Archive for December, 2009

It is no accident that this series is beginning during what is for may the busiest time of the year: the holidays. Our time gets filled with holiday parties and shopping, and our tummies get filled with all the wonderful treats and food-related events that are customary for the season.

In the midst of this hustle and bustle, consider this wisdom from our guide for this journey, Shunryu Suzuki:
“We say true existence comes from emptiness and goes back again into emptiness. What appears from emptiness is true existence. We have to go through the gate of emptiness…As long as we have some definite idea about or some hope in the future, we cannot really be serious with the moment that exists right now…Each of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way. This is the mystery.” (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)

There is an ancient story of a master offering to pour tea for his student. Once the cup was full, he kept pouring until the tea ran into the saucer and onto the floor. The lesson? You cannot keep pouring more and more into a full cup; there must come a time of emptying out.

This series continues in January 2010!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marcia Bench is a Spiritual Business Strategist and Coach for conscious entrepreneurs in service-, information- and professional businesses. She is the CEO of Purposeful Entrepreneur.com, as well as the Founder/Director of Career Coach Institute and other coach training companies, with more than 23 years of experience in coaching and consulting. She has authored 23 books including The Tao of Entrepreneurship and has given hundreds of live and teleclass presentations.

Copyright © 2009 Marcia Bench; All Rights Reserved

How much effort is just enough? That is the question we are examining today in the second installment of our series, Finding the Zen in 2010. I love the definition in the Urban Dictionary for zen: “a total state of focus that incorporates a total togetherness of body and mind. Zen is a way of being. It is also a state of mind. Zen involves dropping illusion and seeing things without distortion created by your own thoughts.”

We in the West have been taught that working harder and continually seeking more, more, more, is the standard to strive for. Working harder, we are told, will yield more and more results. But as Price Pritchett wisely points out in You2, “Sooner or later you’re going to reach the point where you can’t try any harder…Sometimes, in fact, intensifying your efforts produces nothing except bigger problems.”
If this sounds familiar, then what is the alternative? Surely we are not to simply sit back and wait for life to bring us what we want on a silver platter? No, that too is an extreme.

Zen offers us a third way, that of “right effort.” Here is what Suzuki says in our text for this series, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind:

“[J]ust to do something without any particular effort is enough. When you make some special effort to achieve something, some excessive quality, some extra element is involved in it…So you should get rid of that something which is extra…So try not to see something in particular; try not to achieve anything special. You already have everything in your own pure quality. If you understand this ultimate fact, there is no fear.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marcia Bench is a Spiritual Business Strategist and Coach for conscious entrepreneurs in service-, information- and professional businesses. She is the CEO of Purposeful Entrepreneur.com, as well as the Founder/Director of Career Coach Institute and other coach training companies, with more than 23 years of experience in coaching and consulting. She has authored 23 books including The Tao of Entrepreneurship and has given hundreds of live and teleclass presentations.
Copyright © 2009 Marcia Bench; All Rights Reserved

My spiritual transformation began nearly 30 years ago when I explored Buddhism…and as we shed the excesses of the early part of this first decade of the 21st century, it is a perfect place to return to for the new year. This is the first of an 8-part series designed to help you find the “zen” of the new year 2010.

Zen in the traditional sense is the “teaching that contemplation of one’s essential nature to the exclusion of all else is the only way of achieving pure enlightenment.” For our purposes though, I am referring to the detachment from thinking that everything must lead somewhere, that all is about achievement and forward movement – because that Western mindset has us living in the future rather than the present. Our task, to be fully evolving and effective entrepreneurs, is to be fully present in this moment…uncluttered by the past or the future.

My guide for this journey is the classic, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki (pick up a copy if you want to follow along).

Beginner’s Mind
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” – Shunryu Suzuki

Consider all the things you have learned just this year…in the past 5 years…and in your life. You have accumulated a lot of knowledge…but how much of that knowledge do you use to block new experiences because you “know” that already?

Knowing and applying the knowledge in our daily lives are two different things. Zen – and purposeful business – begin with emptying our minds: “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.” Ibid.

Think back to when you were a beginner at something – whether riding a bike, driving a car, or starting your business. Remember how hungry you were for new ideas? How open you were to possibilities? What if you approached your current business or life challenges with that same hunger and openness…what could you open to that you have been overlooking because you “know” that option or approach already?

“In the beginner’s mind there is no though, ‘I have attained something.’” Suzuki writes. “When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners.” That feels very strange to the Western mind…yet it is the secret to truly enjoying the moment.

Researchers have found that when we multi-task, we are only 40 percent as effective as when we focus on just one thing at a time. In the beginner’s mind, we do just that.

Finally, consider the spontaneity of a child as he plays. Is he thinking about what’s for lunch, or what he did yesterday, or whether he’ll get his allowance tomorrow? And yet as adults, Dr. Deepak Chopra tells us that 90 percent of the thoughts we think today are the same as the thoughts we thought yesterday. Why drag those problems, concerns and thoughts into the present moment?

In Buddhism there is the concept of satori, a sudden awakening. You can actually drop your personal history right now – as Wayne Dyer recommends in Your Sacred Self. What would that feel like – just to BE fully here and now?

I invite you to practice that this week, and post your comments below as to how it is going and what a difference it makes!