Interviews & Essays
Author EssayBiz Zen: What Is It?
Zen is many things, many solutions to many mysteries. But in its heart, it is this: the knowledge of the universe and all its workings that comes from sitting.
That’s right. Sitting. Year after year of sitting in the position of thought and comfort (sometimes in a very nice leather recliner), and by working without hope of spiritual (and sometimes even sufficient financial) recompense, and by then reaching for the lightness of being that comes with the renunciation of hope and desire.
In this way, by sitting and sitting and sitting until everything suddenly becomes lighter, you can achieve enlightenment and through enlightenment -- Power.
And happiness. For yes, as we may be happier then any elephant can ever be. For no elephants are happy. It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle then for an elephant to achieve happiness. The average middle manager wolfing down a hot dog at a sideboard has an easier time of it. Because elephants are driven by desire. And desire is misery.
In the end, the elephant -- your elephant -- will and can always be nothing more nor less then itself. And so it will be, day after day, after day. This is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.
You, on the other hand, can be anything you want you to be. Because you are too small to be entitled to a self. And that is your greatest pathway to peace and enlightenment. For the self is bondage.
Get over yourself! How good does that feel!
Your elephant cannot get over its self. And it lives on and on with that gigantic, gray self...until, inevitably, it does not. And then? There is a new elephant. There will always be a new elephant.
And that new elephant will be nothing more nor less, once again, then itself.
But you? You can be anything! Because yourself -- it is nothing! Good for you.
It is up to others to make what they can of the elephant, its size, its weight, its intransigent nature. Those who can do so eradicate and inevitable suffering of life.
Those who do not will be swept along with the tide. (Stanley Bing)
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
The Four or Five Truths
The incomparable lion-roar of the doctrine
Shatters the brains of the one hundred kinds of animals.
Even the king of elephants will run away, forgetting his pride;
Only the heavenly dragon listens calmly, with pure delight.
Zen textYou only get what you are big enough to take.
Jimmy Hoffa Jr.The ways to find one's way to Enlightenment are many. There is prayer and fasting, and some try that to great effect, but that road is severe, particularly to people with electronic scheduling software and a lot of business lunches as part of the general requirements of their jobs, not to mention drinks after work, and pretty soon fasting, if not prayer, is out the window.
The Buddha was quite clear on this subject: if Enlightenment was reserved for those who don't have to work for a living, it would be a pretty unfair deal all the way around.
The Buddha said it, and the scriptures make it clear over and over. In work lies Enlightenment just as surely as in wandering around in a bathrobe with a bowl of rice in one hand and a stick in the other. One need not remove oneself from the world to transcend it. One must use the tools that are put in one's path. Perhaps a tale might elucidate this point.
One morning the Buddha stopped by a barbershop for a little touch-up. The barber was a voluble and philosophical fellow, as many of that profession tend to be, and he regaled the Buddha with a host of meaninglessanecdotes and flippant observations in which the Buddha had no interest.
At the end of an especially broad and runny river of drivel, Buddha closed his eyes and took one of those deep, cleansing breaths that afterward became such an important part of his teaching. The barber at last noticed this and set down his scissors thoughtfully.
“Oh, Buddha,” he said into the gigantic void that was parked, sighing profoundly, in the chair. “I notice that I have been speaking without stop for well unto twenty minutes and you have said not a word. Is there something you wish me to infer from this?”
The Buddha smiled, and the Buddha's smile was indeed a beautiful thing to see, shedding radiance all over the place. “Yes, my friend,” the Buddha said. “Your job is to cut my hair. My job is to sit and have it cut. You see how close to perfection we might be if we each accomplished our duty without distractions.”
The barber was immediately struck by the truth of this and miraculously said not a word for the rest of the haircut. Buddha got to read the new issue of Car & Driver and left a nice tip.
You see? That's how it works. Everybody does what he or she is supposed to do without a lot of fuss and noise and emotion. Things get lighter. The lighter they get, the more enlightened you become. Pretty soon, nothing makes any particular difference. Except the work.
In the tree, the nightingale sings;
What else should he do?
It takes but three
To line the cooking pot!
Bo Ho
A.D. 342A steelworker makes steel, and in that action lies his Enlightenment. An accountant loses himself in his rows of numbers and may thus find the pathway to his oneness with the Universe. For others, the road to wisdom lies in two frequent states of being: sitting and silence. Mostly in meetings.
Sitting. And silence. Both are at the heart of Zen. They are also at the heart of the work we do.
Think about it. We are in a meeting. We sit. We are silent. At times, true, there is a verbal duty for us to perform, so we speak. And then, others speak. And while they speak? We are silent.
On our way to work, we sit on the train or in our car or we stand staring into the near middle distance like a cow in the field. We are going from here to there. What are we doing? Nothing. In that nothing lies everything.
We receive our mail, both electronic and paper, throughout the day. While we evaluate and respond to it, we sit. We are silent. At times, true, others enter our domain and require speech or reaction from us, but when they are gone, we return to our task and while we do so? We sit. And are silent.
We sit on a transcontinental airliner, traveling for four or five hours for a meeting whose meat will occupy perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. We stare out the window of the plane, trying to decide whether to watch the in-flight entertainment. We sit and are silent.
Between planes, we watch the inescapable CNN feed on the television that is bolted to the ceiling. A portion of our minds is taken up with the interesting story of the dancing bear that was adopted by a family of Bosnian dwarfs. But inside, as we sit with less than 10 percent of ourselves engaged, somewhere within, we are silent.
In that silence, there is liberation. There is peace. There is an end of desire, passion, and suffering.
We read papers that will shape our destiny. The Wall Street Journal thinks our industry is spiraling down into the toilet.
Our spirits rebel at what we read, be it newspaper, memo, or E-mail. Inside, we are a riot of feeling. But stop. Look within. Is there not something in there that really doesn't give a shit? Of course there is. In that place, there is silence. There is the Buddha.
There is the answer to the management and control of elephants both large and small.
Why, look. Here comes one now into our little corner of the village. “Owoooo!” It raises its trunk heavenward and lets out a trumpeting cry. Perhaps it dances around the area...
Throwing the Elephant . Copyright © by Stanley Bing. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Read a Sample Chapter
Chapter One
The Four or Five Truths
The incomparable lion-roar of the doctrine
Shatters the brains of the one hundred kinds of animals.
Even the king of elephants will run away, forgetting his pride;
Only the heavenly dragon listens calmly, with pure delight.
--Zen text
You only get what you are big enough to take.
--Jimmy Hoffa Jr.
The ways to find one's way to Enlightenment are many. There is prayer and fasting, and some try that to great effect, but that road is severe, particularly to people with electronic scheduling software and a lot of business lunches as part of the general requirements of their jobs, not to mention drinks after work, and pretty soon fasting, if not prayer, is out the window.
The Buddha was quite clear on this subject: if Enlightenment was reserved for those who don't have to work for a living, it would be a pretty unfair deal all the way around.
The Buddha said it, and the scriptures make it clear over and over. In work lies Enlightenment just as surely as in wandering around in a bathrobe with a bowl of rice in one hand and a stick in the other. One need not remove oneself from the world to transcend it. One must use the tools that are put in one's path. Perhaps a tale might elucidate this point.
One morning the Buddha stopped by a barbershop for a little touch-up. The barber was a voluble and philosophical fellow, as many of that profession tend to be, and he regaled the Buddha with a host of meaningless anecdotes and flippant observations in which the Buddha had no interest.
At the end of an especially broad and runny river of drivel, Buddha closed his eyes and took one of those deep, cleansing breaths that afterward became such an important part of his teaching. The barber at last noticed this and set down his scissors thoughtfully.
“Oh, Buddha,” he said into the gigantic void that was parked, sighing profoundly, in the chair. “I notice that I have been speaking without stop for well unto twenty minutes and you have said not a word. Is there something you wish me to infer from this?”
The Buddha smiled, and the Buddha's smile was indeed a beautiful thing to see, shedding radiance all over the place. “Yes, my friend,” the Buddha said. “Your job is to cut my hair. My job is to sit and have it cut. You see how close to perfection we might be if we each accomplished our duty without distractions.”
The barber was immediately struck by the truth of this and miraculously said not a word for the rest of the haircut. Buddha got to read the new issue of Car & Driver and left a nice tip.
You see? That's how it works. Everybody does what he or she is supposed to do without a lot of fuss and noise and emotion. Things get lighter. The lighter they get, the more enlightened you become. Pretty soon, nothing makes any particular difference. Except the work.
In the tree, the nightingale sings;
What else should he do?
It takes but three
To line the cooking pot!
--Bo Ho, A.D. 342
A steelworker makes steel, and in that action lies his Enlightenment. An accountant loses himself in his rows of numbers and may thus find the pathway to his oneness with the Universe. For others, the road to wisdom lies in two frequent states of being: sitting and silence. Mostly in meetings.
Sitting. And silence. Both are at the heart of Zen. They are also at the heart of the work we do.
Think about it. We are in a meeting. We sit. We are silent. At times, true, there is a verbal duty for us to perform, so we speak. And then, others speak. And while they speak? We are silent.
On our way to work, we sit on the train or in our car or we stand staring into the near middle distance like a cow in the field. We are going from here to there. What are we doing? Nothing. In that nothing lies everything.
We receive our mail, both electronic and paper, throughout the day. While we evaluate and respond to it, we sit. We are silent. At times, true, others enter our domain and require speech or reaction from us, but when they are gone, we return to our task and while we do so? We sit. And are silent.
We sit on a transcontinental airliner, traveling for four or five hours for a meeting whose meat will occupy perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. We stare out the window of the plane, trying to decide whether to watch the in-flight entertainment. We sit and are silent.
Between planes, we watch the inescapable CNN feed on the television that is bolted to the ceiling. A portion of our minds is taken up with the interesting story of the dancing bear that was adopted by a family of Bosnian dwarfs. But inside, as we sit with less than 10 percent of ourselves engaged, somewhere within, we are silent.
In that silence, there is liberation. There is peace. There is an end of desire, passion, and suffering.
We read papers that will shape our destiny. The Wall Street Journal thinks our industry is spiraling down into the toilet.
Our spirits rebel at what we read, be it newspaper, memo, or E-mail. Inside, we are a riot of feeling. But stop. Look within. Is there not something in there that really doesn't give a shit? Of course there is. In that place, there is silence. There is the Buddha.
There is the answer to the management and control of elephants both large and small.
Why, look. Here comes one now into our little corner of
the village. “Owoooo!” It raises its trunk heavenward and lets out a trumpeting
cry. Perhaps it dances around the area . . . r
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