Shozan Jack Haubner

hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is shows on Jack Hofner, author of Zen Confidential. He's a former screenwriter and stand up comic and eventually moved into a Zen monastery in

the early aughts. He was drawn to the rigors of Zen practice, the deep end side of the tradition, and the fact that Zen monks can curse and drink alcohol Hi, Jack, welcome to the show. Hello, thank you for having me. It's an honor. Yeah, well, we're really we're really happy to to have you. Also, your book, Zen Confidential was extremely enjoyable. It's one of those rare things that is both kind of on the same page, can be really funny and very poignant and touching at the same time.

That's a rare skill. So we really, we really love the book. Oh, thank you very much. It was Yeah, it was held to right, So I'm glad somebody found it enjoyable. Yes, it was. It was great and ill we'll get into a lot of it as we as we go through the interview. So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable The Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there's a great battle going on inside of us between a good wolf

and a bad wolf. The good wolf represents things like kindness and love and joy, and the bad wolf represents things like greed and fear and hatred. And the grandson stops and he thinks, and then he he looks at his grandfather and he says, well, which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like to start the interview off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in your work and writing. Bella, it's at all. It's a great

parable on a number of levels. Um. When I first read it, you directed with your website I first read it. Um, I just thought it was a great piece of writing. Is one of those things that kind of kind of chump saw the page. Um. I sat with it for a little bit, um, and and then my my contrarian character started to kick in and I found I had

actually just seen a video on the internet. It was this video going around of um of this family at a zoo and there was this cage with this big thick came as glass, and there was a big lion behind it, a big lioness actually, and there's a little girl, of course on our side of the glass. Um kind of kind of playing around with the lion a little bit, um, and you know, of course saying at a million hits,

everybody loved it. But the lioness was kind of opening her mouth and pushing it against the glass, and the little girls putting her glass and her putting her hand up to the glass when the family's laughing and everybody's laughing. I kind of seen that video right around the time I discovered the story through your website, the parable um and and what hit me was And I gotta tell you, I've been sort of stuck with this ever since. UM. I thought to myself, Okay, is there such a thing

in nature as a bad wolf? For example, you've got that lioness. If that painted glass wasn't there should be devouring that child. UM. You know, is that a good animal or a bad animal? I mean, in a lot of senses, we havethropomorphized what's natural UM, and inside of us we have I think metaphorically speaking UM both and somewhere along the line in our process of consciousness or process of development is people we UM labeled them good

or bad UM. And that process is completely necessary, completely necessary that UM. It creates kind of a divide within us between kind of our natural selves and our UM the self. I have to function in the human world and maybe function in a you know, more spiritually ethically advanced way. So I have to say, you gave me a bit of a call, and you probably weren't expect him to do that. But um, yeah, well, I think that's interesting because one of the questions I wanted to

ask you was about the middle way. The middle way is a is a concept in Buddhism that that tends to be one that is fairly well known, and I think it's normally sort of talked about, at least in popular interpretations of it, as being sort of right down the middle, not too excessive one way or the other. But throughout the book you talk about that in a very different way, and I think that kind of relates to what you're getting at a little bit with the

with the Wolf parable. Could you explain a little bit more about how you interpret the middle way? Yeah, I can't. I mean, I know what you're talking. You know. When I wrote that book, I wrote it. Um, I started writing, and I guess maybe, uh, maybe about a year into my time at the monastery, UM, I'd kind of dropped the writing path completely, told myself I wasn't gonna do it. UM, I was going to concentrate on meditation, manual labor, chanting,

doing simple things completely. I was done with um uh, the creative path. UM. Then about a year into my training, UM, I woke up one day with kind of a few lines running through my head, which eventually kind of became the whole book. UM. But UM, as I wrote that book, it was I was sort of, you know, I was in a bit of my honeymoon phase as a spiritual practitioner. UM. May not seem like it's from the book, but it

was more of more of a honeymoon phase than not. UM. And what I talked about in the book is UM in a sense, the middle way. The middle way is not the Doling way, which would mean kind of a tepid um. UM. I'm not gonna put it. It's it's not a it's not a tepid path as that as I've explored it, UM in the sense you you have, as we've been talking about these these two wolves, these two sides within your nature, and in a sense, they have to they have to find expression and they have

to find completion. UM. If we don't UM. You know, Young talked about the shadow side. UM. If you repress this, and this is my experience, if you repress it or try and push it off or deny it, it's going to come out in your life somehow. So you have this shadow side. UM. You know, everybody's got. Everybody has an inner Gandhi and an inner aid off hipper, you know, and what do we do with that? And and my

experience and Zen practices um. In some sense, and you know, don't press me on this because I'm not sure exactly what I mean in terms of specific articulation, but in some sense, the two have to meet and cancel each other out. And that's when you find your fullest express as a human being, to repress one and indulge the other, or indulge one and repress the other. You've got some kind of internal struggle going on, some kind of lack of completeness, some kind of inauthenticity. Um. And and you

know that's where a lot of human struggle comes in. Yeah, you that that comes up. And you've got some some lines in the book that are that are really excellent. Along those lines, I'll just read one of them because I think for our listeners though, it gives a sense

of what you're talking about. And it says, this is the middle way, not getting stuck in a dream, not getting stuck in a nightmare, but fully and completely waking up right at the zero point where the too meet dream and nightmare, pray and play, pleasure and worship Friday night fucking and Sunday morning sacraments. And I thought that was very And you talk about your mentor in the book and how and that's what I was really drawn to,

was this idea of bringing all those things together. And another thing that you had in the book several times I think your mentor said to you that I wanted to explore further, and I think it ties in is it's you say that the cause of separation is the means for connection. The answer and the problem are always one. Can you unpack that a little bit more? Oh? I

wish I could again, bringing it back to the wolf metaphor. Um, we've all got a nature, we've got human nature, and at some point within our process, um, we have to do it. We have to divide things into good and bad. I mean, you know, for example, I've I've recently sort of quit smoking again. Um. Now, in matters of like addiction,

where for example, nicotine, it's sort of very clear. You feed the monkey, you take another cigarette, then you take another cigarette, and at some point, um, the need keeps feeding itself and you have to keep feeding the need. And there's there's Um, that's a bad wolf. U. Matters of addiction, I think it's very clear. Um in other matters showing the trump or refichetes to that, and teacher talks about how anger and lust, Um these are, these

are energies, and he talks about working with them. UM. And I've found that to be to be valuable in my practice. And if we try and cut off parts of ourselves and deny that they're there, we we run into trouble. What I was taught is that which this self is that you give it away. UM, you apply it. So it's it's a means um to connect. I mean,

it's it's it's kind of it's funny. I mean you know, Uh, whenever you have a great spiritual teacher, you're going to find them laughing a lot because the situation is actually kind of funny. Um. I'm separate, and I acknowledge that I have this I himself, and yet that separateness is by definition, the opportunity to connect. If I wasn't separate, I couldn't connect. We would already be connected. Um, there'll

be no difference between us. UM. So in this practice I've been taught, So you give yourself over and over and over UM. And when we do sitting meditation practice, we give yourself to the breath, right, so you completely connect with the outbreast. You give everything inside you, the environment around you, UM, specifically your oxygen. But when you when you inhale, you take your environment in, You take

your whole environment into you, and you connect. So my mom always asks me, you know, what are you doing when you sit? What are you thinking about? All day? And you know, I try and tell her I'm not thinking. We're doing an activity when we sit. There were practicing the most basic relationship possible between oxygen and my loan, between the carbon dioxide I released in the environment and my environment. The separation is means to connect. And that's

kind of a tricky thing. That's the hard part to get the call on the spiritual practice. At another point in the book, similarly, you talk about it. I think it's a really it's a profound insight that that most of us miss and I know I certainly am guilty of missing and thinking about. And you basically talked that the people in your life don't get in the way of your spiritual practice. The people in your life are

your spiritual practice. And I think that's you talk about it in a monastery, and I think you also reference what it's like in a family, that that those are the people that that help you actually engage in the spiritual practice and in a lot of ways monitor where where you are, how you're doing. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because that that is a lesson that I will I will never ever ever stop learning, especially as something of a missing block. Um. Yeah, it's funny.

I mean everybody has this idea that you're going to go to the mountaintop and you're going to kind of just get up into that horrified air, and you're gonna walk into the zendo meditation hall and it's going to be the enlightenment factory, and you're gonna go in one end you're sloppy, messy self, and you're gonna come out the other end fully formed and enlightened being. And you never really think about the other people that are going

to be around you in that equation. Um, And think about a monastery is you're packed in really tight with these people. Um, you know, it's kind of like family in the sense that you didn't you wouldn't choose of your own accord to be around these people, and yet there they are, and they're in every aspect of your life. Um. And we got to saying at the at the monastery that you know, all the all of us practitioners were like rocks in the bag and shaped around and everybody's

knocking off everybody else's sharp edges. And it's really true. I mean other other people, family, um, coworkers, absolute mirrors for for who we are and where we're at and and if we can interact with them skillful, they'll be our teachers every time. I mean, that's one thing I've

learned that a monastery. I mean, I know, I know, when I was not living in a monastery, I always did how this fantasy about moving to a monastery and pursuing the spiritual path, And now that I've done it, it's funny I come out the other side and I want to just tell people, you don't have to go anywhere.

Your teachers are all around you. Do your meditation practice half an hour of sitting a day in the morning, half an hour in the morning, half an hour in the evening, whatever it is that you need to do to ground yourself. But otherwise, Um, make full relationship with your surroundings and with the people in your life and the world, and the people in your world are going to give you every single lesson you could possibly need.

I mean, there's a reason most of the world doesn't go to a monastery is because really we don't need it. All that we need is right in front of us, bothering the heck out of us. Yeah, and actually I am one of those people who has harbored that fantasy, like, well, if I could just get off to a monastery and and do all that, it would be different. And your book was a very good way of disillusion me of

that of that idea. And I get it, you know, the way you explain it makes a lot of sense that how a lot of the things that we use to distract ourselves in life from other people and interpersonal situations and problems, you simply don't have the there. So everything is is magnified because there's nothing else to focus on. Yeah, yeah,

it's well, it's like that. I mean, monastery politics are like um the way was Kissinger described university politics in the sense that the the in fighting is so intense because the stakes are slow. Yeah, you talked about as we were going through that last part, you mentioned that spiritual teachers will will tend to laugh a lot. And at one point in the book you talk about you bring up the idea of levity, which I think is an underappreciated virtue, and you you tie that then to

the human spirit. Can you can you tell us a little bit more about how you see levity and humor in the spiritual process or even in just living a good life. It's interesting, um search Colin used to talk about how um you know, he he always wanted to make a point with his humor. Humor for me is all, it's a kind of opening when I laugh. I'm never unhappy when I laugh, And I'm never ever ever in a bad space when I laugh when I'm in When I'm in a bad space, I'm clenched tight and and

I cannot appreciate it. Um, I cannot appreciate my life. Um. And when I'm laughing, there's usually some some measure of surrender that's going on, and I think that's kind of key. It's a it's a happy surrender when I'm laughing. The situation is much much bigger than us in many senses. I think we're sort of born who we are into

circumstances that aren't necessarily going to change. And being able to accept this and work with this and have some humility about it and again surrender to it is is the key to I think, really sinking down into your life and living a deep and meaningful life. And um humor, I think is a is a byproduct of that, or laughter is a byproduct of that humor. I actually haven't given too much thought to I think it just comes

to my character. I think when you fail a lot in life, you tend to drift forwards humor as sort of a um as sort of a coping mechanism. My partner Chris just raised his hand as being included in that club. I think, I think we we all relate with relate with that idea, and we've had a tendency to make fun of each other right at our our most painful moments, which is an extraordinarily great thing to do in a lot of cases, because it does it it opens up and releases that clenching a little bit

and and does give a sense of levity. You talked about this idea of things that don't change and accepting change. And in the book you say that you've spent much of your life trying to change who you are, such that who you are has in many ways become a person who tries to change. And then you go on to say, how do you change that has been at the monastery helped you with that, that idea of being

a continual self improvement project. Yeah, I mean before I went to the monastery, before I really did a spiritual practice, UM, I don't think I had a context for myself. Um. You know, it was in a sense of all about me. There was something wrong with me. I was too skinny, or my grades weren't good enough. Um. Or I had some emotional problems, wasn't good with girls, um, not smart enough, not successful. It's always something that I was not enough

or something that I was too much of. And so there's this sense that that the real me that I'm pursuing, it's right around the corner. You know, life is this big labyrinth, it's this big me. But the answer, the real me, the great eye that I'm going to become, just right around the corner. I just have to I just have to read this new book. I have to apply this new method of thinking. You know, I could chase something new, and it's always you get a little

bit further and then it's something new, you know. I mean it's a timer, it's a fantasm or a mirage, um, you know. And then there's a sense that well, when I finally become this real meat, and then I can start living Finally, all my ducks are going to be in a row and I can start living my life. Of course, we know what happens. You know, you're you're eighty years old, and you and you realize you just spent your life trying to become something and um, you're

always waiting for something right around the corner. You're always waiting for what comes next. But of course what comes next is the end. I mean that's the ultimate. What comes next? Um, what meditation did, what legal monastery did was I mean this type of threat zen that I practice nzi zen is pretty severe. You sit in the meditation hall and there's a officer there and he's going to correct you if you move, He's going to shout

at you if you shift. Um, there are all there's all this form and all all sorts of rules and guidelines and regulations about what you can do and what you can't do. It's all designed to get you to sit down in one spot and settle into yourself. And what I find happens is, um, stuff starts coming up. And normally, if I was out in the world, left to myself, UM, I would act those emotions out somehow.

I would get a cup of coffee so I can get my coffee buzz if I'm feeling agitated about something, or I would send an angry email or a passive aggressive email. UM. Or I would even just manifest this inner life in kind of a subtle way, just shifting in a certain way, moving my body in a certain way. UM, sitting down and in one spot and just getting to know myself. Getting as these thoughts and these emotions rise

up and dissolve away, rise up and dissolve away. Start to realize, you start to get like I said, you start to get famili yourself a little bit um and um, you stop taking kind of the Meat project so seriously. This idea that we're people who always think we have to change, That's that's what we that's what we are. We're on this constant self improvement. You called it the Meat project, This constant self improvement where we feel like

we have to become better than we are. Yeah, that's right, that's right and just and this is and this is in one sense where I think that actual formal spiritual work is really helpful, um in the sense that it's it's a very um ritualized, straightforward way of showing you, for me anyways, showing you how to live. I was telling you a student this the other day. It's like to read the old suits us. It's like the Buddha is the ultimate spiritual superhero. You know, it's this amazing,

fantastic fake here. I mean, it's very alluring to want to try and change into that being. You come, you sit down in a cushion, and it's a different story. You're all your rich, crazy, interesting, beautiful, mundane, um fascinating banal humanness rises up and then you play with it for a while and it plays with you, and eventually it dissolves, rises up and dissolves, and you don't get

any better and you don't get any worse. Um. You you're just you're just hopefully you're becoming more alive and more awake. Where the stories in the book that I really enjoyed was the story of you working in the kitchen and uh and the character t Bone. Do you think you could give the listeners a mini version of that story? Yeah, I, UM, I was terrified, terrified to

work in the kitchen when I moved to the Zen center. UM. After I spent a little bit of time in the kitchen, I got a helper UM because it was a really just a really eccentric, crazy, classic kind of Zen character comes m barreling through the generally speaking, when someone's uh, you know, crazy or lazy, they wind up in the kitchen at a Zen monastery. UM. So we're in this

enclosed space, UM, having to work together and UM. Basically, over the period, I think it was in there with me for about two months, basically we just started driving each other crazy. UM. And one thing I kind of learned through this process was, first of all, I had to face a lot of my my mother issues. I guess you could say what I learned working in that kitchen,

and it's kind of a classics in lesson. UM. First of all, I had become my mother in the sense that I was hurt and UM in sort of impatient and overly disciplinary towards my kitchen worker. But being on the other side of that equation, Um, I realized what my mother had gone through and she was raising me um, and I had to kind of really look at myself and say, I was actually a brat. I was actually probably I was certainly worse than my other brothers and

sisters in a lot of ways. Um. And uh, you know, it wasn't all hurt even though as a young man I was still I think I was worse than your average child in the same sense that this kitchen worker that I had was just out of control crazy. I mean he was, um, you know he uh he was. He loved to freestyle wrap, so he spent all his time kind of creating wraps to make fun of me. Um. He was sort of passive, aggressive things behind my back, like hiding the salt shaker in another part of the room,

and it was just constant source of aggravation. So he was definitely a very bad worker. And in a sense, Yeah, I had to look at myself and say, you know what, I was not a great kid, and my mom had to put up with that for year after year after year, and so I really came to u. Yeah, certainly for the first time in left I think I grew up a lot when I was in that kitchen for the first time in my life, I sort of related to the to the parental point of view instead of the

rebellious child point of view. And speaking of of the mother part of that. Can you tell us about what happened when U t bones mother came to visit. Yeah, that was classic. Um. This guy, this guy was like a Summerai when it came to zen um inter personal battles and there was nothing you wouldn't do. He was fearless. So his his mother and father came visited the Zen Center, and we're all in the kitchen and we're washing dishes.

So at one point I started trying to feebly, I started trying to fight back with the bone in the kitchen. So when he would we had a yo mama thing going. So you know your you know your mom is so fat or your mom is so slutty, that kind of thing. Um. So so for a while I was speaking to his his mother's um slatternly ways. Now, of course I've never met his mother. I had no idea who she was. But then she came to visit as at the Zen Center, and so we're all kind of washing the dishes, hanging out.

I'm trying to put on my good zen face, and t Bone just starts um mentioning all these things that I had said about his mother. You know, you you know, my mother's here. You seem to have a fetish for large breast. Do you want to aren't my mother's breast semormous? So he kind of, you know, that's sort of funny, you know, but he wouldn't stop going on and on and and and the uncomfortable thing was his his his parents didn't really stop him from doing this. They didn't

really say anything to him. Kind of, I think, I don't I mean, I don't know how you spend I don't know how you raise a child like this. Um, But I mean he has some some mental issues which I don't get into. But um, you know, they clearly they were very very patient. But he went on, I mean, listed everything I had ever said about his mother, and I believe me, in the in the dark night of the soul and kitchen, I had leveled many a foul insult against his mother, and he repeated every last one

of them to her in that kitchen. You know, my mother's here, you said that she deserves a minimum wage for her services at the brothels and Nevada. Would you like to speak to that now? Oh? Yeah, that's that's pretty good. So he, uh did did did t Bone make it? Is he's did he make it through monastery training? Did he did? He go on to other things? He's a fascinating character. He is a fascinating character. We're friends

on Facebook now, so apparently he doesn't hate me too badly. Um, you know, he's a he's a he's a musical genius, and he's actually a wonderful guy. I know. I think like many of us, he came to his end center when he was Um wasn't at a high point in his life, in his career or his personal life. But in actuality he's He's a great guy, a beautiful guy, amazing guitar planers, and now I think he's I think

he's actually teaching people how to play guitar. Yeah, And the story it comes across that you really learned a lot from him, and that part is so well told. I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot during that. I think we're coming up near the end of our time here, is there anything on the topic of the theme that you'd like to cover that you don't think we have talked about, or anything you want to add in general. Well, I think I'm babbled enough, don't you. No,

I think it's been good. Yeah, I really appreciating of the kamana and and talk a little bit um. And I have to say, I have to keep sitting with the good wolf bad wolf analogy. It's important, Um, we have these we have these these flawed, m crapping, emoding, um, fascinating, precious, beautiful, interesting, wonderful human selves. And that's an absolute reality. And within that reality there's good and bad. There really is good wolf and bad wolves. Like I said, I can't be

feeding the nicotine wolf anymore. It's a very clear example of a bad wolf and a good wolf. And on the other hand, Um, there is some aspect of our, of our of our shared reality that beyond good and evil, yon good and bad, beyond distinction. And and how we bring these these two things together. I mean, that's our that's our human life, that's our that's our mission, our journey and our job. So in a sense, the good wolf bad wold parable is a bit of a can

for me, which I'll keep working on. Well, thank you very much for joining us. Like I said, I really enjoyed the book and I encourage the listeners to read it. There is a tremendous amount of humor and insight in it. So um with that, Jack, thanks very much, it was good to have you. Thank you Eric, and thank you Chris.

Take care you too. Bye. You can learn more about shows on Jack and this podcast in our show notes at one you feed dot net slash shows on and if you don't know how to spell that, that's s h O Z A N and just kind of you know, pay us back for the favor of me telling you how to spell. You can go on iTunes store and pretty much give us a five star rating across the board. Thanks