INsight/ When Words Live

Photo by by Jonathan Cosens Photography on Unsplash.

Manila, 31 August 2022 — Are your words living or not?

Story

It happened 1,500 years ago, and it ushered in a new paradigm with a cross-border process of co-creation among countries in Asia, starting between China and India, and later fanning out to Japan and many other countries. As with most paradigm shifts, it involved a radical change in how to view the world and, hence, how to make a difference in life and work. Today, that paradigm still represents a radical change from business as usual. So what was that change about, and what does it mean for us today in our leadership roles? Let’s explore that.

We are talking about Zen, which started as Chan in China and Dhyana in India. This innovative way of making sense of life and living was brought across the border from India into China by a monk named  Bodhidharma. He was, we could say today, the founder of this new startup. Buddhist practices had already entered China some four hundred years earlier, yet there was something new and different in what Bodhidharma brought. And it caught on, because it appealed to the pragmatic and entrepreneurial mindset of people in China. Introduced during the Han dynasty, this new life practice grew in importance and influence during the Tang dynasty and later traveled to Japan during the Song dynasty. 

Today, we can see that Zen has influenced many people around the world to open their mind and discover new ways of living and doing their business. Understandably, we associate Zen with Japan, where its influence has pervaded society since it was introduced there from China in the 12th century. It has affected how people in Japan are educated, how they discover their values to live by, how they practice the arts, and much more. And yet, Zen is by no means automatic. It is a radical perspective and way to live. What, then, is so radical and different about Zen, especially for leaders today?

Challenge

The challenge posed by Zen is to radically link your words to personal action instead of theorizing about it. According to the late D.T. Suzuki, one of Japan’s foremost authorities on Zen, and a pioneer in introducing Zen to North America, experience and expression are one in Zen. We are not to detach words from action. “Examine the living words, not the dead ones,” he spoke, explaining that “the dead ones are those that no longer pass directly and concretely and intimately on to the experience. They are conceptualized, they are cut off from the living roots, they have ceased then to stir up my being from within from itself.” Powerful words.

Zen is the most radical way I know of applying immediately and personally what you learn. It discourages theorizing and intellection as a way of finding out what really matters in life, in any situation, pointing instead to the importance of insight from direct, lived experiences. Living words, therefore, are seen as words that are linked to action and direct personal experiences. Usually, they are short, like many Japanese poems are too. The longer, and more verbose one’s speaking and writing become, the higher the chance of generating more dead words, rather than words that live. The way I visualize living words is to see them as drops of water that create immediate ripples in a pond. There is no delay. 

In Suzuki’s books, he clarified that whatever explanations he gave were meant only to make practice easier, rather than to expound and compare theories. Reflecting on this, I felt that Zen is about doing right, not being right. In The Knowledge Trap, we explored the importance of taking action, and how much of a challenge this is for us, individually and collectively. We read and hear a lot of words without action. Just think about our struggle to take action on climate change. The Zen masters of old, with their characteristically pithy words, might have exclaimed “more dead words!”

Question

My question this week is: are your words living or not? Reading Suzuki’s work made me realize that the principles behind our work at TransformationFirst.Asia are similar to his intentions. In our leadership coaching and training work, we use frameworks and models to explain matters for you and provide clarity. None of these, however, are ends in themselves or efforts to build theory. All the guidance we offer has only one purpose, and that is for you to use it to practice growing your leadership in your workplace and in yourself. Nothing more. And also nothing less. We know that you will learn the most by taking action and reflecting on your experience. 

So the first order of business is to get experience in leadership, by practicing. That’s how to learn. The knowledge part, as we often mention, contributes just 10%, and serves to get you going in your practice. The direct link between words and experience also underpins the design of Grow3Leaders, our community of practice for leaders, which we continue to develop in discussion with our members there. The focus is on practicing your leadership behaviors by taking on challenges together. What we have witnessed is that words spoken from experience after practice truly sound different, and have more power. Those words live.

As students of Zen have discovered for the past 1,500 years, embracing this radical paradigm that was first introduced by Bodhidharma and then further refined by countless teachers in China and Japan, is not for the faint-hearted. However, as far as I know, it is the wisdom tradition that has most consistently and reliably enlightened large numbers of people about what life and work are really about, through direct personal experience and with commitment and discipline to keep executing on actions, every day and week. And that, I believe, is what we would like to see in more leaders today. If you found inspiration in this post, and the radical paradigm of Zen resonates with you, you can discover how to practice leadership and gain direct personal experiences by joining Grow3Leaders.