are always very painful— other people, family, friends, co-workers. We may not want to admit that reality will not meet our expectations, but we need to see what it is.

That's pretty good.

Are you impressed with yourself?

Yeah, I just love it when, um, other people pull out quotes from something that I wrote, and then it's like, I— because I get to— for, I guess, partly because of, uh, the distance in time, how long ago that was written. And yeah, and also just, I think, the incredible times that we're in right now and how relevant that, that feels. So, well, well done. Well done, Juna Bobby MD.

Yeah, and you, and you can impress yourself sometimes because you forget what you wrote and you're like, wow, that's pretty good. That happens to me sometimes. So yeah, I mean, we are in very uncertain times now, and I'm sure you didn't foresee this when you were writing it.

I think we can depend on reality not meeting our expectations. It's a little bit like when people, when people ask me, um, you know, who do I think is going to be the next president? My thoughts about that are that I thought Barack Obama, completely impossible. No way. No way that could happen. Donald Trump, even more impossible. No way that could happen.

Pandemic, was it possible in your mind?

And it's interesting how quickly and how quickly this, you know, in some way for most of us, it all just, it seemed like it unfolded really, really quickly and then completely took over our normal, what we think of as our normal lives and how many of us are adapting to this new normal.

Yeah. And it's amazing that you just said that because this happened throughout your book as I— I'm not going to say I read it because I listened to it. So I love Audible. I listen to books on it all the time. I do like paper copies also, but I listened to your book and, you know, every time I had a question, you would actually answer it, which is the sign of an awesome book for me. For you as somebody who has been meditating most of your adult life, did it feel as surreal as it did to the rest of us? I mean, I'm, I dabble in meditation, I would say, and I even teach it, but I'm not a Zen, um, Are you a monk? I don't want to label you.

Go right ahead, Juna.

Label away.

So we have to define terms here now that you bring up. Like, to me, a monk, a monk I think of, and there's again, there's no set definition. It's someone who lives in a monastery is a monk.

Uh-huh. Okay.

So I did live a monkish life. I did live in a monastery, but this was, you know, an American Zen monastery.

I see.

It was not what people might think of.

Okay.

There were men and women. And I was married while living in a Zen monastery. I am actually, you know, I don't always say this publicly because so much of my work is in the more kind of mainstream corporate world. But I am a Zen priest. And then don't, don't ask me what a priest is because then—

Yeah, I was going to say, what does that mean?

Like, it's more like a particular path and form that my Zen training— it was a kind of the formal part of my, my Zen training. I have various documents and fun, fun objects that someday I could, I could show you. But to return to your question.

Yes.

Well, it's funny that we're in this kind of Zen mode. I was actually scheduled to do a kind of a one-month retreat the month of March. I was planning to be in residence at the San Francisco Zen Center and where I was scheduled to teach like this one-month offering. I mean, I was still continuing to do my usual day work of coaching and trainings and things, but, but I was actually living on the Zen Center premises. And I moved into the building on March 1st. And I think, I think it was March 7th, maybe March 6th. I was scheduled to do a public talk in which at the Zen Center on Saturday mornings, there's usually, you know, I know, 150 or 200 people who, who come and just as I was getting up early in the morning, I got a text saying, uh, the building will be closed to all outside visitors immediately. So your talk can happen as scheduled, but it will be just for the residents, just for living in the building. And then like a few days later, the messaging was we will no longer be sitting meditation together. Oh, the message, maybe it was for— we will be sitting meditation, but we'll all have to be 6 feet apart in the meditation hall. There'll be a new, a new sitting schedule. And then a couple of days later, it was like, no, no more meditation. We all have to sit in our rooms. That was like progressing, progressing. But I have to say, it was it was impressive and clear leadership that was being exerted. I thought of the people who were running, running the Zen Center. And, and yes, it was all kind of, you know, kind of shocking. I remember especially that getting that text saying that the building is going to be closed to all outside visitors. And I remember first thinking, really? Like, what? Why? And it took a little while, you know. And then I remember the first time I saw the phrase social distancing.

Mm-hmm.

And we have new language, social distancing and sheltering in place.

And then, of course, you had to leave the premise probably eventually.

I did. Like, so I think on March 13th, I was told that I could stay, but then I wouldn't be able to leave indefinitely.

Oh, that's not good.

So I'm back, I'm back living in my home with my family here. And, and, and I have to say, feeling, you know, sometimes a little guilty with how easy and how good I feel like I have it, given that I, I live in a beautiful place. My work doesn't require me I could— my work shifted almost seamlessly to online, to Zoom. Yeah, yeah. Trainings and coaching and other, other events. And, and actually, I, I just, I wrote two things I did last night. It's funny, I, I do a Wednesday night meditation group, and I, I spoke about this topic that you— very much pertinent to the quote you just brought up about living in uncertainty.

The irritating reality.

Irritating, I think, only when we resist it. It's the other side. The other side, I think, is the great eye-opening, heart-opening reality of how uncertain our lives are.

Mm-hmm.

With having nothing to do with the pandemic, right?

That Yes, but this throws it into the spotlight. And I loved what you call it. You call it ground truth. I guess that's a military term, you said? Yeah. It's what's really happening right now. And, you know, as a physician, there is so much pulling, you know, in two different directions of, you know, trying to accept and not resist the reality, but at the same time, you don't want to miss anything. Right. So that, um, is kind of like a push and pull all the time for me and being of a highly anxious nature. And you said you were talking to your friend who's a physician who's in the front lines, but like when you're in this peaceful environment of your suburban home, or, you know, hopefully most people listening to this are safe, but when you're in those front lines, it's a totally different world. So it almost is. Like a different reality.

No, totally. I think, you know, the differences in our realities, you know, again, they're always— I think uncertainty is being highlighted and the different realities are being highlighted. I think they're always there. I mean, the extremes are— they can be a little ugly when we really look at the extremes of our realities. So I think we're, but there's something about looking at them.

Going back to how did you experience it as you were in the monastery? So you weren't even in, you know, life with civilians at that point. And you're in this monastery, you have all this experience meditating. Was there any difference in experiencing this or do you feel like it was the same shock and, you know, and maybe a little more acceptance than the usual person? Yeah. Layperson? I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know. Or was it just sheer panic and then you just breathe? Like, what did you go to?

I mean, in some way it was pretty easy when there's, when there's no choice. And the combination, I think, of the science seemed really clear, right? So it's like, I don't fight germ theory and how diseases spread. And listening to the science, I think, is, um, something one would hope that everyone would be paying attention to. Even though I now, we, we live in the in this strange misinformation and so much stuff going on.

But what was your experience in your mind as you sat there looking at your texts and then every day getting something new coming in? Like, that was just escalating.

I think just, you know, I think I'm, I'm just a, you know, somewhat normal human being. It was a bit shocking and a bit unnerving. Like, it was like, I remember first, like, am I, am I dreaming? Is this really happening? Like, This is so— as far as I know, you know, the building has never been closed to the public. And this was— and then people, friends of mine who lived in the— this was, this is the city center. So right in the middle of San Francisco. And as literally hundreds of people were coming to the door to come inside, people were standing there saying, sorry, we're we're really sorry, we're closed because of the pandemic and you can watch Mark's lecture online. And that was, I felt like that was the beginning of this, what's become this enormous transition from in-person events to online events.

And like you said, the new normal happened so fast that it is actually normal now, right? All of this, but once in a while it hits me, I have to admit, usually at night. Like, I can't believe this is happening. My son had to come home from college. And you have kids too, right?

I do.

How many kids do you have?

I have, I have two grown kids. See?

Oh wow. Okay.

Yeah. I now have a grandchild.

Oh, congratulations.

My, my daughter now living with me, um, and, and her, her family. So that's been great. So I wanted to go back where I started to go before. Like, the reason I mentioned that, um, that I ran a greeting card— I started and ran a greeting card company— was that I define myself as a professional quote collector. And as we were talking about how this time makes you— makes things— puts things into more vibrancy, there's a certain kind of clarity around the this uncertainty. And I thought of a— see if I can remember who this quote is, the name. This is from— do you know there's a book called— a beautiful book of photographs called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men?

No.

His name will pop into my head, or I could look it up, but it's a book of— he was a photographer who— it's interesting interesting that he was photographing people during the Depression, during the first Great Depression in the 1920s, early '30s. And so a photographer who said— see if I can remember— he said something like, "Stare, it will change the way you see and more." Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long. And I think there's something about staring. Like, I think, you know, when things vary from what we expect and it gets our attention. But in some way we're all kind of staring, we're all kind of prying and eavesdropping about like, what's happening here? And I think there's this part of, you know, so the ultimate in uncertainty is none of us know how long we will be alive, right? That's the uncertainty that we most like to avoid.

That's the massive anxiety right now.

Yeah, but yes, yeah, well, there's anxiety, especially with this kind of invisible, this invisible thing that's around and, and yeah, and our needing to be careful and knowing that no matter how careful we are, it's not all, it's not all within our, it's not within our control.

No, it's true.

But then, yeah, and then there's that whole spectrum, I think, of that irritating reality, that irritating uncertainty that, again, but it's only irritating when we resist it. Of course, we want to be, we want to live. So, yeah. Have any other, any other great quotes?

Yeah, I do actually, but, um, I have another, I have one of my favorite ones that I'm saving till the end that I want you to explain because it's a Zen quote. Your coaching business is with corporations and people in business, is that correct?

Yeah, I do, um, I do a combination of some one-on-one coaching. I do quite a few trainings. I do trainings in the business world. And I also do kind of talk talks. Those are my 3 kind of core work activities.

There was a foreword from Daniel Siegel, Dr. Daniel Siegel, and he says, a mindful leader makes the work environment a generative social field in which compassion, connection, and creativity thrive. And he says the 7 accessible practices in this book Your book can teach you how to become just such a leader. So can you talk to me a little bit about how compassion, connection, and creativity can help someone lead in business? A lot of times people don't correlate business people with compassion. Maybe connection, yes, but maybe not compassion and creativity in a sense. But, and a lot of these people are very successful people who have an ability to really hyperfocus. They get where they are because they have been able to compartmentalize their mind and to be able to focus on the work at hand without getting distracted. But even they're having— COVID-19 is having a huge impact on their lives as well. I mean, a lot of them are working from home. So what would you recommend to someone who's never really meditated before or has been introduced to mindfulness before?

Well, it's never too late to start a meditation practice, you know.

Right. But do you ever see those people when it's like that, that panicky state where you just can't deal with anything right now?

Yeah. So, you know, I think, I think so much, even going back to your original quote about, you know, this irritating reality.

But I'll take it. It's mine now. Yeah.

You're quoting me. You're quoting me. Yeah, so the reality of being really anxious and upset and being on fire and just like paying attention to that, like just, and being like, imagine being curious about that. And you don't have to try and, not trying to run away from it or suppress it or push it away. It's just like, you know, I'm really upset right now. I'm really anxious. And And this would be a good time to breathe. Like, I'm also breathing. I'm breathing. And just that, just that can happen. What can I learn from this moment? What does this moment ask of me? What is there to learn? And what should I do? What would make— what would be the best action to take? I think this is a better practice than the alternatives, which are often judging ourselves. Beating ourselves up, suppressing our emotions, lashing out, blaming others or blaming the situation. So anytime I think that we're tempted to do any of those things, talking to oneself, I think, in a more positive way. So it's interesting, you know, there's a lot— there's some interesting research around self-compassion. So you brought up the compassion and creativity. I think one of the most important skills to develop in the business world is what I think of as compassionate accountability. So this beautiful paradox— so you were sort of describing the focused, hard-charging business people And we need that. Businesses need focus. They need us working with a sense of urgency. They need accountability, right? You need to be able to have a vision for what you want to do and a way to measure how you're doing against accountability. But I think the compassion side, which is now a relatively new topic getting talked about in the mix of business But I think trust is not a new idea.

That's true.

And in the business world, there's been a lot written about trust. And I think, you know, how do you develop trust? Well, compassion, right? Compassion is about— this is like the first practice in my book of the 7 practices, love the work of self-awareness and of helping others. And in order to help others, you need to love yourself. You need to know yourself. And this is all around about, uh, this practice of developing compassion. But again, I think it's also important that we have these other— what, what I think of as more conventional skills around the technical skills, emotional intelligence skills.

So Do you find that businesses are more open to these practices now than maybe 10 years ago?

Yeah, the world has changed in the last— a lot has happened.

That's great to hear. Please tell me more.

No, I think that we're— I don't want to come off as a dreamy, woo-woo, overly optimistic guy.

And?

And? I work in companies like Google and Facebook and SAP. There's a lot of things in those companies. There's a lot of room for improvement. You know, there's a lot of improvement for all of us and all of our businesses. It's very easy. It's very easy to critique companies and it's very easy to even like what you were saying about misinformation. I think that for the most part, again, I'm also, I'm also fond of saying, I'm fond of saying that greed, hate, and delusion have been popular for thousands of years. We human beings tend to be fearful and scanning, and we, and we're always, as you were saying earlier, this scanning for threats, what could go wrong, and then reacting to that. And a lot of that has happened and is happening in the business world that has caused some really significant problems. I think there's at least some opening to look at what is the role of business in causing these inequities that we have, of causing climate change, of the huge gaps we have in our experiences. And that there's some, I think, some glimmer of possibility that business could also be part of the solution. And I think it starts by asking some difficult questions like, why do these companies exist? And what do we want for our children, really? I mean, what do we— you know, if you're running you know, if you're running whatever company it is, what kind of place do you want to leave for your children? And as opposed to, how could I make the most money I could possibly make and to hell with the planet? Which has been more the conventional ongoing, you know, thinking for the past many, many years. And I think it's always maybe been been a very small percentage of people who've ever questioned that. And I think that's growing.

You've seen that shifting.

I think that's shifting. And I think—

On the ground.

On the ground, you know, and I think the conversations that are having, I think around, I would say the big 3 problems are climate change, inequality, and nuclear weapons. All, all three have the, I think, the possibility of, um, really damaging, perhaps if not getting rid of, the human populations. And, um, so we need— it needs to be more than, uh, carry on as things always have been. Let's, let's, you know, let's continue raping the planet.

I was getting worried the other night because I heard Elon Musk— I heard that he was selling all of his homes. In California. He's going to go on a spaceship.

Yes, right. If we— yeah, yeah, it'll, it'll, it'll all be, it'll all be great on Mars with the orange dust. Yeah, it's interesting going back to, you know, where, where we started this conversation around this time. And, and I think my, my hope is that, you know, as we are staring and prying and eavesdropping I mean, it's actually been amazing how much we've come together, I think, at least not only in this country, but around the planet.

When you talk about Zen and productivity and business, and in your book you talk about non-attainment in a world of attainment, that's also your words, right? Those are great words. And how does that all go together for you? So I wanted to find out more about how you went from being a student at Rutgers in college and ending up at the Zen monastery, which is Tassajara, right? That was the first Zen monastery in the US. And then going back to business school. That sounds crazy to me. So first I want to know, you grew up in Jersey? Is that where you grew up? So did I. I'm a Jersey girl. So you grew up in Jersey. What was your upbringing? Were you brought up by monks, Buddhist monks?

No, I had an incredibly kind of conventional, you know, white middle class, lower middle class, actually. You know, my father was an electrician. My mother was a secretary. I brag that from my house that I grew up in, We could, I could hear the Parkway and smell the Turnpike. I was just a pretty shy, introverted kid, but I loved sports.

What was your sport?

I was captain of my high school wrestling team.

Wow.

But I played a lot. I, you know, I grew up in bowling alleys and golf courses and then baseball fields and football fields. And basketball courts. And I'm still kind of a sports addict, mostly watching.

So you're in a blue-collar home.

In a blue-collar home. And it's interesting. I mean, one of the— you talk about attainment and non-attainment. In wrestling, in high school wrestling, I noticed that really good wrestlers really wanted to win and didn't want to I noticed that the best wrestlers didn't seem to care, that they, they loved what they were doing. It was like, like, I, I noticed that the state champions, they were like artists or dancers. They seemed to just be expressing their craft in a way that had a different tone than the next level of people who really wanted to win and really didn't want to lose. And I noticed I really wanted to win and I really didn't want to lose. And I noticed how it got in my way.

That's interesting.

So you don't think it's like you want to win, win, win, win until maybe you don't win, then you let it go? I think it's always the art of it.

The whole time. I think the desire to win gets in the way of your actual activity.

So eventually at that level, at a very high level, you have to let go of it. But I know a lot of performers, whether sports or music, and they actually get to a certain level of competency before they can release it and become artists. So there has to be that desire to win for a while.

Sure. Yeah. And I think there's that desire. I think it's in all sports, but all physical activities. And this is the connection. We should be really skilled, competent business people. I think it's important that we ask why we're doing what we're doing and to pay attention to the consequences of our actions. Right. So this is where And in business, it's like, how do you define winning? Is it the number of people you're helping? And money. Right. That's right. Money. Money. It's interesting how we forget that businesses were all originally created to help people in some way. I mean, we need lending money. And, you know, when done fairly, when done consciously, is an important thing.

Yes, absolutely.

And it's easy to lose sight that businesses are essentially about helping. Helping.

That's interesting.

And that I think the entrepreneurial spirit of wanting to create things, wanting to succeed, wanting to create wealth Those things are great as long as you don't lose sight of helping. Yes, there are certainly exceptions, but businesses that have really figured out how to help people, you know, I think of, you know, again, it's tricky. I hesitate naming any company. I know, I know. It's easy to criticize. It's easy to look at, and no company is perfect. I mean, I I started and ran a greeting card company. And I still remember, actually, one of the first things that we produced was wrapping paper.

Nice.

Made from recycled material. And I still remember the very first time that this truck pulled up and the back of the truck opened and there were, you know, was filled with cartons of cartons of wrapping paper. My first, my heart sank. And I thought, who needs this crap? Why, why do we— why am I— why am I cutting— why am I involved in cutting down trees to make wrapping paper?

I laugh because I can so relate to all of that, but I'm also materialistic sometimes.

Well, a lot of times. So after I— so I— so My heart was beating fast and I was breathing hard as you were, and then I said to myself, well, you know, it's kind of nice. Wrapping paper is special. People like wrapping gifts in special paper. And at least this wrapping paper is made from mostly recycled material. It's more, it's much more environmentally friendly.

Is that why you eventually gave it up though? Because of that guilt, or just business?

No, no, no, no. I did, I did it for 15 years.

That was— oh wow, that's a long time.

Oh, okay.

So I want to go in a linear fashion because I, I usually wander off, and I was trying to see if I can take this in a more linear interview. I love tangents, but I'm like, too late for that.

It's too late for that.

Um, this happens all the time, but I have so much fun. What did you have a religion growing up?

I grew up in a pretty much non-practicing Jewish household. I mean, it was more— we were kind of ethnically Jewish, but there was very little— there's very little religion, very, very minor.

Okay.

Did your parents have any spiritual practices or?

Hardly. I mean, again, there was, you know, we, we there was some acknowledgement and, and minor celebrations of the holidays, and, and that was pretty much, pretty much all. So no, not so much religion.

So did you have any spiritual guidance when you were growing up? No. End up at Rutgers, and were you wrestling there?

Yep, a little bit.

And when you got to Rutgers, what are you doing for a year? And you— and then you take off to California. So tell me what happened physically.

Yeah, that, that first year, that first year of Rutgers was a real transformative time. One, it was leaving home, being with, you know, a much more diverse group of people from around the country that I had ever been with before. And, and I A book did it for me. The, the first book that really, really got my attention was Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow. Oh, I, I think of myself as having been pretty asleep, um, growing up, but there was something about that book, and I— it was also, I think, the place I was in. I think I was, I was grieving having lost my first real love relationship, and I was kind of at Rutgers. Rutgers. I was kind of depressed and moping around, and, and, uh, this book was assigned for a psychology class at Rutgers. And, and this idea of self-actualization and that you could actually get to know yourself, and that there were— his description of a slice of the population that were much more emotionally intelligent than the general population, one, I got a glimpse of just how asleep I was. And at the same time, I got a glimpse of what was possible. And I remember thinking, you know, why would anyone do anything different? So in some way, As things, as my world started to open up, at some point I started to feel like I don't want to be reading this. I somehow wanted to be doing it, and I didn't quite know what that meant. One day, a friend of my older brother's came back from San Francisco and handed me this brochure of a place in San Francisco called the Humanist Institute. Which, um, where they did meditation and studied Eastern and Western mysticism. And, and it was connected to, uh, Sonoma State University, and you could get graduate credits for this thing. And I, I was able to sell my parents on that even though I hadn't finished college. I'm gonna go to take these graduate courses in San Francisco. For a year. And so I took a 1-year leave of absence.

Sophomore year?

Came to San Francisco. It was actually after my junior year.

I had—

Okay. Yeah, it took me a couple years to get the courage to actually kind of leave.

Uh-huh.

And you have a brother who, is he into Zen and Buddhism or it was just his friend? Just his friend. Just a chance thing?

Yeah.

Interesting.

You know, I took a Psych 101 class And I completely fell in love with it at Rutgers, but I didn't have the wake-up call like you did. I went to medical school and that was all awesome, but I don't know. I sometimes I regret, but I say maybe I would've been a disillusioned psychiatrist by now if I had gone into that. Who knows, right?

Yeah. You probably weren't as asleep as I was.

I was pretty asleep.

I think. I also had more confidence. If I had more confidence, I probably would have become a doctor. I remember, I remember thinking about it, and, and, um, I took a few pre-med classes when I was a freshman and thought, wow, this is— these are hard. I don't think I'm smart enough.

All right, you made me feel better, and I made you feel better. So when you get out to Tassajara. Am I saying it right?

No, no, I didn't. This was, this was a place, this was before I knew anything about the Zen Center. This was this small, this was a small community in, but there it was in the kitchen at the Humanist Institute where the Tassajara bread book fell into my hands and I started baking bread using this book that talked about this Zen monastery. And this book is very practical. It was about making bread. It was spiritual. There were lots of kind of— it was the Zen of breadmaking. And it also had a sense of humor. It didn't take itself too seriously. And I liked, I liked all these qualities. And I became aware that, that the San Francisco Zen Center had a a place in the city that I actually used to— I was working, I was working in an office downtown San Francisco, and the, the, the bus I was taking to work would literally go right by the Zen Center building to and from my, my work. And, and one day I got off the bus and walked into, walked into the building. Big mistake, you know, and No, and I was immediately, immediately drawn to the, the feeling and the people and just the, the spirit of it was, you know, we sit meditation every morning and come join us. And there was no, no one was selling me anything.

And then you move in.

I first started driving across, across the city early in the morning, and then you said, I know how to make bread. No, actually, I didn't know how to make bread very well at all, but But I did get pulled in and I got trained somehow. I did get trained to be a breadmaker right away.

Uh-huh.

I'm going to have to get that book, too. That sounds like a great book.

There's quite a culinary tradition out of the Zen Center. They started a restaurant called Green's Restaurant. Just a very— it's just a very well-known vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco. And several cookbooks came out of came out of there. And then I ended up, um, yeah, so I moved into the— I moved into the Zen Center building, and then, uh, maybe a year later went to the monastery and went to Tassajara to study. And I still have the— I still have the letter that I wrote to my parents, uh, describing why I wasn't coming back to Rutgers and why this was the education that I needed. And, um, that one-year leave of absence turned into 10 years.

And now, were they afraid that you had been taken in by a cult or something?

No, they weren't. In fact, they— at some point, they sent one of my friends to come rescue me from the cult.

I— yeah, I would have done that with— if it was my child.

He ended up— he ended up staying at the Zen Center.

So when you stay there, you work for the Zen Center and you don't get paid, but you stay there like in trade. Is that how it works?

There's many different, many different, many different setups.

Okay. The quote that's on the website is, the true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind. And it's Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who is the author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, right? So he was the founder, or it was based on his teachings?

He was the founder.

Okay, because an old friend of mine gave me a copy of The Beginner's Mind in medical school, and I was like, what is this? And I kind of never read it. And at one point I did skim through it And I couldn't understand half of it, but I do remember one main concept. And tell me if this is the main concept, because the concept that I got from it was that you really should just clear your mind, like tabula rasa. Just let it— you're not an expert, you're not, you don't know anything, and just let out all of preconceived notions and just allow your mind to open up to possibilities that you would otherwise rule it out if you felt like you were an expert or something, said, no, that's not it.

Yeah.

And this is, this is beautifully tying right back to where we began with this question of uncertainty. Right. So, so beginner's, beginner's mind is not being so sure about anything, especially this question about reality.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so here we are in this in this reality that no one could, you know, probably would have predicted that it would look and feel like this. But in general, um, our brains like to predict reality. We like to be sure. We like to know. So, so this practice, to me, it's Zen practice is just a fancy word for human practice, right? The human, human practice. Or, you know, Abraham Maslow called it called it, you know, self-actualization. Zen calls it finding real freedom. And paradoxically, our freedom lies in letting go of what we think we know and looking, looking at things with a much more fresh, fresh eye.

But there's always that balance, right? You need to have that knowledge too. That's right.

Yeah.

So then, and then you back off.

Yeah.

Just like wanting to win and then backing off from it. That's right, sort of the same concept. That's right.

So you want, you know, you want to, want to be whether it's the best, the best striving. Well, yeah, so it's how to, how to let go of that, that's, that what the word striving seems to contain, a kind of being attached to winning. So it's how to how to let go of that and trust that, um, you know. So, but, but again, it's like I'm often using the sports analogies that you— if you're a tennis player, you practice, practice, practice, practice, so you pay a lot of attention to every detail. But then when you're in the match, you're, you're just in the moment. You're, you're not— if you're thinking about winning or you're afraid of losing you're— that's going to get in your way. Just focus, just focus on hitting the next shot, responding. Let go, let go of your expectations about what's going to happen. And, and also just strategically, it, it allows you to be much more responsive and less, less predictable and to be more, to be more free.

In flow, they call it flow.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Yes. So in medicine, there's this whole idea of preconceived diagnosis. So there's this, you know, story where the resident comes up or an attending comes up with a case and says, oh, this person has COVID-19. And then everybody's like, everything is COVID-19. You don't even consider another diagnosis, right? So they say— they call it anchoring bias. It's like a tendency to anchor heavily on one piece of information. Although honestly, now you have to say that, and then you go on to the differential diagnosis, and at the very end you have to add that on again, COVID-19, because it's showing up as so many different ways.

Yeah. I loved an interview I heard of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, where he talks about anchoring biases. And I think it was Terry Gross who asked him, who said, the fact that you're aware of all of these biases, does that help you? And he said, no, I'm a human being. One of my favorite biases is regression to the mean. You know, do you know that one?

Can you explain that?

Sure. Um, it's, it's in, uh, it's in Thinking Fast and Slow where he talks about an Israeli fighter pilot trainer who is convinced that if you yell at people for doing badly, they will do, they will do better if they've done badly. You, you shouldn't praise people who've done who've done well, because if you do, they'll do worse the next time. But regression to the mean is that if someone does something really well the first time, they're just by chance not going to do as well the next time. And if someone does something really badly first time, like you can, you can test this out by, you know, just doing you know, playing some little game, you know, where, oh, I'm going to try and get this penny as close to my wastebasket as I can. Well, if the first time I do really badly, I'll probably do better the next time.

True.

And if the first time I do like, you know, bullseye, I got it, I'll probably won't do as well the next time, regardless of whether I'm praised or yelled at.

Uh-huh. Right, like the author of Eat, Pray, Love, right? She was so upset because it was such an amazing hit, and now she's worried about the next book, right?

Well, this is why I think beginner's mind is so crucial, right? Otherwise, we, we, we're fooling ourselves all the time by thinking, thinking that we know, right? So this, this attitude of, uh, and I think this is a core part of meditation practice. And because it's not easy, we, we want, we want to know, we want to win, we want, you know, all those, all those things. And, and so cultivating, cultivating a mind and body that is okay with uncertainty, that is more, you know, able to navigate within what's certain No, of course, you know, if you're running a business, you have to make predictions and you have to, you know, try and aim for things to be a certain way. But then it's being willing to be surprised.

In your Zen practice, when you're seeing clearly with a beginner's mind, where does that whole giving meaning to things come when you interpret hardships with meanings so that you can have a more positive outlook.

Yeah.

Where does that come in with Zen?

Yeah.

And is Soto Zen different from regular— like, is there a special— which is what Tassajara is, right?

Yeah, there's a, there's a couple of different Zen, um, traditions that have, that have come down in the United States. The, the two that are most, uh, prominent are— there's Soto and Rinzai, uh, and they're just different flavors of the same, same thing. I think that what we find is that when we let go of trying to make meaning, and usually we're down in our own more pure, sincere hearts, there's great meaning. There's great meaning in being alive, in just being alive, just in breathing, in breathing, in seeing and feeling. In hearing, that we don't have to make meaning. There's one of my— in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, one of my favorite quotes is Shinryu Suzuki saying, "The world is its own magic." The world is its own magic. Things are pretty magical, actually.

You know, I just look out the window at the trees and the sky and Well, one of my favorite quotes that I was gonna tell you about was, the most important thing is to remember the most important thing. I love that one.

Sounds like Shunryu Suzuki.

Is that him? Yes. Okay. There's a lot of attributes and I wasn't sure exactly who it was. Mark, thank you so much for being here. It was such a pleasure to meet you. I really appreciate you spending this time.

Me too. Thank you very much.

Hopefully I see you on your retreat.

That'd be great. Come join me. Okay, bye-bye.

That was Mark Lesser, author of Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons from Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen. If you haven't already done so, check out episode number 53, Meditation to Connect with What You Love, inspired by Mark. Tune in tomorrow for a quick Q&A session with Mark. Go to mindbodyspace.com. Juna.bobby.md.com. Click on the RxChillPill podcast page where you'll find more about Mark as well as a free downloadable PDF on your 3 steps to focus and other resources that we mentioned in this podcast. Thank you again for listening. And until next time, wishing you wellness. This is Dr. Juna.