Thy will be done

Ven. Pomnyun is arguably the most popular and respected religious figure in Korea today. He is a household name, known mostly for his engaging Q&A style dialogue — Dharma Talks — with audiences about everything and anything they want to throw at him. Mostly, it's about their personal lives, cheating spouses, rebellious children, overbearing mother-in-laws and drunkard husbands being the mainstays of these questions.

I have been interpreting for Ven. Pomnyun since 2015 when I first met the monk at an international conference on the topic of Korean unification. This was in late August of 2005 when I was taking a break from work and about to start my master's degree at Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. I saw an ad calling on the Korean newspaper asking for volunteers, so I did. I ended up serving as the MC and session interpreter.

Since then, I have been volunteering as his interpreter for his Dharma Talks, starting at Google in 2014. While such talks can be a nightmare for interpreters since they are unscripted and can span wide-ranging subject areas from Indian history to developmental psychology, I learned a few key takeaways that make up the larger, consistent teachings that underlie all his engagements with people from all walks of life.

The first lesson is what I call The Zen Equation. I call it an equation because our response to a situation or people is a function of the specific externalities or stimulus reacting with our internal assumptions. Adam Grant explained this concept better than I ever can: "What others say doesn't directly affect your emotions. Between their words and your feelings is your interpretation of their intention. Agency lies in the space between stimulus and response. A sign of emotional intelligence is recognizing your power to change your assumptions."

In other words, it's not any externalities that affect your sense of well-being. It's how you react to those externalities. This seems obvious on the surface but internalizing this is a huge undertaking since we automatically lay the blame on others for the way we feel. The challenge becomes even more acute when we encounter people or arguments that trigger us due to some past traumas or really challenge our foundational assumptions and values.

The second lesson is that everything is constructed, even karma. Usually, we think of karma as a comeuppance to some bad deed or destiny based on what you did in your previous lifetime. However, the authentic Buddhist concept of karma is the opposite. Karma is what makes up your agency that lies between stimulus and response as Grant describes. Our agency is basically made up of preconceptions and assumptions of how the world is and should be, mostly ingrained into us even before we develop a sense of self. It's a subconscious set of cognitive habits that reacts in predetermined ways to the stimulus we encounter in everyday life. Since it's subconscious, we can't consciously see it, much less manipulate it.

At the same time, however, it is constructed. That's right. Karma is a construct. And like any other construct, it can be deconstructed and then reconstructed in an intentional way. Of course, it's not easy. In fact, it's so difficult that our ancestors thought it was literally written in the stars, handed down to us by an omnipotent God, or inherited as a result of how we lived our lives in previous incarnations. What Buddha taught us was that our lives are not deterministic. It's constructed out of our everyday choices, except that these choices are made on our behalf unknowingly by our own subconscious set of cognitive habits. The purpose of Buddhism is to empower our own agency to see and change our karma to one that makes us content. If I had to boil down Buddhism into one slogan, I would call it "change management for your karma."

The third lesson is that nothing exists except in the "here and now." Neither past nor future exists. This is a literal fact. Only the now exists. Yet, we live most of our lives in the past or the future. We are often not present in our own lives. How can we change our lives for the better if we are not even present? This is all about focusing on the process, not the outcome. You don't really have any control over the outcome. You only have control over the process that you are engaged in, the here and now. Ven. Pomnyun often quotes the bible when trying to make a point. For this lesson, I heard him say this is equivalent to the "Thy will be done" phrase in the Lord's Prayer. Thy will be done means that the outcome is as God wills it. In other words, you don't have control over it. All you can do is be faithful to what you do (i.e., process), and let God decide where the dice will fall.

He's hosting another dialogue on June 18 for the English-speaking audience. I will be interpreting. Come by if you can. It's always fun.

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect The Korea Times’ editorial stance.