How I Avoid Burnout: Buddhist Priest Daniel Soten Lynch

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- A Zen monastery is an ideal place to ride out a pandemic. “I’m in quarantine with two roshis”—roshi means “old teacher” in Japanese—“and a Tibetan lama, which is pretty cool,” says Buddhist priest Daniel Soten Lynch, who’s lived at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, Ore., since 2010. (Soten is his Zen name.)

Each day, he awakens at 4 a.m. for a two-and-a-half-hour meditation service; he ends the day with two or three more hours of meditation, until about 10 p.m. (Once a month, he completes a weeklong retreat during which he meditates for much of every day.) Otherwise, he spends business hours overseeing the monastery’s operations, managing its sprawling property, and, in pre-pandemic times, helping lead workshops for the public.

The key to avoiding burnout, Lynch says, is to “get in touch with the aspect of ourselves that cannot be burnt out. In a nutshell, that’s what we’re learning to do in meditation.” Here’s how he thrives:

You don’t need a change of scenery to keep it interesting. Lynch’s life might appear monotonous, but to him it’s exciting and thought-provoking. “It’s like a little mini adventure that begins every day. It’s the same routine day after day, but five minutes before I enter the meditation hall, I never know what it’s going to be like.”

Do work that supports your ethics. Providing others the opportunity to experience an awakened life is a priority for Lynch; he sees his job as caring for a property that enables that mission. “Because that’s the case, I can brush more stuff off my shoulders when I don’t like it.”

Don’t compromise your health. Lynch runs in the hills around the monastery. “I’m pretty stubborn about making sure that I get that. I don’t really let anybody tell me otherwise. Because I’ve got all these healthy elements in my day, it does refresh me.”

Integrate hobbies. Lynch composes music for the liturgy. “It’s very, very nourishing.” He also conducts and arranges music for a rock and marimba band made up of fellow residents. Hobbies allow you to feel competent, autonomous, and interested in things, he says. “For a lot of people, now is a time where that can happen.”

Embrace pandemic angst. All that fear, financial insecurity, and loneliness is an opportunity. “Be curious about that anxiety and its causes. Invest in the investigation of what that stress is, being raw and God-honest-to-the-bone truthful.” He suggests saying to yourself, I’m suffering. What is that suffering? How do I know that I don’t like this? What is the problem here?

Meditate, meditate, meditate. “The weeklong retreats that we do once a month—it’s like being reborn,” he says. “For long periods of time, all the details and problems of life are literally gone. The past and future are gone, and there aren’t even any other people. And then when you come back, you see people and problems anew.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.