Knowing How to Be Satisfied
Photo by Brooke Lark
In this second talk in a series on the Eight Awarenesses of Enlightened Beings, Zuisei speaks on the second awareness: knowing how to be satisfied.
In a Western culture that seems obsessed with excess and consumption, it can be a struggle to know when we are truly satisfied. Yet when we practice and take a closer look at our minds and hearts, we may find that we already have all that we need.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Knowing How to Be Satisfied
The Buddha said, “You friends should contemplate knowing how to be satisfied if you wish to be liberated from suffering. The Dharma of knowing how to be satisfied is the realm of riches, comfort, peace, and tranquility. Those who know how to be satisfied are happy and comfortable even when sleeping on the ground. Those who do not know how to be satisfied are not satisfied even when dwelling in a heavenly palace. Those who do not know how to be satisfied are poor even though they are wealthy, while those who know how to be satisfied are wealthy even though they have little. Those who do not know how to be satisfied and are always tempted by the five desires are consoled by those who know how to be satisfied. This is called knowing how to be satisfied.”
This is the second of the eight awarenesses that the Buddha taught right before his death. This was his last teaching — the eight awarenesses of an enlightened being. And the first is having few desires. When I first read these, I thought maybe these two were the same thing. But I think there's a subtle difference.
The first, having few desires, really refers to those things that we don't yet have and want — the longing, the hunger, the desire that arises as a result. It's saying: have few wants, and you will suffer less.
The second deals with a sense of satisfaction with what we already have. In a sense, it's saying: you already have everything you need. You don't need more.
Can you see that? These two form a dynamic between hunger and satiety — between reaching for what is not and resting in what is.
I was saying in my last talk how powerful desire is. Maybe that's why the Buddha chose to break it down, to speak about it in such detail. Because it is such a powerful force. The very act of wanting is its own fuel — you could say, the desire for desire itself.
About a little over a month ago, Tenkei, my partner, and I went to Macy's in the city — a place where everything shines and glitters, where everything entices and promises. It's both exciting and terrible.
I was thinking: if you want to feel bad about yourself, go shopping. Or go see your family — although that's not all families, of course. But there’s this promise there: that having these things — some of them quite nice — I’ll look better, I’ll feel better about myself.
At the same time, there's a kind of deep sense of depression: right now, I don't feel that. You look in the mirror and nothing feels quite right. It's a strange limbo.
That's the not-so-nice thing about marketing: it plays into our insecurity.
Tenkei needed to get lipstick. I was standing just outside the little Bobbi Brown counter. Without realizing it, I was right in the path between the attendant and the customers coming in. She had to pass by me to greet others — and she just looked right through me. It was as if I wasn’t even there.
I could tell she probably took one look at me and thought, “She’s hopeless.” So maybe not even bother.
Afterwards, I regretted not going up to her myself to say, “Will you show me some lipsticks?” Just to overturn her image of me. But in that moment, I did feel invisible.
It’s not a mystery how this deep sense of dissatisfaction is formed and confirmed in us.
Even if you say to yourself, as I have, “I don’t really care about how I look or how other people perceive me,” there are all these images around us, all these messages in our culture saying, “Actually, it is important. You should care.”
As a woman especially, you should care about how you look because it’s so deeply tied to your sense of worth.
It reminded me of reading Bill Bryson when he talks about Watson and Crick discovering the double helix. Watson wrote a book about it after the Nobel Prize. The only mention he makes of Rosalind Franklin — whom I’d never even heard of until that moment — is that she was “uncooperative and almost willfully unsexy.” He grants that she was “not unattractive,” but “she really didn’t try. She didn’t even wear lipstick.”
That’s one image we now have of her — by one of her closest colleagues.
The same is true in politics. Nobody ever discusses a male politician’s wardrobe or hairdo — well, that’s not entirely true, but it’s more the exception than the rule.
And if you’re a man, you’re not off the hook. Growing up in this culture, you’ve probably learned that showing emotion is not accepted. It’s “weak” to show emotion. It’s good to have it, because everyone likes a sensitive guy — but not to show it.
So when you do feel it, which of course you will, what do you do? You either suppress it and then find some way — or some way finds you — for it to come out, usually as anger. Or you just get angry right from the start. You cut off a part of yourself.
And of course, what ends up happening? Somehow, you feel wrong.
So how are we to feel satisfied? Truly and deeply satisfied — not just with what we have or lack materially, but with ourselves. The way we look, the way we speak, the way we think — who we are.
What’s the right amount of anything? Brains and brawn, courage and sensitivity. What’s the right amount for me?
Maezumi Roshi, in his commentary on the eight awarenesses, speaks of oryoki. He says “O” means response, “Ryo” means amount, and “Ki” means container. Oryoki is the container that holds the right amount to respond to the need.
He says, we ourselves are oryoki. We are the container which holds the right amount to respond to the need. As Master Dogen says, when the need is large, we respond largely. When the need is small, we meet it in a small way.
Oryoki has been a profound practice for me. I could literally say it changed me.
Like probably nine or 9.5 out of 10 women, I too grew up obsessed — that would be the right word — about my weight. For at least a decade, maybe a decade and a half, I constantly worried about how I looked and what I ate, exercising constantly.
When I came here, I couldn’t yet tell at the time that underneath it all, I was deeply dissatisfied and yearning, hungry to feel fundamentally okay. I started practicing. I began to see that it wasn’t really just about food or my weight. But the energy, the power of it, was still there.
I remember so clearly one afternoon going up to my cabin and feeling desperate. Thinking: “What would I think of? How would I use my mind if I weren’t constantly thinking about this?” The feeling was so excruciating I quite literally wanted to bash my head against the wall.
Then, sometime after that — during sesshin, during oryoki — I was standing back in the hallway as a server, watching my teacher eat. And I thought: “I can do that. I can do oryoki with every meal.”
I’d been having stomach problems at the time, seen a bunch of doctors. I went downstairs, threw away the medication they’d given me, and never took it again. I started a very deliberate, careful study of want, of hunger, of what was actually going on in my body and mind.
I trained myself to do oryoki with every meal, to find out what was the right amount for me. That’s when I began to sense that pervading feeling I carried all the time — that something was wrong, something was flawed about me. I understood that was a big part of what had brought me to practice, but I couldn’t have explained it.
From that moment on, I became an “oryokian,” really studying the right amount of food, of energy, of work and rest, of solitude and comfort, of company.
With food specifically, I remember so clearly the day I was standing by the bread table and thought: “I have not thought about food. I don’t remember since when.” It was probably about two years from the time I had begun.
And I felt what the Buddha meant by “liberation.” It was liberating.
If you’re somewhat new to oryoki and worried about the mechanics — the sequence, the knot — don’t miss the incredible teaching of this ceremony, of this liturgy. See what it can show you about you.
So what is the right amount? What is the right amount of practice in order to see what the right amount is? In a sesshin, for example, how much do you sit? With what kind of effort? Is there such a thing as too much sitting? I think there is.
What kind of effort is needed to realize this mind — this natural, pure, bright mind? How do you know when to push yourself and when to relax? When to try harder and when to stop trying? When is satisfaction complacency, and when is it fulfillment? How do you know the difference?
In Maezumi Roshi’s book, Tetsugen Roshi — Dara Roshi’s Dharma brother and Maezumi Roshi’s successor — does a question-and-answer session after each of Maezumi Roshi’s talks on the awarenesses. He has a very nice exchange with someone about work.
Tetsugen asks the person — who seemed to be a crew leader — how they know when it’s too much, how they know when to stop. The student replies, “You have to know yourself. You can’t really baby other people. You have to take care of yourself.”
Tetsugen says, “It worries me that you speak this way, because it’s like you’re saying all these people working with me or for me are separate. Really, you should say: it’s me working. You can do more than yourself, which includes all the people involved. All the people involved are me. They are me working.”
Do you see that? He’s basically saying: enlarge the container. Don’t even enlarge it — it’s already larger. See that the container is that large. Take all of it into account.
If I actually knew I am the whole universe, what would be missing? What reason would there be not to be satisfied? This is true satisfaction. It’s knowing our nature.
Karagiri Roshi said that in the relative, we’re always responsible. In the absolute, we’re always forgiven.
We could also think of it this way: in the relative, we’re always developing. There’s always more to see, more to realize, more to embody and manifest. In the absolute, there’s nothing to develop at all.
So, in the relative, we work with our wants and needs, with insecurity and confidence. We tune our bodies and minds so that we may let go of habitual impulses, of reaching, of fear or longing that makes us seek something outside ourselves — something that will improve us, or at least take the edge off discomfort.
In the absolute, there’s nothing to do. Because we are the very nature of completeness.
If I actually knew I am the whole universe, what would be missing?
When the five desires arise, we understand them as a kind of worldly joy, the Buddha calls it. These five desires are the five sense desires. In a different sutra, he says: What is worldly joy? These are the five cords of sense desire: forms cognizable by the eye that are wished for and desired, agreeable and endearing; sounds cognizable by the ear; odors by the nose; flavors by the tongue; tangibles by the body.
It is the joy that arises dependent on these five cords of sense desire, which is called worldly joy. There’s the Niramisa Sutta, which is called unworldly.
There is joy in desire, and we shouldn’t ignore that. But it’s not the only thing present. A big part of studying my compulsion, my obsession with food, was recognizing the moment when putting another cookie in my mouth was no longer pleasurable.
My real threshold now seems pretty low. The first one is delicious. The second isn’t. The second is forced. The second is my attempt to prolong the pleasure. The actual experience is one of some pleasure, mixed with pain. It doesn’t work. Practice spoils your access.
I think this is one way to work with addictive behaviors — it’s not enough by itself — but it’s to pay close attention and to pay broad attention. There’s so much happening in our bodies that we mostly ignore. When we stop ignoring, we get a fuller picture of the suffering that accompanies certain kinds of pleasure.
It’s not eating only one cookie for the sake of discipline. It’s not even restraint. It’s eating one cookie because you realize that’s all you want. There’s no effort involved. There’s no sacrifice.
Otherworldly joy, the Buddha said, arises out of entering and dwelling in the jhanas — the deep state of meditation. It arises out of seclusion, of a mind that is concentrated and unified, of directed thought and examination. It arises out of equanimity.
Even greater joy arises when a taint-free practitioner looks upon their mind, freed of greed, hatred, and delusion — and joy arises. This is called a still greater, unworldly joy. It is the joy of being freed of the three poisons — the joy of joy itself. Lasting joy. Perfect or transcendent joy. Joy based on wisdom, based on harmony.
At the same time, there is a kind of dissatisfaction that is skillful, that is helpful — the dissatisfaction of knowing, no matter how much you realize, that there is always more. It’s more like aspiration, a kind of calm longing, of reaching, but not grasping.
Since I am, in fact, the whole universe, how could I possibly know all there is to know? In this sense, we can never be fully satisfied. Our fundamental capacity is limitless. Perhaps this is another way of saying that knowing how to be satisfied — truly satisfied — is knowing how to live with satisfaction, but the right kind.
As Master Sing Son said, to live without anxiety about non-perfection. Speaking to myself here as much as I speak to you. Actually, it’s to have no anxiety about having anxiety about non-perfection.
Anxiety, like any thought, any feeling, any dharma, is conditioned, which means its nature has the three marks: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and insubstantiality, no-self.
When we understand impermanence and no-self, then suffering — that unsatisfactoriness — changes. If it’s anxiety, shame, anger, or doubt, can I recognize that it is ever-changing? That it is empty of inherent existence? I am feeling it.
That also needs to be recognized. Felt and acknowledged. But what if I just let it be when it is, and let it pass when it passes? Where can the dust alight then?
There are two poems by the sixth ancestor, and Shen Tzu, the fifth ancestor, as he prepares to transmit the dharma, says to his monks: “Write me a poem that shows your understanding.”
The head monk writes: “The body is a Bodhi tree, the mind a standing mirror bright. At all times polish it diligently, and do not let the dust collect.”
Huineng, who was illiterate, has someone else read it to him, and he writes his response:
“Bodhi is originally without any tree. The bright mirror is not a stand. Originally, there’s not a single thing. Where can the dust alight?”
There is a practice of brushing away the dust so we can see clearly. And there is a practice of realizing there’s no place for the dust to fall.
As I said, anything we haven’t acknowledged will keep us tethered.
For thoughts — especially unskillful ones — you may replace them with skillful ones, forget them, or not feed them. One way is to stabilize the mental formation, tracing a thought back to its source.
For example, a person walking fast asks themselves, “Why am I walking fast? What if I walk slowly? Why don’t I stand? Why don’t I sit? Why don’t I lie down?” Even imagining this settles the body.
The same is true for thoughts. What is the root of my anger? What is before it? Shame. Why? Because really what I’m feeling is sadness. Why? Because I’m lonely, but I’m not supposed to feel that. I’m not supposed to say it. I don’t want to admit it.
Not admitting it keeps me walking fast. It keeps me running and kicking and knocking things over — which makes me feel worse.
And on it goes. I often think about working on two levels: the relative and the absolute. The relative: understanding what we need to see, acknowledge, and clarify. The absolute: realizing that fundamentally, I am empty, and this feeling is empty. It has no inherent existence. Because that’s really where the true liberation is. Where the lasting liberation is.
Anything we haven’t acknowledged will keep us tethered.
Maybe knowing how to be satisfied is not being shy or embarrassed about our happiness. Because in our news, our art, our common discourse, despair has a way of gathering large audiences.
In general, unhappy people tend to be more communicative. Sometimes enthusiastically so. And in ourselves, we’re so willing to express what we’re disastisified about. Not so much when we’re happy and joyful. And I don’t know if it’s that we view this happiness, and by happiness I mean fulfillment, contentment, maybe because we view it with suspicion, or maybe we’re looking for it in the wrong places. It doesn’t quite exist. And it certainly seems very fleeting. If I am basing my happiness on the way I look or what I have or what you think of me, I’m going to have to stay pretty nimble to stay happy. That fulfillment is not as entertaining, is not as dramatic.
I think it was in a book by Gunaratana I read some years ago—Dan Rather interviewed a man whose house abutted a highway.
Every morning during rush hour, the man would come out on his porch and wave at the cars, saying, “Good morning, have a good day!” And every afternoon, during rush hour at the end of the day, he’d wave again and say, “Good afternoon, have a safe drive home.”
I guess somebody figured out what he was doing and told Dan Rather about it. So Dan Rather went and interviewed him.
He said, “You know, nobody can hear you. Why are you doing this?”
And the man replied, “Every morning, I wish them a good day. Every afternoon, I wish them a safe drive home. I’m just doing it from my heart. I don’t need anything else.”
An undercover bodhisattva.
And, you know, we have no way of knowing, of course, what he was like day to day—what it was like to live with him. But I doubt that he was particularly angry or dissatisfied.
And yet—did his loving-kindness (because really, that’s what that was) radiate in all directions? Did that come first, his loving-kindness, or that ease with himself? Does it matter?
Last weekend, during the retreat, I was telling people that Annie Dillard has a quote: “Be careful what you read, because that’s what you’ll know.” And I say, be careful what you think, because that’s who you’ll be.
The three worlds are nothing but mind.
And the thing is, there is no time or place where this isn’t true. There’s no world apart from this mind—this mind. That’s why it’s so important to guard and protect it, like a mother protects her child.
I was saying how all these innocuous thoughts—well, I don’t think there is such a thing. And sometimes it’s hard to catch them.
I can certainly speak for myself—sometimes I don’t realize what I’m creating until I’m deep in it. But that’s part of the study.
And this is Shantideva:
“All endeavors are for the sake of satisfaction, which is difficult to obtain even by means of wealth.
So I will enjoy the pleasure of satisfaction and good qualities diligently accomplished by others.”
This is sympathetic joy—definitely the most difficult, yet the most potent, of medicines for our dissatisfaction.
In a moment of anger, in a moment of discontent, to bring someone else to mind and rejoice in their virtue, in their well-being—it’s an unfailing antidote, the perfect bomb neutralizer.
Everything just falls apart.
You know, next time you’re angry or you feel judgmental, try it. Wish someone well—and then keep doing it.
Because part of you will resist it. Part of you won’t want to. Part of you will want to stay angry.
But that turning toward what is skillful, what is affirming—you know, at a certain point, you can’t hold both. You can’t hold both the anger and the loving-kindness, or the joy.
We can see others as others—as beings competing for the same resources we want and need. Or we can see them as the very means to our liberation.
That’s what Shantideva says:
“One should always look straight at sentient beings, as if drinking them in with the eyes, thinking,
Relying on them alone, I shall attain Buddhahood.”
Relying on you alone, I will attain Buddhahood.
Relying on me, you will attain Buddhahood.
And this is the same as saying: relying on me alone—on all the parts of me, the wanted and unwanted, the known and hidden, the accepted and denied—all of them are the gate to my liberation, your liberation.
And then we do end up being the ones who console those who don’t yet know how to be satisfied. Not by taking care of them, not by babying them—certainly not. But simply by being deeply satisfied ourselves, like this man, offering ourselves for the sake of offering.
That’s why we can’t leave anything or anyone out. Not my desire, not my dissatisfaction, not my greed, not my anger, not my ignorance. Not the people who trouble me—the ones who annoy me, the ones who threaten me.
And that’s the wonderful news: we don’t need to be someone else to be liberated. We don’t need to travel to some other, unworldly, ideal realm.
Because that’s not how the Buddha meant it.
It’s all right here before our eyes—perfectly visible, completely present, and utterly without flaw.
Knowing How to Be Satisfied, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 : Eight Means to Enlightenment by Master Dogen
02 : Niramissa Sutta: Unworldly
03: The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment by Bernie Glassman and Taizan Maezumi