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My friend’s doubt about whether she was foxed in managing the complex account could be debilitating if it caused her to hesitate and lose the chance to regain power. Doubt generally inhibits your ability to act-react spontaneously. An instant of uncertainty, for example, causes an athlete to miss a chance to score or a per-former to lose an opportunity to demonstrate great mastery.

But doubt need not be just a source of nervous anxiety. Rather, it can lead to a profound reflection that serves to elevate self-understanding. An experience that is instrumental in spiritual at-tainment is known in Zen as the Great Doubt, which examines in a thoroughgoing way all assumptions and presuppositions. This resembles what medieval Christian mystics called the “Dark Night of the Soul,” through which you must pass from the dark abyss of ignorance and self-deception to the heights and bright light of genuine insight. The Great Doubt takes nothing for granted and questions every outlook, and when applied to personal develop-ment it helps you act-react fully within—rather than half a step behind—this present moment. In contrast, unproductive doubt is preoccupied with second-guessing and revels in uncertainty.

An Unmoving Mind is expert at turning proverbial swords into the plowshares of cooperation and harmony. When you do not favor your own position but develop useful trade-offs and con-structive compromises, the result is that you feel in control of timing and placement. Through yielding and nonaggression, you can gain acceptance for your agenda and priorities as well as ar-ticulate schedule and resource needs.

According to the Zen tradition even the most sacred and re-vered objects are mere conventions that can be treated with blas-phemy and contempt. A famous saying of master Lin-chi (Rinzai in Japanese, founder of the Rinzai Zen sect) highlights the need to strip away the veneer of conventionality,

• If you see the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha!

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Lin-chi insists on transcending assumptions and attachments, even those concerning the ultimate model of enlightenment.

The importance of overcoming attachment is highlighted somewhat ironically by evoking the flip side of this enlighten-ment, a kind of sudden nonrealization, as expressed in a typically absurd Zen Buddhist koan. A monk is pushing an ox through a window. He is able to get the head, body, and legs through the opening, but the tail does not pass. Paradoxically, the large parts that logically ought not to fit are able to make it, but the one part that should go through easily cannot.

This recalls the biblical parable that it is easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the King-dom of God. The tail symbolizes ego, ignorance, or grasping, which at the eleventh hour prevents you from realizing your aims. Just one single element of obstruction manifested in a tiny instant of time is enough to block all the progress that has been made. A break-through must be accomplished with 100 percent effort and skill.

Any slight obstacle can leave you hopelessly frustrated.

The process of Elevation-Purification-Activation (EPA) cul-tivates four basic levels of human consciousness: feeling or emo-tion, speaking or communicaemo-tion, thinking or logic, and knowing or intuitive awareness. According to this approach, if you allow yourself to be controlled by emotions, unchecked by introspec-tion, inappropriate speech is the likely result. Feeling unsettled, disturbed, panicky, or anxious may cause you to say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. The remedy is to elevate and purify personal feelings. When you attain the Hermit’s objective, impersonal standpoint, you can articulate a higher vi-sion that is effective in bringing about constructive change. Your emotions are tamed and transmuted into the foundation of a productive and cooperative understanding, which enables you to act with the Warrior’s effortless creativity.

The goal of EPA is to resolve conflict and tension by means of a Zen Encounter. The Encounter reveals that power comes from

32 Mountains Are Mountains

the understanding that all parties benefit from a steady focus on productivity and good will. To avoid a Confrontation in the work-place, which heightens conflict and often ends in a no-win situa-tion or dismay for at least one of the parties, the Encounter uses thought and speech in a constructive and cooperative way to achieve an opportunity for mutually enhancing dialogue and ex-change of ideas. The Encounter is based on the ingenuity and calm composure of the Unmoving Mind. The Mind exhibits an aloof and unbiased perspective aligned with principles of fair-ness, reasonablefair-ness, and impartiality gained through contem-plative insight and integrated with creative energy.

To create a deep sense of reconciliation and resolution through an Encounter, one must recognize and come to terms with the roots of conflict by identifying the cause of blockage without fear-ing the result of the inquiry or the possibilities of rejection. Sup-pose you are waiting to hear news of an expected raise, bonus, promotion, contract, or some other kind of award or reward for productive activities. Anticipating a payoff for hard work and a job well done, you learn that there are delays and uncertainties as to whether you will receive the benefit. To overcome the impasse, it is necessary to understand the gap between what you deserve and what you receive, or between some unattainable ideal and actual conditions. Keep expectations realistic and reasonable and methods flexible and fair in carrying out negotiations.

For Zen, the internal dimension is decisive in defining your degree of insight and accomplishment. The aim of the Encounter modality is to develop constantly the interior level through inter-action with an exterior element. You cannot rest on your laurels or be satisfied until you test and contest your abilities through interaction with colleagues and counterparts. When I was a kid and heard that my father, a doctor, had a “practice,” I wondered why he needed to keep practicing since he had already earned his credentials. Later, I came to understand that experts and

profes-The Power of Zen 33

sionals of all sorts need to make continuous progress in training in order to refine their skills. Each new situation is a test that determines who holds genuine power. No person is an island, and truth is determined only through a process of polishing your skills in order to foster mutual development. When you look out for the general good, enhancement invariably comes back to you as initiator.

There are Four Steps to complete a Zen Encounter, which will be explained in detail in the last two chapters. The steps are not a sequence to be memorized and blindly followed, but represent a flexible guideline that allows for creative movement from speech to silence and from structure to anti-structure, and back (and forth).

The process begins when you are able to distinguish and rec-ognize a legitimate crisis in current structure. The steps continue with a creative approach to speaking (Step Two) as well as the use of silence when words fall short of the mark (Step Three). The guiding question for the second and third steps is, when chal-lenged, do you speak your mind or forever hold your peace?

Zen discipline contributes to professionalism in balancing the use of speech and silence. The Unmoving Mind adjusts the use of words and of no-words to fit a specific situation and rearrange or escape altogether from a framework that becomes constraining and a source of oppression. Whether you are being expressive or reticent at any particular time should not be determined by pres-sures from outside forces but by self-control in selecting forms of expression conducive to positive change. It is your choice.

When both words and no-words fail, a more inventive form of White Collar Zen is required, which is found in the fourth step, the path of anti-structure. Awakening the Unmoving Mind em-powers you to cross over invisible lines of hierarchy and division.

One knows when to—and when not to—go beyond rules of pro-tocol and procedure through unconventional actions.

Structure creates a standard framework that instructs people how to behave in a way that leads to cooperation and harmony.

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This can be motivating and liberating, as in the strict discipline of the Zen monastic lifestyle, yet it also has the potential to be constraining and lead to regimentation and rigidity.

True power is based on the authority of ideas and ideals. You are enabled, with sufficient preparation, to leap out of the cookie-cutter mold. Zen masters are known in traditional accounts for tossing or kicking away important symbols, as well as scolding and slapping their rivals and students. They are even seen com-mitting or instructing followers to commit destructive acts, like cutting off people’s limbs or slicing cats in half, to make a point about questioning authority that is imposed arbitrarily or with-out genuine accord among all parties.

Cutting through structure involves taking risks but can be ap-propriate and conducive to progressive interaction and growth.

This is true so long as you are not taking advantage or revealing contempt, but displaying genuine humility and willingness to undergo self-scrutiny and self-criticism. Since the anti-structural approach is unpredictable and has an edge of defiance, it may result in excesses and abuse or be perceived as anarchic or arbi-trary. White Collar Zen, in bringing the Unmoving Mind into the new frontier of the contemporary workplace, strives for a bal-anced attitude that strengthens rather than defeats structure based on discipline that inspires creativity.