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Introduction and Announcements

I'd like to make a few announcements before the talk. One is that here in California now, they say a great majority of people in this state are in stay-at-home orders. So many of you who are listening from California won't be going much anywhere this week, maybe much less than usual. And maybe people in other parts of the country and the world also have a kind of stay-at-home policy or approach these days.

Because of that, I want to try to make IMC be more supportive for people in these difficult times. So I was wondering what we can offer more than we already do. Next week, I'm teaching an online retreat. Normally, the teachings for the online retreats are just for the people on the retreat, especially live, and we've been continuing that policy when we do online retreats. But it occurred to me this morning, why not have my talks be available live for those of you who would like to listen to a retreat talk and would like a little bit more Dharma during the day? I thought I could make at least my talks available.

In California time, I'm teaching Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 4:00 PM. So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 4:00 PM, California time, I will be here on YouTube. That's the plan right now, unless my colleagues say that we shouldn't change it that way, but I think it should be fine. It will be wonderful, I think, to do this. For those of you who have never been on a retreat, you'll get maybe a little bit of flavor of a retreat from it. Sometimes we don't make retreat talks so easily available because retreat talks are a little bit different in flavor than regular talks, and maybe they are not understood as well without the context. So with that caveat, starting tomorrow, and Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

And then, next week, partly because of the retreat and partly because during this time next week I have to go get a COVID test. Later next week I'm going to have cataract surgery, and part of that preparation is to get tested for COVID to make sure that I'm good for the surgery. I've invited a wonderful young teacher to come. His name is Jose Gibson, and I've been mentoring him in the current teacher training. I'm quite enthusiastic and very happy for him to come and teach our community. I think you'll be in wonderful hands next Sunday here with Jose.

Two Universes: The Utilitarian and The Appreciative

So, for the talk. Sometimes I like to think that we have a choice of living in two different universes—universes at least of our own experience. We have some choice between these two. At each end of the spectrum, these two ways are very separate from each other and lead very different ways. One is conducive to supporting the world of clinging and attachment, and the other is much more conducive to freedom and compassion. They represent two forms of action, of how we can live our life in the world.

I want to lay out these two sides of this dichotomy, remembering that we don't want to live in a world that's so separate between these two. They don't have to be so separate; there's actually a way of holding them together where they work together. They don't have to be opposed; it's just that if either side is emphasized too much, it can be a problem. But especially what I'm going to call the first side is probably the one that's most problematic for this world that's often difficult and challenging.

These two modes of action, modes of being: the first I call utilitarian, and the second I call appreciative. We can live in a world mostly with a utilitarian attitude towards everything, or we can live in the world more with an appreciative mode for everything. It makes a huge difference which of these you choose, and maybe in different contexts we choose different ones. But it is important to understand that there's a competition between these two different capacities and to be wise with them. Probably the appreciative mode is really the beneficial one for truly trusting the emergence of this Dharma life that we have.

The utilitarian mode is pragmatic, focusing on a goal and looking at what is of utility, what is beneficial, what has the greatest good as a consequence of what we're doing. In this regard, the goal is often more important. For people in this utilitarian direction, what's important is how we get to the goal, and whatever is useful for that is what we're focusing on. Often then, there's no sense that the goal should be represented in the means; the means is independent from the goal.

The appreciative mode is not so much focused on the goal, but is more focused on the process of how we are. Whereas the utilitarian mode is focused on the future—usually about where we're going, how we're going to get there—the appreciative mode is more focused on the present moment and with the experience of the present moment, independent of where we're trying to get.

The utilitarian mode is more focused on productivity, a product, or a consequence that we want to have. The appreciative mode can also focus on something growing, developing, and becoming different, but it's not from being productive, but rather through enhancement. How do we enhance what's really good here? How do we make room for things to emerge and flow in their own way, as opposed to trying to be most efficient with what's going on?

The utilitarian mode is more about a goal, a direction we want to get to. There can be failure; we can fail to get to that goal we put a lot of effort into, and then there can be a lot of regret that we didn't attain it. In the appreciative mode, rather than focusing on failure, the tendency is to focus more on satisfaction. It could be, "Wow, that didn't work out. I didn't manage to do what I was trying to do. But boy, was it satisfying to do it." That focus on the present moment, the appreciation, the enhancement of something that's really good in us—for many things that we do, maybe it's less important that we succeed than that how we did it was really satisfying and meaningful. We might still have the sense that we failed or didn't manage to do what we hoped to do, but it's eclipsed by that tremendous joy and delight in the doing itself, in the satisfaction of being engaged. There is no regret that we did it, because the outcome isn't as important as how we do it, the engagement in the process.

The utilitarian mode is more about becoming something, making something come into being. The appreciative mode is more about being itself. Just what is here, and how am I in the am-ness^[1] of us, rather than the future of us.

Whereas the utilitarian mode is maybe more centered on wanting—wanting something to happen—the appreciative mode is more centered in loving, loving what is. Of course, with loving it's possible to want something to be different, but the center of gravity, the home base, is in the loving, not in the wanting. Certainly, we meet people whose home base, the place where they're rooted, the operating volcano of their life, is their desires. Sometimes, the neediness of people is a very intense desire that is projected onto someone else who is going to help them attain or get what they want.

The utilitarian mode has more to do with hope and longing, because we're hoping and longing for something different than what we have. In the appreciative mode, maybe it's more aspiration and inspiration. The difference is that hope and longing are more focused on the goal and the outcome. In my vocabulary, aspiration and inspiration come from the word spirit or respire, the breathing itself. Aspiration is what emerges in us: a desire, a wish, a vision that has bubbled up from the inside, out of the goodness of who we are, the wholesomeness of what's here. Aspiration doesn't have to be fulfilled in the way that a hope has to be fulfilled. Aspiration is just a kind of love for "all this is possible, this is a vision, this is worth working towards." But let's work towards it in a way that's satisfying. Let's stay close to this nice breathing, this nice sense of breath, this place where things emerge in a wonderful, free way.

I associate the utilitarian mode with acquiring, wanting, and getting. I think of the appreciative mode as tending to things: wanting things to be well, but then tending to them, supporting them. Supporting them to grow, enhancing them, letting them develop so the best in that thing or that person is going to come out. It is not wanting them to be a certain way, but tending to what's already here so that what is wonderful can develop. It's kind of like gardening. You might take out the weeds so the flowers and vegetables can really grow.

The utilitarian mode, I think, is much more the fixing mode. Fixing things, fixing people. For people involved in spiritual care or pastoral care, like chaplaincy in a hospital, one of the really important attitudes or approaches of a chaplain is that whoever we meet, we don't try to fix them, but rather we nurture them. We support them and we trust their emergence. We meet them to appreciate them, to value them, to listen to them, and to accompany them. It can be very hard for chaplains not to want to try to fix the problems and the suffering we meet with people. Sometimes trying to fix misses the point and actually does a disservice for people. There is a whole other appreciative mode, which is an affirmation and an opening that allows a much deeper connection for people to have with their inner life and spiritual life. In the long term, that is sometimes much more beneficial than the fixing of a particular problem. So instead of fixing, the appreciative mode is tending and nurturing. We want to nurture what's there.

Because the utilitarian mode is pragmatic, focusing on an outcome, and wanting to be efficient, there's often a strong need to know. People who just want to get things done just want to know how to do it. In the appreciative mode, there's less need to know. In fact, there's an appreciation of the value of not knowing, of showing up with beginner's mind, with not-knowing mind, showing up without knowing a lot. This means that because I'm there with not knowing, I'm not bringing my preferences, my projections, and my bias and putting them on the situation. I don't have to take my expectations and my desires into it. I'm here just to be open, not to know, to trust emergence, to trust what's here, and to learn what's here—to take in the circumstance, situation, and the person in their fullness, rather than being ahead of what's happening with my own agenda.

The utilitarian mode is more about efficiency, often excluding what we think is unnecessary. I like to think of the appreciative mode as being more about cooperation than efficiency, more about inclusion and community than it is about excluding anything or anybody. Cooperation is often slower in the short term than just getting the job done for oneself.

When I was working in the monastery kitchen, I was the kitchen manager for a while with a crew of maybe nine people. In many ways, I was a more skilled, more confident cook than most of the people who were new to the crew. I could do many of the things that needed to be done myself. It was much more efficient for me to do it, and so it was very hard to assign things to other people. I just wanted to do it because I could do it in a third of the time. It took me about three months to learn—I'm a slow learner—that the best thing I could do in the kitchen was not do any work myself at all, but just go around and nourish and support the crew^[2], supplying everyone else in their jobs. And then the kitchen worked so much better. In a sense, doing the particular things that had to be done in the kitchen happened slower, but the whole kitchen worked so much better when I enabled the cooperation and cooperatively supported everyone.

The utilitarian mode, focusing on the future, on getting things done, on being efficient and doing just the right thing, can sometimes make no room for the inner muse, for the inner heart or spirit, or the depths of who you are. To listen to the music of the heart, how the heart sings, or the deepest kind of wisdom and understanding and connectivity, we can only tune in if we slow down, open up, and allow something deeper to manifest and respond to what's going on. I associate the utilitarian mode very much with being in our thinking mode, fixing mode, planning mode, arranging mode, and being-efficient mode, which doesn't really connect us with this deeper place of knowing that we can have. In the appreciative mode, there's a slowing down, a receptivity, and an openness, so there's room for the muse, for the heart, for the spirit, for the fullness of our being to operate together.

Finally, I think of the utilitarian mode as often being fueled by need. The appreciative mode can also do things, but it's more inspired by possibility. There's less drive or clinging; it's more like, "Okay, let's open to this possibility, and let's reveal this possibility," rather than acting in an acquisitional way.

Here are some metaphors for these two different modes that we can maybe see a little bit better. One is that, in a utilitarian way, in the evening when we're ready to go to sleep, we can put ourselves to bed in an efficient way, but we can't efficiently put ourselves to sleep. Sleep is something I make room for, I allow. I have to get out of the way. I can't lay there in bed and say, "Okay, now I'm going to be the most efficient going-to-sleep person ever," and run the race to sleep. That doesn't really work. Sleep is something that comes upon me, not something that I do efficiently.

Acquiring knowledge is something we can do pragmatically in utilitarian ways, but we can't become wise just by getting knowledge. Wisdom has a different source that is often not so efficient and not about acquisition and getting something. It's more like allowing and being present, paying attention in a careful and full way that allows these deeper parts of ourselves to respond and process and digest what's happening. We allow a deeper source of wisdom to arise, rather than just practical knowledge.

Maybe a good comparison for these two different modes is pleasure and happiness. It's relatively easy to do something that's physically pleasant. We can get food, we can get a massage, we can go outside; we can do pleasant things. But happiness, you can't just do something to make yourself happy. The appreciative mode makes room for happiness. It turns out there's much more joy and happiness available in any given moment than most people allow for or avail themselves of. In the appreciative mode, there's time and space to take in and notice how many wonderful things there are, as well as all the challenges in this life. It's amazing how, if we switch to live in a more appreciative mode, we live in a different universe. The rules of the universe, or the information upon which we build our understanding of ourselves and the world, change radically depending on which of these two approaches we take in our life. If the utilitarian mode is all we do, we're really limiting how much happiness, joy, love, and compassion are actually possible here.

Another metaphor for these two modes is praise. It's possible to do things to get people to praise you, but you can't pragmatically get people to admire you. Admiration is something that comes from inside of people, something more private in them. Praise is just what they say to please you or to get from you what they would like. They know that we want praise, and so they give it to us. But admiration is something important in the privacy of their own inner life that arises from something deeper inside.

So to combine these two worlds and not see them as separate: there can be a goal, but the process of how we get to that goal is such an important part of it that maybe we bring them together. Often it's in the process that the best qualities of our life have a chance to flow and come. The goal itself is a little bit abstract because it's in the future; it limits what we're focusing on. But if we focus on the goal and remember the process is important, we bring along so much more of who we are and what's possible. It's possible then to discover wellsprings of satisfaction inside that we can enhance, wellsprings of wholesomeness and goodness that we can nourish and tend while we are pursuing what we hope for, what we want to get, or what we want to become.

These two modes are not opposed; they can be integrated together. But I think for people interested in Dharma practice, it's really important and useful—it's utilitarian—to focus on the appreciative mode. It's actually quite productive in a spiritual way to not focus on productivity, but to focus on enhancement and nourishing and tending to this life of ours here.

How do we allow for this appreciative mode? The appreciative mode is something that we have to give time for. We have to allow for a certain inefficiency, to slow down, open up, look around, and take the time. In the beginning, it might be helpful as a practice to practice a greater appreciation: to spend more time with your world, yourself, and what's going on. Not to push away or deny the difficulties, challenges, and the things which are off, but maybe make it a practice to begin appreciating more what's already here and what is good about here. There are thousands of things to appreciate in any given day. What happens to you if, as you go to bed at night and lay there waiting to fall asleep, you go through and appreciate so much of what was in that day? Think about the things that were valuable and the things you're grateful for, which are two of the definitions of appreciation: to value something and be grateful for it.

Spend time practicing and focusing on appreciation. And then, more deeply than thinking about all the things we appreciate, in the present moment, ask yourself: what way of being, what kind of attention, what kind of way of holding oneself and being present allows you to soak in what is appreciable? Not just to think about it, but to let what you can appreciate be there to nourish you, support you, tend to you, bring you satisfaction, and bring you a sense of inclusion—where all things are included and all things have space here. Perhaps you'll come to appreciate that the ability to be open and receptive to what emerges, allowing things to register and be felt, eventually will become one of the most satisfying ways to be. It's the doorway to deep satisfaction, deep appreciation, and deep loving and compassion.

So, there are two different universes you can live in. The appreciative world leads to one universe. The utilitarian mode alone leads to another universe. And then the third universe is where we really want to live: really integrating these two together so that we get the best of both worlds. We're here to benefit this world as best we can with both perspectives supporting each other.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to our next time together.