What are you going to complain about once everything is fixed? If you sorted the entire world out tomorrow, what would you do with the rest of the day?
What are you going to complain about once everything is fixed? If you sorted the entire world out tomorrow, what would you do with the rest of the day?
Somebody told me what STFU stands for and it was not what I expected. We are handed a blank canvas and immediately want to paint it a colour. On the road I was bored and cold and fed up, and then I started seeing the lines in a leaf, and a car going past making them jump and settle. Two bears, one with a machete and one with donuts. Focus on the right one.
One thing to try: Look at one ordinary thing until you see something in it you had not noticed.
In this episode
(0:04) Hints and tips on getting through the difficult times
(2:57) Asking him what it stood for, and the answer
(4:41) Fix the whole world and what will you moan about?
(7:07) The blank canvas, and wanting to paint it immediately
(9:34) Bored, cold and fed up, going along that road
(14:24) The lines in a leaf, and the leaves jumping as a car goes
(16:59) Two bears. One with a machete, one with donuts
(18:58) It is your interpretation, and somebody else has another
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The question this answers
What would you complain about if everything was fixed?
I came across a line that I have not been able to put down. Zen does not fix your life, it stops you needing to. So sort the whole world out tomorrow, and then what do you do with the afternoon?
The heart of it
You are not broken and never were. The needing to fix is the thing that hurts.
You cannot change the present moment, and that is precisely what we spend all day arguing with.
I am a terrible meditator and I sit twice a day anyway. My teacher Jun Po had one instruction for me and I kept asking whether I was doing it right. Sit down and shut up. Yes, but am I doing it right. Sit down and shut up. Every time the mind wanders, back to the breath.
After weeks of this I finally asked what STFU actually stood for, since he kept saying it. It was not what I expected.
Then I asked whether you can do meditation wrong. He said yes, absolutely.
If I fixed my paralysis I would simply have swapped it for other problems, and I suspect most of you listening are not paralysed and have plenty of your own.
We do this with everything. Hand somebody a blank canvas and the first instinct is to paint it. Look up at the stars and we want to add gods. Finish a good series and we go looking for whether they are making season two.
When I did five hundred miles round Cornwall towing a replica air ambulance, most of it was cold and boring. I remember looking three miles ahead at a black cloud, dreading the afternoon, while sitting in bright sunshine. I was in a rainstorm half an hour before I reached it.
But then I started noticing the lines in a leaf. A car going past, and all the leaves jumping and settling again.
In the middle of chaos you do not become calm. You remember calm.
Epictetus had it too: it is not events that disturb us, but our opinion about them. And you can prove it, because somebody else can sit in the same moment and rather enjoy it.
Also this. If you want your worries gone, buy shoes a size too small and walk two miles. Half a mile in you will not be thinking about anything else.
One small thing to try
Look at one ordinary thing until you see something in it you had not noticed.
Then the plainer version. If you are doing the dishes, do the dishes. Get in the car and leave the radio off. Have one silent morning.
The image I keep is the man at the end of the bar in a Western. The whole place is fighting. He finishes his whisky, puts the money down and walks out. He is not disconnected from it. He is just not in it.
Questions people ask
Is Zen about sitting in silence with incense?
Not as I understand it, and I am no scholar. It is a direct experience of what is happening right now. The cushion is one way in, not the thing itself.
Is this the same as being stoic and stiff upper lipped?
No, and stoicism gets that bad name unfairly. It is feeling everything without being run by it. Notice the discomfort, get curious about it, and do not rush to fix it.
What if something genuinely does need fixing?
Then fix it. If a bear is running at you with a machete, being Zen about it is not the move. This is about the other ninety nine percent of the day.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
acceptance · zen · self-compassion
Read the transcript
Hello, and welcome to Stillness in the Storms, the podcast
that helps you through the most difficult times in life and
just gives you just some hints and tips on how to live life a little
bit happier and a little more with some resilience. Today I want
to talk about Zen and I come across this wonderful quote. Zen
doesn't fix your life. It stops you needing to. So I want to
talk about that on today's podcast. What is Zen? How can we
interpret? How can we introduce a bit of Zen to our lives
without it just being a meme on Instagram? And does it really
need us to stop fixing our lives? Is our lives broken? That's
the kind of thing I'm talking about today on Stillness in the Storms.
But just before we start, I want to thank all of you, my monthly
donators, the people that join and promise to pay something every
month and all use that, treat me to a coffee. Because really, this
podcast would. I would have to put adverts. I really don't want
to put adverts in there. There's nothing worse than tuning
into a podcast and you've got like 10 minutes of adverts and 8
minutes of podcast. Okay, I'm a bit exaggerated, but you know what
it's like. So thank you so much to all of you. You are absolutely
awesome and thank you for sharing and thank you for the emails
and, yeah, thank you for being part of my journey as well. I'm Stephen
Webb, your host, and what you may not know about me is I'm paralyzed
just below my neck. I'm also a Cornwall Councillor now, so I'm a
politician. I'm also a terrible meditator. I try to meditate
twice a day and I'm terrible at it. But that's what makes meditation
so challenging and that's what makes it so important for our lives.
Because if I don't meditate, I get teasy, I get argumentative, I
get bothered, I get bogged down. I tend to get more poorly.
So, yeah. And what's my form of meditation? I just sit and shut
up. Stuff you. Stuff you. Jumpo used to say stfu. And I was
like, for weeks and weeks, I would keep saying to him, what, am
I doing it right? Am I meditating right? And he would go,
just sit down and shut up. I'd be like, yes, but am I doing it right?
He'd say, look, sit down, shut up. Every time your mind wandered,
bring it back to your breath. And I'd be like, yes, I do that,
but am I doing it right? Just a few. Just repeat that in your mind,
and eventually your mind will slow down, your body will slow down.
And in the end, I said, so what does the few stammer? He said,
shut the fuck up. That's what it stands for. I was like, ah. So
then I asked him, can you do meditation wrong? And he said, yes,
absolutely. And I was like, okay, so am I doing it right? And
he said, stephen, and I'm going to say to you, every listener
here, if you meditate, just sit down and shut up. Just allow
your mind to go quiet, allow your body to relax, and allow this
moment to be exactly what it is. And there you go. And that's
what Zen is. It's allowing this moment to be what it is. By
allowing this moment to be what it is, you then don't feel the
need to have to fix everything. Now I'm paralyzed. Can
I fix that? To fix that, I would need to mend my broken neck.
I would have to walk around again. I'd have to do all that. And
guess what? I'd replace being paralyzed with other problems. Because
I'm guessing every single one of you that's listening to my podcast
has your own problems. And are you all paralyzed? Probably not.
And that's what it comes down to. You know, being alive means to
suffer. The Buddha would say, dukkha, just by being here, just
by having an ego, just by having that desire to improve your
life, to be happy, to do something, to get out of bed in the
morning means there's going to be things that you want. There's
going to be things that you want to change. There's going to
be things that you're uncomfortable with, and that's what
you want to fix. If you fix everything out there, if you fix
the whole world, what are you gonna moan about? What are you gonna
do all day? Sit on the beach in the beautiful sun? What are you
gonna moan after a while when there's no rain, there's no flowers,
you're probably gonna get bored of that ammonia. Too hot, too
much sand in your bum, or whatever. You know, whatever. Whatever
we end up doing, we're gonna moan about something. And that's
what Zen is. Zen recognizes that. You know, Zen is just a matter
of, ah, there you go. It is what it is. And the one thing that
helps me more than anything else is I cannot change this present
moment. There's nothing you can do about right now. Right now
you're listening to the podcast. Then you can turn it off
and do something else in the next moment, but you can't do anything
about this moment. You're already here. It's already happening.
But that's the one thing we're more annoyed about than anything
else. And Zen is not about sitting down and with groups of monks
and incense sticks and sitting in silence. Zen is about a direct
experience of what is happening right now. Zen's not about
becoming better. It's about realizing you never were broken.
You are what you are right now. You are the best version of
yourself right now. Then can you become a better version? Yeah.
Can you become a worse version? Yeah, but that's intention.
That's moving forward right now. You are everything you can be
in this moment. You know, where does Zen come from then? Okay,
let's back up a little bit, because I'm just jumping straight
towards zeniths, and there's thousands of books that try to explain
Zen. And please don't take my definition of Zen as any kind of
answer to what Zen is or anything, because I don't really
know. All I know is. All I know is that when we stop and we
take a step back and just go, ah, that's it. The problem is we
add everything to it. We want to paint it a color. You know, if
you're given a lovely blank canvas, go, okay, let's put something
on it. Rather than just go, wow, look at that blank canvas. You
know, when we look up the stars and the magic of the universe,
we then want to add gods to it. When we watch a really good movie,
we're like, oh, I hope version 2 comes out. When we've had a really
good season of our TV show that we absolutely love, we're like,
oh, when does season two come out? We start looking up, are they
making a season two of it? Because we want more all the time.
The desire to want more. And Zen just answers that by saying,
you don't need it. You don't need it in this present moment. And
I think that's what helped me to become more peaceful than anything
else, that I'm into politics, politics more than anything else.
And Trump has taken way too much of my life away. It's not Trump's
fault. Trump's doing what he does, and I feel for anybody that
is, like, gonna suffer at the hands of him being in power. But
I've chose to be focused on Trump. I choose to scroll through
the phone looking for little quick endorphin fixes of somebody
that's wrote an article that's calling him out on his stupidity.
It's all my choice in that moment, can't blame anybody else
for it. So when we stop blaming. So then when we stop blaming
everybody else for our life, and I'm blaming Trump for taking
too many years and all that, you suddenly just start facing life,
not the need to fix. We just sit with the pain without needing
to tidy it up. And when I was going 500 miles around Cornwall in
my electric wheelchair, towing a. A replica of the Cornwall Hamiltons
to raise money, I was doing it for several different things. But
most of the days were just miserable and cold. I would be in
my wheelchair going along the road at like 10 miles an hour, eight
and a half mile an hour, if the government are listening and
any police are listening. And I was just there going along the
road, and I was bored half the time. I was cold. I was fed up. I
remember going along one road and I was looking ahead of me and
there was this horrible clouds and rain. And I started thinking,
oh, God, I don't want to be in that. Oh, God, this is gonna be a
really horrible afternoon. What happens if. And I totally forgot
the fact that where I was in that moment was beautiful sunshine.
And I was looking ahead to, I don't know, three miles down the
road. Well, that was half an hour off. I was doing about. Because
when you average out the speed, I was doing about six, seven
miles an hour. On a good hour, I might do eight miles. And that
was half an hour away. And there I was already in the rainstorm
while sat in the sun. And that's what the mind does. It takes
us to the places we don't want to go because we're frightened of
losing the place. And when we're in a terrible time, we're like,
oh, my God, I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to. Instead
of just going, well, I know this moment's going to pass. It's
going to pass just as quick as it does, whether or not I hate it
or not. And I think the Buddha, I heard a story of the Buddha
was saying, or it may not be the Buddha. Dalai Lama was saying,
if you think time is relative, you spend just 10 minutes sat on
a sofa talking to a person that you love, their company. Or
you spend four seconds sat on a hot stove. You know, that hot stove
will seem like a lifetime. And that 10 minutes sat on the sofa with
somebody that you really enjoy, their company will seem like
a few seconds. And that's what everything is. Life is relative,
relative to how we're feeling, what we're doing. And this is where
Zen and stoicism is very similar. It's facing life exactly
how it is. And when we do face life exactly how it is without, I'm
not saying don't feel emotions because Zen Stoicism isn't about
not feeling emotions. This is where it often gets a bad rap. You
know, it's not about being stoic and stiff uplift like the British
maybe, you know, look at me. Well, I can't joke, I can't smile.
Much like the Kingsguard, isn't it? And when they cannot smile,
they can't do anything. They're just like sat there rigid.
That's not stoicism. Stoicism is feeling everything but not being
controlled by those feelings. It's ah, a feeling of discomfort
is arising. What is that discomfort? Where is it coming from?
Being inquisitive but not having to immediately fix it or change
it because it'll go. Have you ever noticed the way you can have
a real bad headache or you can have a real big pain, or you can,
you know, something's going on in the outside world and then you
stub your toe. Nothing else exists in the world. The minute you
stub your toe, that's it. It's like if you want to get rid of all
of your worries and all of your problems, go and buy a pair
of shoes that are too small for you and go and walk two miles
in them. I can guarantee within half a mile you won't be thinking
about all your problems. You'll be thinking about that sore
foot with that blister on it that will be giving you agony. So
everything is relative. And this is what Zen does. Zen just brings
everything back to this moment, what it is now, in this moment,
without having the need to fix it. You're just holding the raw moment
for what it is. And when you do that, something magic happens.
Suddenly you start seeing the world, the universe within. You start
feeling the wind on your face, you start feeling the heat. You start
seeing life for what it is. And you start seeing it through,
not so much through lens, like lens tinted glasses, where you're
just trying to see all the best and everything. You're just
seeing it for what it is. And therefore you don't feel the need
to change it. And it becomes even more magic than what it was
before. You suddenly see the lines in the leaf. You see the way
a car goes past and the leaves jump up in the air and then they
all just settle back down. You see the trees and the branches of
the trees, the way they wander and weave. Every single one of those
branches is at war with the other branch. You think nature's
nice and peaceful? Oh, look again. There isn't a bare nature.
There isn't a war with the next bare nature. And we hear these
stories of the way the trees talk to each other. They'll feed
their own offspring. They'll do all that. No. Well, yes, but they're
at war with the other trees in the forest. And we often talk about
the way 10% of the world ends up with most of the stuff in the
way of humans, people. But that's what nature does, too. Not
saying it's right, it's just what it is. You look at any single
forest or wood, 90% of it is one particular species of tree. It's
just a reality. That's what it is. But we could go into a forest
and go, I want different types of tree, and I want different types
of flowers. And I want the river to be more weaving, and I want
a few more waterfalls. Just enjoy the forest. How would you know
the days when you get out of bed in the morning and you go, oh,
wow, my body's not feeling pain today. I remember when I was
going to college for about four months doing an introduction
to counseling course, and they used to check in each morning and
they go around the room and you do a check in. And I remember
sat there one morning and my check in was, do you know what? I'm
really feeling good today because I got no pains in my hands.
My hands are not feeling like they're in burning hot tar, which
is what I get a lot of time with my root pain. And the room was
like, oh, wow. Yeah. And they were surprised by the check in. What?
That, you know, because I didn't have pain, it was like. But
so many people, and even myself, I focus on what I'm not liking
about this moment. It's good that humans have got a negative bias
because otherwise we would have probably not survived this long.
If you've got two bears running towards you, one with a machete
and one with donuts, you're gonna want the one with donuts. But
you better focus on the one with the machete, otherwise you're
never gonna get the donuts. You're not gonna get rid of that
image out your head now, are you? You know, so just a reminder,
two bears running, Georgia, one with donuts, gravy grin on his
face, and one with machete. Probably still got a grin on his
face because why wouldn't he have? So we've got to focus on the
negative, but you don't have to. I'm just thinking, does the Zen
work with a bear running towards you with a machete? Just
sit and be, ah, don't worry, it's fine. Just be all Zen about
it. Okay? There's situations where not. But in general, if you
haven't got a bear running towards you with a machete, be Zen,
be chilled. Very similar to what the Stoicism says, control what
you can and accept what you can't. Well, accept the present moment,
because you cannot control the present moment. Zen says there is
no separate you doing the controlling. Really think about there's
no separate you doing the controlling. Ah, you are part of
the process. And Epictetus, which is one of my favorite teachers,
he says, it's not events that disturb us, but our opinion about
them. It's not events that disturb us, it's our opinion about
them. So when you take the present moment, and if you're choosing
to not like it, or choosing to want to avoid it, move on from it,
hate it, because something's happened in our past, and I don't
like this moment. It's your interpretation of it, and I know
it's your interpretation of it, or mine or any other person,
because another person can be sat in exactly the same moment and
they can enjoy it. So bringing all this back to daily life, if you're
doing dishes, just do the dishes. Just have those silent mornings.
Just walk quietly, get in the car and don't turn the radio on and
just listen to the road. It's worth remembering that. Just take
a breath. And Zen is just taking that breath. In the middle
of chaos, you don't become calm. You remember calm. You're already
calm in this moment. It's just. You're not remembering that
you're calm. You're in the middle of everything that's going
on. And if you just go, ah, you can go there below it, and you
can see it and you can be aware of it. Be that person at the
end of the bar that everything else is going on. You know, you've
all seen that Western, Western, where I probably grew up
on Westerns. But that person at the end of the bar was a big fight
going on. And that guy sitting there with his whiskey, everything's
going on. He's just there, calm. And right at the end of the
fight, right at the end of the whatever, he downs his whiskey, leaves
the money on the side and just walks out. Wouldn't you like to be
that? That's what being Zen is, it's not about disconnecting.
It's not about being not part of it. It's not about running away.
It's about facing the moment as what it is. And then at that point,
who is the one holding that opinion? Who is the one facing that
moment? Who is the one sitting here listening to the podcast? Because
it's not who you think it is. It's just awareness. And when you
bring this moment back to a witnessing awareness, you suddenly
realize that life doesn't need fixing, the moment does need fixing.
It's perfectly okay the way it is. And suddenly that's when you
can start to dive in and out of life and play with it a little
bit. Play with the fact that you're sad or lonely or fed up or
really happy and realize that all of those are just experiences
just slightly away from this Zen quiet moment. Happiness is not
something you can attain. Happiness is an experience. Happiness
really is in the mundane. I do a whole podcast about that, the happiness
line. Happiness is not something you achieve because the
minute you achieve happiness, you won't be happy anymore. It really
is. It really is a paradox. You know, you cannot want to be happy
and happy. And if you are happy, you're not going to be happy
for long because that happiness will become the normal.
Yeah. So right now, without fixing anything, you can just be
here as it is. And I go back to that quote. Zen doesn't fix your
life, it just stops you needing to. And how do you practice
Zen? I just recorded a guided meditation for you to just sit with
a Zen moment and just be here observing, being aware and just take
away that needing to fix things. I'll upload that to the Inner
Peace Meditations podcast. There'll be a link just below. If
you go to stevenwebb.uk you'll find all my links there. Thank you.
And thank you for listening to Stillness in the Storms. And thank
you for donating and keeping it free. You are awesome. Take care
