In this episode of Mindful Leadership, Marc delves into the timeless Zen story emphasizing how we can navigate life’s challenges and opportunities without avoiding difficulties. The episode begins with a guided meditation to center ourselves, followed by an insightful discussion on the Zen teaching that every day is a good day. Marc shares personal anecdotes and reflections on how this philosophy has influenced his journey as a mindfulness teacher. Tune in to explore how embracing a mindset free from judgment and comparison can transform your daily life. Support the podcast by donating at marclesser.net/donate.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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[00:00:00] Marc: Welcome to Mindful Leadership with Marc Lesser, a biweekly podcast featuring conversations with leaders and teachers exploring the intersection of keeping our hearts open and effective action in these most uncertain and challenging times. Please support our work by making a donation at Marc lesser slash donate.

[00:00:36] Marc: Hi, this is Marc Lesser, and welcome to Mindful Leadership. Today’s episode is called Every Day is a Good Day. We’ll start with a short guided meditation, and then I’ll share a brief traditional Zen story about a dialogue between a. A teacher and a group of students in which the teacher asks about, what do you have to [00:01:00] say about yesterday?

[00:01:01] Marc: What do you have to say about tomorrow? Anyhow the teacher’s response is, every day is a good day. And it’s a sense, it’s a different way of relating to our challenges and opportunities without without avoiding difficulty, but also without avoiding all of the. Wonders of life. I hope you enjoy this episode.

[00:01:28] Marc: Let’s begin with a few minutes of doing some sitting practice, and I’m gonna ring my trustee Bell to get us started.

[00:01:59] Marc: And so the [00:02:00] invitation is to arrive to bring yourself here noticing, noticing what it’s like to be here alive. Breathing,

[00:02:18] Marc: Letting go as much as possible of the activities of the day and nothing to achieve, right? Just that that attitude can be supportive and transformative. Nothing to achieve. Nothing needs to be added on or changed right now. How does, how might that feel? How would it feel in the body to be

[00:02:51] Marc: safe? Satisfied, connected, deeply connected with yourself and with [00:03:00] everyone and everything.

[00:03:05] Marc: Can you feel it?

[00:03:09] Marc: It’s just about letting go of our usual judgements and comparisons.

[00:03:33] Marc: I’ve been turning this zen, little zen poem. When the wind stops, flowers fall. When a bird sings, the mountains become more calm. Right When the wind stops, flowers fall. So flowers fall. Whether there’s wind or [00:04:00] not. We can hear, we can feel the quiet and calm, whether it’s quiet and calm or not.

[00:04:09] Marc: Sometimes the the contrast can be helpful to us. I.

[00:04:25] Marc: Yeah. So right now, dropping in finding, finding your own ground, your heart, noticing whatever it’s like to be here alive breathing.[00:05:00]

[00:05:03] Marc: I think of this part of a Mary Oliver poem, right? This is what I was born for to look, to listen. To lose myself and to find myself inside this soft world this this practice. Simple timeless, just breathing.

[00:05:57] Marc: Just appreciating the quiet. And [00:06:00] this morning I’ve also been appreciating the dogs barking. Airplanes flying overhead.

[00:06:14] Marc: Sometimes I can hear the train in the distance. But just noticing how beautiful these sounds can be. Are they interruptions or are they here to support us?

[00:06:42] Marc: Again, breathing in, I’m noticing that I’m breathing in and breathing out. I notice that I’m breathing out.

[00:06:56] Marc: So as a way of ending, I’m gonna ring, ring my bell, but do [00:07:00] feel free to continue sitting or join me for as I make this shift in gears here.

[00:07:29] Marc: So I wanna talk about one of my favorite Zen stories, little Zen parables, which is every day is a good day. And I can picture this revered Zen teacher looking out over his group of students, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of students in a field somewhere in China. And, he looks out over the over them.

[00:07:49] Marc: And he does this in a very challenging, challenging way. He says I’m not talking about, what happened yesterday and I’m not talking about what might happen [00:08:00] tomorrow. What is it that you what do you say? What do you say? And no one knew how to respond to this.

[00:08:08] Marc: And they were all silent. And he looks over and he says every day is a good day. Every day is a good day. And this somehow, this particular phrase has come down, thousands of years as a teaching story. And of course, every day has its ups and downs, has its surprises, has its positive things and negative things.

[00:08:28] Marc: There’s always the question do we have enough? Am I enough? How’s my life going? How’s my relationships? My work? The world is a mess, right? So we can’t help it, right? We can’t help it. We live in the world of comparison in the world of judgment. But, of course, zen practice, which is really this human practice offers us this other way.

[00:08:52] Marc: Another way is where we can let go. We can actually live and be outside [00:09:00] of the world of comparison and judgment and beyond. Is it enough or not enough? And this is the every day is a good day. And it, so it’s not about, it’s not about ignoring or avoiding anything, but, and this this story, this sense story reminds me of a time.

[00:09:20] Marc: Many years ago when I was designing a program to train mindfulness teachers and I asked a friend and mentor for some ideas on what elements he thought should be included in this training. And and the aim was to train these teachers to be more present and confident and the competence to work with groups of business leaders and to be able to teach meditation practice.

[00:09:47] Marc: And mindful leadership, and I was surprised at what my friend suggested. He said that you should design an ordeal, give them something that at first might seem [00:10:00] impossible. And I was surprised at hearing this word ordeal. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that. I had gone through my own ordeal in order to gain more confidence as a mindfulness teacher.

[00:10:17] Marc: I was finding myself standing in front of groups of Google engineers. People thought I was much more experienced than I was, but really I was new and learning, and it was quite the ordeal and how much I often felt like an imposter in those early days of standing, in front. I Google headquarters in Mountain View, leading meditations and mindfulness practices for really bright achievement oriented engineers.

[00:10:47] Marc: And even though I had a good deal of meditation experience, I really didn’t have all that much experience in teaching meditation and being in, in front of business people. So this was this my [00:11:00] own ordeal. Was really Im important and in some way our lives. We can’t help face the ordeals of whether it’s raising children or our jobs.

[00:11:10] Marc: Reading the newspaper can be an ordeal these days, and it’s easy to get caught by the day-to-day enough or not enough good or bad imposter or not imposter. And what if what if you. Today, what if today you have everything you need? What if today? Every day is a good day. Every day is a good day.

[00:11:36] Marc: Thank you.

[00:11:46] Marc: I hope you’ve appreciated today’s episode. To learn more about my work, you can visit Marc lesser.net. And if you’re interested in enrolling in a self-directed course called Seven [00:12:00] Practices of a Mindful Leader, please visit Marc lesser courses.thinkific.com. This podcast is offered freely and relies on the financial support from listeners like you.

[00:12:13] Marc: You can donate at marclesser.net slash donate. Thank you very much.

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