Episode 146
Self Acceptance – The Zen Way
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
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Thank you for listening.
Steven
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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Stillness in the Storms, the podcast that helps you through the most difficult times in life
Steven Webb:and just gives you just some hints and tips on how to live life a little bit happy and a
Steven Webb:little more with some resilience.
Steven Webb:Today I want to talk about Zen and I come across this wonderful quote. Zen doesn't fix your life. It
Steven Webb:stops you needing to. So I want to talk about that on today's podcast. What is Zen? How can we
Steven Webb:interpret? How can we introduce a bit of Zen to our lives without it just being a meme on Instagram?
Steven Webb:And does it really need us to stop fixing our lives? Is our lives broken? That's the kind of thing
Steven Webb:I'm talking about today on Stillness in the Storms. But just before we start, I want to thank all of
Steven Webb:you, my monthly donators, the people that join and promise to pay something every month and all used to treat
Steven Webb:me to a coffee. Because really, this podcast would. I would have to put adverts. I really don't want to
Steven Webb:put adverts in there. There's nothing worse than tuning into a podcast and you've got like 10 minutes of adverts
Steven Webb:and eight minutes of podcast. Okay, I'm a bit exaggerating but you know what it's like. So thank you so
Steven Webb:much to all of you. You are absolutely awesome and thank you for sharing and thank you for the emails
Steven Webb:and, yeah, thank you for being part of my journey as well. I'm Steven Webb, your host, and what you
Steven Webb:may not know about me is I'm paralysed just below my neck. I'm also a Cornwall Councillor now, so I'm
Steven Webb:a politician. I'm also a terrible meditator. I try to meditate twice a day and I'm terrible at it.
Steven Webb:But that's what makes meditation so challenging and that's what makes it so important for our lives. Because if I
Steven Webb:don't meditate, I get teasy, I get argumentative, I get bothered, I get bogged down. I tend to get
Steven Webb:more poorly. So, yeah. And what's my form of meditation? I just sit and shut up.
Steven Webb:Stuff you. Stuff you. Jumpo used to say s-t-f-u. And I was like, for
Steven Webb:weeks and weeks, I would keep saying to him, what, am I doing it right? Am I meditating right? And
Steven Webb:he would go, just sit down and shut up. I'd be like, yes, but am I doing it right? He'd
Steven Webb:say, look, sit down, shut up. Every time your mind wandered, bring it back to your breath. And I'd be
Steven Webb:like, yes, I do that, but am I doing it right? Just
Steven Webb:stifu, stifu. Just repeat that in your mind, and eventually your mind will slow down, your body will
Steven Webb:slow down. And in the end, I said, so what does stifu stand like? He said, shut the fuck up.
Steven Webb:That's what it stands for.
Steven Webb:I was like, ah.
Steven Webb:So then I asked him, can you do meditation wrong? And he said, yes, absolutely.
Steven Webb:And I was like, okay, so am I doing it right? And he said, Steven.
Steven Webb:And I'm going to say to you, every listener here, if you meditate, just sit down and shut up.
Steven Webb:Just allow your mind to go quiet, allow your body to relax, and allow this moment to be exactly what
Steven Webb:it is. And there you go. And that's what Zen is. It's allowing this moment to be what it is.
Steven Webb:By allowing this moment to be what it is, you then don't feel the need to have to fix everything.
Steven Webb:Now I'm paralysed. Can I can I fix that? To fix that, I would need to mend my broken neck.
Steven Webb:I would have to walk around again. I'd have to do all that. And guess what?
Steven Webb:I'd replace being paralysed with other problems. Because
Steven Webb:I'm guessing every single one of you that's listened to my podcast has your own problems. And are you all
Steven Webb:paralysed? Probably not. And
Steven Webb:that's what it comes down to. You know, being alive means to suffer. The Buddha would say, dukkha. Just by
Steven Webb:being here, just by having an ego, just by having that desire to improve your life, to be happy, to
Steven Webb:do something, to get out of bed in the morning, means there's going to be things that you want. There's
Steven Webb:going to be things that you want to change. There's going to be things that you're uncomfortable with.
Steven Webb:And that's what you want to fix. If you fix everything out there, if you fix the whole world, what
Steven Webb:are you going to moan about?
Steven Webb:What are you going to do all day? Sit on the beach in the beautiful sun well you're gonna moan
Steven Webb:after a while when there's no rain, there's no flowers, you're probably gonna get bored of that and moan you're
Steven Webb:Too hot, too much sand in your bum, or whatever. You know, whatever. Whatever we end up
Steven Webb:doing, we're gonna moan about something. And that's what Zen is. Zen recognizes that. You know, Zen is just a
Steven Webb:matter of, ah, there you go. It is what it is. And the one thing that helps me more than
Steven Webb:anything else is I cannot change this present moment.
Steven Webb:There's nothing you can do about right now. Right now you're listening to the podcast. Then you can turn it
Steven Webb:off and do something to go to the next moment, but you can't do anything about this moment. You're already
Steven Webb:here. It's already happening. But that's the one thing we're more annoyed about than anything else.
Steven Webb:And Zen is not about sitting down and with groups of monks and incense sticks and sitting in silence.
Steven Webb:Zen is about a direct experience of what is happening right now.
Steven Webb:Zen is not about becoming better. It's about realising you never were broken. You are what
Steven Webb:you are right now. You are the best version of yourself right now and can you become
Steven Webb:a better version? Yeah. Can you become a worse version? Yeah, but that's intention. That's moving forward right
Steven Webb:now. You are everything you can be in this moment. You
Steven Webb:know, where does Zen come from then? Okay, let's back up a little bit, because I'm just jumping straight towards
Steven Webb:zen is and there's thousands of books that try to explain Zen. And please don't take my definition of Zen
Steven Webb:as any kind of answer to what Zen is or anything, because I don't really know. All I know that
Steven Webb:All I know is that when we stop and we take a step back and just go, ah,
Steven Webb:that's it. The
Steven Webb:problem is we add everything to it. We want to paint it a colour. You know, if you're given a
Steven Webb:lovely blank canvas, go, okay, let's put something on it. Rather than just go, wow, look at that blank canvas.
Steven Webb:You know, when we look up the stars and the magic of the universe, we then want to add gods
Steven Webb:to it. When we when we watch a really good movie, we're like, oh that's I hope version two comes
Steven Webb:out. When we've had a really good season of our Tv show that we absolutely love, we're like, oh, when
Steven Webb:does season two come out? We start looking up, are they making the season two of it? Because we want
Steven Webb:more all the time. The desire to want more. And then just answers that by saying, you
Steven Webb:don't need it. You don't need it in this present moment. And I think that's what helped me to become
Steven Webb:more peaceful than anything else, that I'm into politics, politics more than anything else. And Trump has taken way too
Steven Webb:much of my life for hey It's not Trump's fault you
Steven Webb:know Trump's doing what he does, and I feel for anybody that is, like, gonna suffer at the hands of
Steven Webb:him being in power. But
Steven Webb:I've chose to be focused on Trump. I choose to scroll through the phone looking for little quick endorphin fixes
Steven Webb:of somebody that's wrote an article that's calling him out on his stupidity. It's all
Steven Webb:my choice in that moment you can't blame anybody else for it. So when we stop blaming. So
Steven Webb:then when we stop blaming everybody else for our life, and I'm blaming Trump for taking too many years and
Steven Webb:all that, you suddenly just start facing life, not the need to fix. We just sit with the pain
Steven Webb:without needing to tidy it up. And when I was going 500 miles around Cornwall in my
Steven Webb:electric wheelchair, towing a replica of the Cornwall air ambulance to raise money, I was doing it for
Steven Webb:several different things. But most of the days were just miserable and cold. I would be in my wheelchair
Steven Webb:going along the road at like 10 miles an hour, eight and a half mile an hour, if the government
Steven Webb:are listening and any police are listening. And I was just there going along the road, and I was bored
Steven Webb:half the time. I was cold. I was fed up. I remember going along one road and I was looking
Steven Webb:ahead of me and there was this horrible clouds and rain. And I started thinking, oh, God, I don't want
Steven Webb:to be in that. Oh, God it's gonna be a really horrible afternoon. What happens if. And I totally forgot
Steven Webb:the fact that where I was in that moment was beautiful sunshine. And I was looking ahead
Steven Webb:to, I don't know, three miles down the road. Well, that was half an hour off. I was doing about.
Steven Webb:Because when you average out the speed, I was doing about six, seven miles an hour. On a good hour,
Steven Webb:I might do eight miles. And that was half an hour away. And there I was already in the rainstorm
Steven Webb:while sat in the sun. And that's what the mind does. It takes us to the places we don't want
Steven Webb:to go because we're frightened of losing the place. And when we're in a terrible time, we're like, oh, my
Steven Webb:God, I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to. Instead of just going, well, I know this
Steven Webb:moment's going to pass. It's going to pass just as quick as it does, whether or not I hate it
Steven Webb:or not. And I think the Buddha, I heard a story of the Buddha was saying, or may not be
Steven Webb:the Buddha. Dalai Lama was saying, if you think time is relative, you spend just 10 minutes sat on
Steven Webb:a sofa talking to a person that you love, their company. Or you spend four seconds sat on a hot
Steven Webb:stove. You know, that hot stove will seem like a lifetime. And that 10 minutes sat on the sofa with
Steven Webb:somebody that you really enjoy, their company will seem like a few seconds. And that's what everything is. Life is
Steven Webb:relative, relative to how we're feeling, what we're doing. And this is where Zen and stoicism
Steven Webb:is very similar. It's facing life exactly how it is.
Steven Webb:And when we do face life exactly how it is without, I'm not saying don't feel emotions because Zen Stoicism
Steven Webb:isn't about not feeding emotions This is where it often gets a bad rap. You know, it's not about being
Steven Webb:stoic and stiff upper leg like the British maybe, you know, look at me. Well, I can't joke, I can't
Steven Webb:smile. Much like the the quick the king's guard isn't it? And when they they cannot smile, they can't do
Steven Webb:anything. They're just like sat there rigid. That's not stoicism.
Steven Webb:Stoicism is feeling everything but not being controlled by those feelings. It's
Steven Webb:ah, a feeling of discomfort is arising. What
Steven Webb:is that discomfort? Where is it coming from? Being inquisitive but not having to immediately fix it or
Steven Webb:change it because it'll go.
Steven Webb:Have you ever noticed the way you can have a real bad headache or you can have a real big
Steven Webb:pain, or you know something's going on in the outside world and then you stub your toe do you know
Steven Webb:Nothing else exists in the world. The minute you stub your toe, that's it. It's like if you want to
Steven Webb:get rid of all of your worries and all of your problems, go and buy a pair of shoes that
Steven Webb:are too small for you and go and walk two miles in them. I can guarantee within half
Steven Webb:a mile you won't be thinking about all your problems. You'll be thinking about that that sore foot with that
Steven Webb:um blister on it that will be giving you agony. So everything is relative. And
Steven Webb:this is what Zen does. Zen just brings everything back to this moment, what it is now, in this moment,
Steven Webb:without having the need to fix it.
Steven Webb:You're just holding the raw moment for what it is. And when you do that, something magic happens. Suddenly
Steven Webb:you start seeing the world, the universe within. You start feeling the wind
Steven Webb:on your face, you start feeling the heat. You start seeing life for what it is. And you start seeing
Steven Webb:it through without
Steven Webb:not so much through lens, like lens tinted glasses, where you're just trying
Steven Webb:to see all the best and everything. You're just seeing it for what it is. And therefore you don't feel
Steven Webb:the need to change it. And it becomes even more magic than what it was before. You suddenly see the
Steven Webb:lines in a leaf. You see the way a car goes past and the leaves jump up in the air
Steven Webb:and then they all just settle back down.
Steven Webb:You see the trees and the branches of the trees, the way they wander and weave. Every single one of
Steven Webb:those branches is at war with the other branch.
Steven Webb:You think nature's nice and peaceful? Oh, look again.
Steven Webb:There isn't a bare nature that isn't at war with the next bare nature. And
Steven Webb:we hear these stories of the way the trees talk to each other. They'll feed their own offspring. They'll do
Steven Webb:all that. No. Well, yes, but they're they're at war with the other trees in the forest.
Steven Webb:And we often talk about the way 10 of the world ends up with most of the stuff in the
Steven Webb:way of humans, people. But that's what nature does, too. Not saying it's right, it's just
Steven Webb:what it is. You look at any single forest or wood, 90 of it is one particular species of tree.
Steven Webb:It's just a reality. That's what it is. But we could go into a forest to go I want different
Steven Webb:types of tree, and I want different types of flowers. And I want the river to be more weaving, and
Steven Webb:I want a few more waterfalls and
Steven Webb:Just enjoy the forest. How
Steven Webb:would you know the days when you get out of bed in the morning and you go, oh, wow, my
Steven Webb:body's not feeling pain today. I
Steven Webb:remember when I was going to college for about four months doing an introduction to counseling course, and they used
Steven Webb:to check in each morning and they go around the room and you do a check-in And I remember sat
Steven Webb:there one morning and my check-in was do you know what? I'm really feeling good today because I got no
Steven Webb:pains in my hands. My hands are not feeling like they're in burning hot tar, which is what I get
Steven Webb:a lot of time with my root pain.
Steven Webb:And the room was like, oh, wow. Yeah. And they were surprised by the check-in What
Steven Webb:That, you know, because I didn't have pain, it was like. But
Steven Webb:so so many people, and even myself, I focus on what I'm not liking about this moment.
Steven Webb:It's good that humans have got a negative bias because otherwise we would have probably not survived this long. If
Steven Webb:you've got two bears running towards you, one with a machete and one with donuts, you're gonna
Steven Webb:want the one with donuts. But you better focus on the one with the machete, otherwise you're never gonna get
Steven Webb:the donuts.
Steven Webb:You're not gonna get rid of that image out of your head now, are you? You know, so just a
Steven Webb:reminder, two bears running towards you one with donuts maybe a grin on his face, and one with a machete
Steven Webb:Probably still got a grin on his face because why wouldn't he have? So we've got to focus on negative
Steven Webb:but you don't have to um I'm just thinking, does the Zen work with a bear running towards you with
Steven Webb:a machete? Just sit and be, ah, don't worry, it's fine. Just be all Zen about it. Okay this situation
Steven Webb:is when not But
Steven Webb:in general, if you haven't got a bear running towards you with a machete, be Zen, be chilled.
Steven Webb:Very similar to what the Stoicism says, control what you can and accept what you can't. Well, accept the
Steven Webb:present moment, because you cannot control the present moment.
Steven Webb:Zen says, there is no separate you doing the controlling.
Steven Webb:Really think about there's no separate you doing the controlling.
Steven Webb:Ah,
Steven Webb:you are part of the process. And Epictetus, which is one of my favourite teachers,
Steven Webb:he says, it's not events that disturb us, but our opinion about them is
Steven Webb:not events that disturb us, it's our opinion about them. So when you take the present moment, and if you're
Steven Webb:choosing to not like it, or choosing to want to avoid it, move on from it, hate
Steven Webb:it, because something's happened in our past, and I don't like this moment. It's your interpretation of it,
Steven Webb:and I know it's your interpretation of it, or mine or any other person, because another person can be sat
Steven Webb:in exactly the same moment and they can enjoy it. So bringing all this back to daily life, if you're
Steven Webb:doing dishes, just do dishes Just
Steven Webb:have those silent mornings. Just walk quietly, get in the car and don't turn the radio on
Steven Webb:and just listen to the road.
Steven Webb:It's worth remembering that. Just take a breath.
Steven Webb:And Zen is just taking that breath. In the middle of chaos, you
Steven Webb:don't become calm. You remember calm.
Steven Webb:You're already calm in this moment. It's just. You're not remembering that you're calm. You're in the middle of
Steven Webb:everything that's going on. And if you just go, ah,
Steven Webb:you can go there below it, and you can see it and you can be aware of it. Be that
Steven Webb:person at the end of the bar that everything else is going on. You know, you've all seen that Western,
Steven Webb:Western, where I probably grew up on Westerns. But that person at the end of the bar was a big
Steven Webb:fight going on. And that guy sitting there with his whiskey, everything's going on. He's just there, calm. And right
Steven Webb:at the end of the fight or at the end of the whatever, he downs his whiskey, leaves the money
Steven Webb:on the side and just walks out. Wouldn't
Steven Webb:you like to be that? That's what being Zen is, it's not about disconnecting. It's not about being not part
Steven Webb:of it. It's not about running away. It's about facing the moment as what it is.
Steven Webb:And then at that point, who is the one holding that opinion? Who is the one facing that moment?
Steven Webb:Who
Steven Webb:is the one sitting here listening to the podcast? Because it's not who you think it is.
Steven Webb:It's just awareness.
Steven Webb:And when you bring this moment back to a witnessing awareness, you suddenly realise that life doesn't need fixing,
Steven Webb:the moment doesn't need fixing. It's perfectly okay the way it is. And
Steven Webb:suddenly that's when you can start to dive in in our life and play with it a little bit. Play
Steven Webb:with the fact that you're sad or lonely or fed up or really happy and realise that all of those
Steven Webb:are just experiences just slightly away from this Zen quiet moment
Steven Webb:now Happiness is not something you can attain. Happiness is an experience. Happiness
Steven Webb:really is in the mundane. I
Steven Webb:do a whole podcast about that, the happiness line.
Steven Webb:Happiness is not something you achieve because the minute you achieve happiness, you won't be happy anymore
Steven Webb:it's really is. It really is a paradox. You know, you cannot want to be
Steven Webb:happy and happy. And if you are happy, you're not going to be happy for long because that happiness will
Steven Webb:become the normal.
Steven Webb:Yeah.
Steven Webb:So right now, without fixing anything, you can just be here as it is. And I go back to that
Steven Webb:quote. Zen doesn't fix your life. It just stops you needing to. And how do you practice Zen? I
Steven Webb:just recorded a guided meditation for you to just sit with a Zen moment and
Steven Webb:just be here observing, being aware and just take away that needing
Steven Webb:to fix things. I'll
Steven Webb:upload that to the Inner Peace Meditations podcast. There'll be a link just below. If you go to StevenWebb.uk
Steven Webb:you'll find all my links there. Thank you. And thank you for listeners Stillness in the Storms.
Steven Webb:And
Steven Webb:thank you for donating and keeping it free. You are awesome. Take care and have a lovely,
Steven Webb:peaceful Zen week.
