Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / How to Outgrow our Flakiness - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei

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How to Outgrow our Flakiness - Jogen Salzberg, Sensei · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Jomon: Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:23
  Jogen: Good evening, everybody. Thank you for being here. Tonight was the first night I felt like we really had the winter energy going on, and I appreciate that and hope it lasts a little while longer. I had a Dharma talk talk topic request, which I love. Oh, there's the echo again.
• 0:49
  I thought I solved it. Do you hear the echo? No? Okay. I had a request for a particular theme, and I even got a title from the person, which I love.
• 1:02
  So basically, wrote an outline for me, and I'm going to read what they wrote. They said, well, there was three titles: Limitless Choice Is Killing Us All, How to Outgrow Our Flakiness, or Showing Up for the World When Canceling Is Always an Option. How many people does this feel like a relevant topic to? Yeah, okay. Okay.
• 1:28
  And they said, Canceling and being flaky sucks, but is endemic to our culture right now. Why can't we show up for each other? How to cope with social anxiety. Why is it so hard to commit to stuff? The people I admire make commitments and stick to them.
• 1:48
  They also show up when are when they say they are going to show up and don't waffle. This seems to be a quality that dharma teachers embody, so the solution must be dharma related, right? So probably the best I can do is spark some investigation for you if this is something you, struggle with, or if you don't struggle with it but you are canceled on, maybe it could build some, empathy. Nobody likes being canceled on. Right?
• 2:31
  And just take a moment and and feel into the disappointment of that. See if you have recent enough memory that you can feel what it's like to be the recipient of canceling, of flaky canceling. And then see if you have a memory that you can feel into of what your state of mind is when you are the canceller, when you are the flaky canceller. And of course, we're not talking about times when you are actually sick or something actually comes up. When you are the counselor, how much consideration of the interior of the other person is there for you In that moment, how much are you imagining the impact of that act?
• 3:52
  So this person said, Why can't we, show up for each other? And I thought I would start with what it might look like to show up for each other with this practice empowering us. And a few things. We wouldn't overextend ourselves socially so that we have so many social obligations. That's the first thing.
• 4:21
  Clear that out of the way. The problem is not that I have too many people that I feel I need to check the box of, I'm staying in touch, I'm staying in touch. Because we can be socially greedy, and we can be greedy for friends, we can be greedy for company, and we're investigating why. Why do I, take on more relationships where someone on the other end feels that, there needs to be reciprocity of attention? Why do I take on more than I have time for?
• 5:04
  Right. So if we do have if we are socially greedy, it could be, something to do with self image. There might be some sense that if I amass friends, I'm valuable. If I amass connections, if lots of people want to hang out with me, I'm getting some sense of affirmation from other people that I am different, special, worthy. So to investigate, if amassing friends is in the equation, and what is underneath that?
• 5:49
  That's a weird thing. Do people amass friends? They might. They might try to I don't mean just social media, but I mean try to, like, intentionally enlarge our social network. And what's that for?
• 6:08
  We could investigate, if we think we are socially greedy, do we have an inability to tolerate solitude? What does aloneness present us with? And this person actually said, the person that requested this talk said that there was a moment of feeling lonely, and then they reached out to somebody to ameliorate that loneliness, and they had ambivalence around this person. What does aloneness present us with that is hard to hold, is hard to occupy? I think also related to this level of the investigation about being socially greedy is we investigate if this is going on and then exhaust the search for the thoroughly cool or interesting or inspiring friend.
• 7:25
  We put to rest the notion that we're gonna finally find the person that we always want to be around, that kind of is consistently giving us what we want. And the thought I had at the moment of writing this is that nobody is consistently that great to be with. Does that seem true? Yeah. Nobody is that great.
• 7:51
  People are great sometimes. If if our seeking for connection is based on wanting inspiration and interestingness, I think it would be hard to find someone that always is that person. So that's kind of, let's call that wave one of the investigation. We'll look at, are we socially greedy? Meaning, we're wanting and creating more connections than we can actually maintain.
• 8:25
  And then we flake on people because we simply can't handle all of the apparent obligations we've taken on. And this is easy for me. I don't have that many friends. For some of you, it's hard. Right?
• 8:41
  You have to look into it. Then a little bit deeper through presence, we feel out our actual obligations and affinities. So obligations, I'm defining this as people who it is right for us to care for and be in relationship with. Who are those people? For many people, family comes to mind right away.
• 9:11
  We might also like those people. We might also, find them interesting, but there are people that I think we sense that we are obligated to be in relationship to. It's not right for us to make choices based on, do I feel like spending time with you? That question is not really appropriate for that level of relationship. We're obligated.
• 9:38
  There's some deeper fibers. There's some mutual commitment, or maybe it's not always mutual. So let's say there's obligations and then there's, affinities. And there is I've talked about this a little bit before, but there's a concept in Zen of affinity, and that means that there are people we have a hidden karmic background with. The traditional idea would be something like we have a past life connection with somebody.
• 10:11
  So there's more there's a kind of a hidden energy or an obscured history with somebody, and we connect with them, and there's energy, there's resonance, though that could be positive or negative. And so an affinity has a relational resonance that we sense. So when we get a sense for how affinity feels for us and how we recognize it and for what our obligations are, the people that turning away from actually feels wrong, then we can start to simplify the people we're committed to. Right? Maybe, this is helping me clarify my own thinking.
• 11:03
  Clarifying obligations and affinities is a way to reduce and kind of cut through social greed. Yeah. Who do I have real energy and kind of, meaning resonance with, and who who are the people that I need to show up for because that's just the way, that's just the dharma of this lifetime. So then, if we're practicing, we have a basis of spaciousness and awareness of impermanence. We have a basis of spaciousness and impermanence, And that means how I happen to feel in any given moment with my obligations and affinities doesn't have to have too much power over whether I show up for you.
• 12:03
  How I happened to feel about the last time we interacted doesn't have to have too much power about whether I show up for you. We have space to let a feeling just be a feeling. We have a space to see that things change. There is It's part of why I was being snarky about there's nobody that's that cool and interesting, because if we're relationship with anybody over time, there are gonna be times where they bore us. They are not that interesting.
• 12:34
  There are gonna be times with a friend where we feel like, Maybe I should have stayed home, Or a part of us that says, I wrote or rather hung out with so and so. But a mood is a mood is a mood. We can know that if we have that, if we have a basis in our practice. I happen to feel like you're not interesting at this moment, or hanging out wouldn't be what I want, but that doesn't have to be the basis of my choice. So I'm less blown around by how I happen to feel at this moment.
• 13:20
  A feeling is a feeling is a feeling. A thought is a thought is a thought. If you think about, it's a miracle that we show up for each other at all. People who are always in motion, internally being impacted by external events, being impacted by hormones, weather, job situation, how much sleep we got, what we read on the news, how much practice we've done, what's going on in other relationships, all these factors, right, kind of affecting our feelings, and it's actually amazing when we are consistent for each other, and it's actually mature when we show up even when we don't feel like it. So the basis of spaciousness impermanence for the people we have obligation and affinity with.
• 14:19
  We could we could that's actually workable. We could actually do something about our flakiness then. And the interesting thing is, sometimes we don't show up. We cancel because we're currently feeling and thinking away, Oh, I just don't feel like I want to be with your whateverness about that person. And then the mind takes that thought as real.
• 14:47
  We project how we're currently seeing somebody into the future. We project our current mood into the future, really forgetting that a mood is so ephemeral. If we don't renew it, if we don't give rise or let flourish the thoughts that renew particular feelings, they often have a pretty quick lifespan. Pretty quick. And I could find even in one, in a particular conversation, I could be feeling whatever I feel, and then two minutes later, that could actually recede if I don't, if I'm not grabbing onto it and renewing it.
• 15:37
  Right? So sometimes, actually, we would prove ourselves wrong if we kept the commitment, if we didn't flake. We would show up and be like, you know what? It was different than I thought. Also, empowered by the practice, we can have an appreciation of this.
• 16:01
  Presence and curiosity in the midst of discomfort, when it's not too intense, matures us. Matures us. It's a similar formula to, being in meditation retreat or doing a long sit. It's important that we sit with discomfort, that we don't always get up or check out right when it gets uncomfortable, because somehow presence is purified, is deepened when we sustain it in the midst of discomfort. It's a little bit like the logic of asceticism.
• 16:47
  Asceticism is the old idea that to deepen yourself spiritually, one of the things you can do is choose certain discomforts. Agree to take them on, but not as poor me, I'm now gonna labor under this hair shirt that I've decided to put on, but oh no, I avoid such and such situations, and what would happen if I agreed to bring my whole self to not check out in the midst of it? And the good news is, in the right dose, when we're choosing that, it is actually purifying. Now, I don't know why, but something happens. And that's true with people too.
• 17:34
  I guess I'm getting towards the age where I can be like an old fashioned person as technology is developing, and I was reading somebody middle aged like me lamenting that very young people now are filtering everything they say relationally through AI before they say it. And I thought, Oh my God, that's terrible. Because people feel like if technology can eliminate any discomfort, if technology can eliminate awkwardness, then I'm going to eliminate it. Why should I have to feel awkward? Why should I have to face not knowing what to say or saying something that hurts someone's feelings?
• 18:21
  Let me eliminate all of these undesirables. But if we do that, we are not going to have any resilience. We're not gonna have any capacity. And this is where our relational life and our spiritual life, they really, they really are, they can mirror each other very much. So being present with, even when something in us doesn't want to, especially if we are curious about that, is soul deepening.
• 18:57
  And for some people, being reminded of that is motivating. Sometimes we cancel because we don't want to, this is the other side of what I was saying, subject other people to our state of being, Right? I remember times where I've gone through really low mood and I thought, No, so and so can't handle me. Right? That's really interesting, and in a way, that's a culling process of who are our mature companions or who has resilience and who has not cultivated that in themselves.
• 19:46
  What kind of person is a friend who really is unwilling to be with us when we're sad, low, uninspired, etcetera? We get to see who other people are for us when we don't pull out because we don't want some state to be seen. I do think there is a time for being alone with our pain. There is a time for that, of course, but And so this person said how to cope with social anxiety. And so suppose a reason that we cancel is social anxiety.
• 20:37
  So first of all, before we get to why are we anxious, what makes the feeling of anxiety so powerful? Where does that power Why does it have power over us? It's relation to the basic texture of social anxiety, or any anxiety for that matter. Anxiety is very close to excitement. It's very close.
• 21:15
  What, what, and we like to be excited, we pay for excitement. People go into movies to get really excited, get, people go to movies to get terribly frightened. Love that stuff. What is it about social anxiety as a feeling that is hard to tolerate? Now, if it's really extreme for you, if it's tapped into, I'm gonna be exiled from the tribe and, you know, stoned to death, If it feels raw and existential, that might be a different kind of issue.
• 21:50
  But when it's when it's mild, when it's something that we we consider, a nuisance but still has power over us, why? What is it? So to investigate that, I also think it's excellent if you can find yourself in a situation where you have to sit in meditation and really inhabit anxiety. I've mentioned before, I had a teacher, or I have a teacher who loved to put me on the spot. Sometimes I would be getting ready to give a talk when I was still new at this, and he would just take my notes away.
• 22:29
  And he said, Go give the talk without your notes. He'd like to have me There's an old practice in therapy called encounter therapy. Some of your therapy types, do they still do encounter therapy? No. Oh, and excuse me, exposure.
• 22:47
  Yeah, nods, exposure. So to expose yourself fully to the anxiety and see what makes this a problem. Right? Then, on the level of investigation, sometimes social anxiety has its source in murky intentions in us. So I have found the more rested in my own reality I am, the less anxiety I have.
• 23:20
  The more honest I'm being with myself, the less anxiety I have in life and specifically with other people. So in some sense, it can be a precept issue sometimes. For example, the precept of not to lie, but to speak and embody the truth. Sometimes that's what's going on with social anxiety. We're hiding something.
• 23:47
  We might be hiding it for different reasons. We don't want to be seen or we have something that we are that we don't want to be seen. Or the social anxiety is that we're fawning. We're being someone only because we might get something from it. Sometimes that's a survival strategy, and we should honor that, and sometimes it's coming from a more murky place in us.
• 24:20
  So we feel nervous or things are uncomfortable because we're just not being, we're not being real. We're contrived. Sometimes we're performing, and that's what makes it anxious. Sometimes we're manipulating. So the more real and rested in our reality we are, the more we accept what we actually are, the less anxious we are.
• 24:49
  That's a theory at least. You try it out. And then the practice would be to do this investigation and see, oh, I do kind of hide. I do pretend that such and such is okay that someone likes to bring up in our conversations. I pretend it's okay, but I don't feel it's okay.
• 25:10
  Right? Then I can do something about it. Can be forthright. And we still might have energy on the excitement, anxiety spectrum, especially if we are forming a new connection with somebody. And then as we talk about often, there's a way when you're really present to convert anxiety or to let anxiety just be a vibrant energy of uncertainty.
• 25:50
  It might sound like a contradiction, but you can relax into anxiety, which first of all means you stop fighting against it. You stop trying to mellow it. You actually stop trying to mellow it. You give up trying to fix it, you let the energy just infuse your being. It's one of my theories about, some performers who have a very electric presence.
• 26:12
  I think one thing about that is they've converted stage fright into that kind of electric quality. They're using it. So this person said, why is it so hard to commit to stuff? The people I admire make commitments and stick to them. Well, maybe the Internet has broken us.
• 26:41
  It was actually my first thought. Just think about human beings have never been faced with endless options for new stimulus. Endless options. It makes a library look like an eight track player. Endless options for stimulus and endless options for commitment.
• 27:03
  Maybe the Internet has broken us. I hope not. But we have more seeming options for how to spend our time than we are wired to handle. Okay? But here are some other thoughts to check out about why it might be so hard to commit to stuff.
• 27:25
  One reason is that the critical mind sees a flaw in everything. Critical mind that everybody has is never going to one day not see a flaw when it's active. The critical mind sees flaws, and that flaw can give us a reason to hold back. In other words, there's no person and no relationship that our critical mind can't see some about. And so if it's always judging people, if it's always kind of finding the ways that they failed us or their shortcomings, we continually have this sort of reasoning about why we might retract our engagement, about why we might hold back or why we might cancel altogether.
• 28:20
  The critical mind sees a flaw in everything. Right? So seeing through the critic allows us to maintain our obligations and affinities much easier. Much easier. And in fact, when you begin to see through the critic, you can see how a particular quality might be seen a different way.
• 28:45
  Critic says somebody is lazy, but actually, they might just be laid back. So, to know laziness as the liar that it sometimes is. I know that it's very popular in TikTok therapy culture to put on a pedestal, taking time for ourselves and boundaries and all of that, and for some people, of course, that's really good advice, but laziness, as Carl Jung said, is one of the great passions of human beings. And no spiritual practitioner goes the distance and doesn't see that laziness is a real thing that they have to contend with. We have to be honest about laziness.
• 29:37
  And sometimes we're lazy about people that are our affinities and obligations. We don't wanna show up the way that we really should. People who practice Dharma also show up when they say they're going to show up and don't waffle, this person said. That seems to be a quality that the teachers embody, so the solution must be Dharma related. Right?
• 30:12
  Well, here are some things about that. As we come to see that our mind is often filled with perpendicular desires, Or put it another way, we have too many desires alive in us than are possible for any human being to fulfill. Nobody can really fulfill all of their desires without being an utterly selfish human being. Life is constantly saying, Nope, you can't fulfill that desire because here's reality. Desire wants to go this way, but reality is this way.
• 30:52
  As we come to know ourselves and face this, we simplify internally. And I think it's not that we don't have desires, it's that we prioritize our desires. We come to know what's actually really most important for us to do given our dwindling life. That helps a lot with being able to do what we say we're going to do and show up for who we've created the connections to show up with. And then related to all that, or in a way, sewing it all together is putting principle and vow before feelings.
• 31:42
  There's a well known dharma teacher, Zen teacher named Kosho Uchiyama. And Kosho Uchiyama said, One of the three things that a Zen practitioner does is they live by vow. And that means that we, through coming to really know ourselves, through exposing laziness, through getting to know our priority desires, we really make firm commitments. We make firm commitments, and those firm commitments, we begin to etch them in our hearts, such that those commitments are there as a stabilizing force when we want to choose temporary feelings over deeper principle. And I think if we see somebody who seems to be very, very steady, not so moved around by moods and feelings, it's because they're living by vow.
• 32:51
  They've kind of There are some commitments that are etched in their heart, and that is not It's actually a very empowering thing. It's not a heavy thing or an aesthetic thing, it's a very freeing thing when you have that kind of simplicity. In a way, a lot of illusion of choice falls away. Because a lot of choice and a lot of desire really is, an illusion. So maybe there is waffling inside the person we think doesn't waffle, but the momentum of the vow supersedes those impulses.
• 33:35
  Right. Now, last thing that comes up for me is when we have remorse about being flaky, really take that in. Really take that in. Remorse is a very healthy faculty, and it's essential for a spiritual practitioner. We have to feel our remorse.
• 34:02
  It's very important communication.
• 34:12
  Jomon: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendust.org. Your support supports us.