Quality of Work Life
The Middle Way at Work
When Smart People Do Dumb Things
Juyi asked, “What is the profound point of the Buddhadharma?”
Daolin answered, “Refraining from harmful action and practicing helpful action.”
Juyi retorted, “Bah, even a three year old could say that!”
Daolin replied, “A three year old could say it, but not even an eighty year old can practice it!”
—Dogen Zenji, Shoaku Makusa
THE HUMAN MIND is a thicket, full of impediments to following the path. Even when we know perfectly well what to do, we often don’t do it. Some call this fear of success; others call it fear of failure; still others say the problem is perfectionism. Who knows the truth? Human beings have been trying to understand themselves and their failures for millennia.
Most of us know what’s good for us, but we don’t do it. As the apostle Paul wrote, “I do not understand myself. For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do.” Since the ways of the “I” are so difficult to understand, one wise thing you can do is enlist the support of others in your efforts. Everyone needs a team, a sangha, a community—we are social animals who do better when surrounded by others committed to our well-being. Your team might include trusted friends, work colleagues, professional helpers such as therapists and life coaches, advisors such as financial planners and business managers, mentors, and career coaches. Some people hold regular meetings of their support groups—referring to them as mastermind groups or success teams. No one can build a successful life for you, but you can’t do it alone.
Remember, though, your support team supports; it doesn’t do the work. “You must walk; Buddhas just show the path” (Dhammapada 276). For most of us, the wisest thing we can do is spend time in meditation, getting acquainted with our troublesome self. The more we become aware of the deviousness of our mind, the more we acknowledge the problem. And the more we accept the problem, the more power we gain to do what that three-year-old knows we should do.
How Can You Deal with Discouragement at Work?
Once, during a meditation retreat, a student said to the zen teacher Soen Nakagawa, “I am very discouraged. What should I do?”
Soen replied, “Encourage others.” This is zen thinking.
—Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen Computer1
PHILIP TOSHIO SUDO gives us a beautiful vignette from the work of a beloved Zen teacher. It exemplifies Zen thinking by turning away from the eternal troubles of the self and out toward the eternal possibilities of helping others.
Yes, we know this is hard to do. And we know it is hardest to do exactly when you are most burdened by your own discouragement. But that is what is so remarkable about doing it anyway. You feel better. You may think you have nothing left, nothing to give. But when you have no encouragement for yourself, you will be surprised as you discover how you can still find great compassion for others. When your own trouble is right at the surface, you will see their troubles so much more clearly. Lose yourself in helping them. As soon as you do, your own troubles are over.
Will they return? Of course they’ll return. Troubles come and troubles go; that is the way of things. But it’s all right, because in helping others, you’ll find that you have helped yourself. It’s a miracle.
How Can You Handle Rumors and Gossip at Work?
What is right speech? Abstaining from lying,
divisive speech, abusive speech, and idle chatter.
—Samyutta Nikaya 45.8
THE BUDDHA DID not indulge in rumors or gossip. Right speech forms part of the eightfold path because speech has great power. To follow the Buddha’s path, we must not engage in talk that divides people, talk that criticizes people behind their backs, or talk that is just chatter to kill time. Are rumors and gossip any of these? They’re all of these.
The Buddha knows you don’t mean ill to people when you talk about what’s going on with a coworker or another department. You’re simply curious, or amused, or disapproving of someone else. But this idle speculation and chatting is almost always destructive. Things get repeated and always get distorted in the repeating. By the time a comment has made the full circuit on the company grapevine, it has been totally changed and is completely inaccurate (if it was ever accurate at all).
Trust is impossible in such an environment. Gossip and rumors set an organizational tone in which everyone feels unsafe. People communicate warily because they worry about what others are saying behind their backs. Both gossip and the worry it creates suck up time that could be spent solving problems, cultivating new ideas, or exploring new markets. Productivity and profitability are bound to suffer. So, when we indulge in gossip or rumors, we are hurting not only our organization but also our own future, by undermining the strength of our enterprise.
The Company You Keep
Being friends, companions, and colleagues with admirable people is actually the whole of the noble life. The monk who has the good and virtuous as friends, companions, and colleagues will stay on the eightfold path.
—Samyutta Nikaya 45.2
MANY MOTHERS CAUTION their children not to associate with bullies, troublemakers, and those who are up to no good: “You’re judged by the company you keep.” True, others will think well of you when they see you with good people. But there is an even more compelling reason to choose your friends and colleagues wisely: admirable people will move you to become a better person.
When the Buddha said these words we quote, he was responding to someone saying that being with admirable people was half of the noble life. The Buddha contradicted him: it’s all of the noble life.
If you want to cultivate patience and kindness, hang around with patient, kind people. If you want to have more integrity, spend time with those who embody it. Surround yourself with people actively contributing to their organizations and to the world. If you want right livelihood, seek out people who are doing what you’d like to do. Note that we’re suggesting one possible solution to mistrust in the workplace. This is where you belong. If you can’t create trust in your workplace, find another.
How Can You Achieve Balance between Your Work and Personal Life?
Healthy tension is the natural complementarity of structure and inspiration, responsibility and personal fulfillment, discipline and freedom, authority and egalitarianism, tradition and relevance, male and female, form and void, life and nonexistence. Neglect one side of the pair, and it will turn around and bite.
—Robert Aitken, Encouraging Words2
IS LIFE AN either/or proposition, or is it both/and? We live on a continuum of polarities: work versus play, community versus individuality, male versus female, young versus old, task versus relationship, and so on. We live in the dialectical tension between these polar opposites, being pulled in two directions at once. The Buddha understood this, and Aitken Roshi reminds us that this is not just unavoidable: it is healthy.
We must attend to both ends of these polarities. We must spend time alone as well as time in community; we must pay attention to relationships as well as tasks; we must find time for work and for play. Those of us who choose one end of a continuum while ignoring the other never do so successfully, for the neglected end will come back to bite us. If we have too much freedom, we lack the structure and discipline we need to improve ourselves; yet if we have too much structure, we become rigid and stifled with no freedom for inspiration and innovation.
So it is with life inside and outside of work. As a scale fulfills its function when its sides are equally balanced, so we humans function best when we balance work life and personal life—we can be loose, relaxed, capable of movement, just, and fair. This is the Buddha’s middle way.
What Are the Costs and Benefits of Integrity and Wisdom?
Life is easy for the shameless, cunning,
Corrupt, brazen, nasty, and betraying.
But for one who’s honest and insightful,
Trying to pursue purity, it’s hard.
—Dhammapada 244–245
WHY DO SO few people follow the path of mindful work? Because it’s hard. The Buddha levels with us. Living a life of integrity is hard work. Following the path of spiritual growth is hard work. Awakening and staying mindful in each moment requires constant honesty. It’s exhausting (though sometimes also exhilarating), but it expands through all your relations and creates a lasting legacy. The benefits of integrity and wisdom compound over time.
It’s easier to just give in to your worst impulses and let the least common denominator of the workplace drive you. Following a spiritual path at work is like trying to maintain a meticulously clean house while still living in it … along with a pack of teenagers! It takes time, attention, and energy. Living in a laid-back, messy house is much easier in the short run. Spend your energy on momentary and trivial pursuits; don’t invest in the future. The teenagers will agree. That tells you something.
You have to look at the costs and benefits in the long run as well. It’s there you’ll find that even though the cost of integrity is hard work, the price of giving in is your integrity itself. Without your integrity, you are merely a succession of meaningless moments, always vanishing. This is too high a price to pay. Still, it’s your choice. There is a cost and a payoff to living a mindful life, and there is a cost and a payoff to living a foolish life. The Buddha would tell you to do the math and then decide.