Nothing Special: Living Zen

by Charlotte Joko Beck

  STUDENT: Isn’t the observer really part of the little mind?

  JOKO : No. The observer is a function of awareness that only arises when we have an object come up in our experience in the phenomenal world. If there’s no object coming up (for example, in deep sleep), the observer is not there. The observer finally dies when we are just awareness and no longer need the observer.

  We can never find the observer, no matter how long we look for it. Still, though we can never locate it, it is obvious that we can observe. We could say that the observer is a different dimension of mind but not an aspect of the little mind, which is on the ordinary linear level. Who we are is awareness. Nobody has ever observed awareness; yet that’s who we are—a “formless field of benefaction.”

  STUDENT: It seems that an unpleasant sensation can anchor me in the present and focus my attention here and now.

  JOKO : There’s an old saying to the effect that human extremity is God’s opportunity. When things are pleasant, we try to hold on to the pleasantness. In trying to cling to pleasure, we destroy it. When we are sitting and are truly still, however, the discomfort and pain draw us back to the present. Sitting makes more obvious our desire to escape or evade. When we are sitting well, there’s no place to go. We tend not to learn that unless we’re uncomfortable. The more unconscious we are of our discomfort and our efforts to escape, the more mayhem is created within phenomenal life—from war between nations down to personal arguments between individuals, to arguments within ourselves; all such problems arise because we separate ourselves from our experience. The discomfort and pain are not the cause of our problems; the cause is that we don’t know what to do about them.

  STUDENT : Even pleasure has an element of discomfort to it. For example, it’s a pleasure to have some peace and quiet, but then I have an uncomfortable feeling that the noise and racket might start up again.

  JOKO : Pleasure and pain are simply opposite poles. Joy is being willing for things to be as they are. With joy, there’s no polarity. If the noise starts, it starts. If it stops, it stops. Both are joy. Because we want to cling to pleasure and push away pain, however, we develop an escape strategy. When something unpleasant happens to us as children, we develop a system—a chief feature for coping with unpleasantness—and live our life out of that instead of seeing it as it is.

  The Baseboard

  In ordinary life we all carry around what we can call an imaginary baseboard: an electrical baseboard that jolts us whenever we encounter what feels like a problem. We can imagine it with millions of outlets, all within our reach. Whenever we feel threatened or upset, we plug ourselves into it and react to the situation. The baseboard represents our fundamental decision about how we have to be in order to survive and get what we want in life. As young children we discovered that life wasn’t always the way we wanted it to be, and things often went wrong from our personal point of view. We didn’t want anyone to oppose us, we didn’t want to experience unpleasantness, and so we created a defensive reaction to block the possible misery. That defensive reaction is our baseboard. We’re always plugged into it, but we especially notice it at times of stress and threat. We have made a decision that ordinary life—life as it actually is—is unacceptable to us. And we try to counter what’s happening.

  All of this is inevitable. Our parents were not totally enlightened beings or buddhas, but other beings and events contributed, too. As young children we were not mature enough to handle them wisely. So we plugged into our baseboards and had a tantrum, “freaked out,” or perhaps withdrew. From that time on, life was not lived for the sake of living life, but for the sake of our baseboard. It sounds silly; yet that’s what we do.

  Once the baseboard is established, whenever something unpleasant happens to us—even if somebody looks at us a little crossly—we plug into our baseboard. The baseboard we have constructed can take an indefinite number of plugs, and during the day we may plug into it a thousand times. As a result, we develop a very strange view of our life. For example, suppose that Gloria has said something snippy to me. The bare facts are simply that she’s said something. She and I may have a little issue to discuss, but the truth of the matter is, she has simply said something. Immediately, however, I feel separated from Gloria. As far as I’m concerned, there is something wrong with her. “After all, look at what she did! She’s really a most unpleasant person.” Now I have it in for Gloria. The truth is, however, that my issue is not with Gloria; she has nothing to do with it. While it’s true that she has said something, my upset comes not from her but from plugging into my baseboard. I experience my baseboard as a type of tension, which is unpleasant. I don’t want to have anything to do with such a feeling, so I go to war with Gloria. But it’s my baseboard that is causing me distress.

  If the incident is minor, in a relatively short time I forget about it and plug something else into my baseboard. If the incident is major, however, I may take drastic action. I remember a friend of the family during the Great Depression who was fired from a job he had held for forty years. He raced up to the rooftop and jumped off, killing himself. He didn’t understand his life. Something had happened, it’s true, but it didn’t merit committing suicide. He had plugged into his baseboard, however, and his suffering was so strong that he couldn’t stand it.

  Whenever something major happens in our lives, we get a sharp shock from our baseboard. We don’t know what to do with that shock. Though the shock comes from inside us, we assume it comes from outside, “over there.” Someone or something has treated us badly; we’re victims. With Gloria, it feels obvious to me: the problem is Gloria. “Who else would it be? No one else has insulted me today. It has to be her!” In reacting, I start plotting: “How can I get back at her? Maybe I’ll never speak to her again. If she’s going to act like that I don’t want her for a friend. I’ve got enough troubles. I don’t need Gloria.” In fact, the real source of my distress is not Gloria. She did something I didn’t like, but her behavior is not the source of my pain. The source of the pain is my fictional baseboard.

  In sitting, we gradually become more aware of our body, and we find that it is contracted all the time. Usually the contraction is very fine and subtle, and not visible to other people. When we get really upset, the contraction strengthens. Some people are contracted so strongly that this is obvious to others. It depends on one’s particular history. Even if a person has had a relatively happy and easy life, the contraction is constantly there as a marginal tension.

  What can we do about this contraction? The first thing is to be aware that it exists. This usually takes a number of years of sitting. In the first years of sitting, we are usually dealing with the gross thoughts that we cook up out of the seeming troubles that we have with the universe. These thoughts mask the underlying contraction. We have to deal with them, and settle our lives down to the point that our emotional reactions are not so obstreperous. When our lives become somewhat more settled and normal, we become aware of the underlying marginal contraction that has been present all of the time. We can then become aware of the contraction more strongly when something goes wrong from our point of view.

  Practice is not about the passing events of our life. Practice is about the baseboard. The baseboard will register these passing events. Depending on the events and how our baseboard registers them, we call our reactions upset, anger, depression. The distress is caused not by the events, but by our baseboard. For example, if a marital couple is quarreling, they think they are quarreling with each other; yet the quarrel is not actually with each other, but with each person’s baseboard. A quarrel happens when each person plugs into his or her own baseboard in reaction to the other. So when we try to resolve a quarrel by dealing with our partner, we don’t get anywhere; our partner isn’t the source of the problem.

  Another thing that adds to the confusion is that we like our baseboard. It gives us self-importance. When I don’t understand my baseboard, then I can demand a lot of attention by quarreling with Glor
ia, getting even with her so that she knows the score. When I do this, I maintain my baseboard, which I see as my protection from the world. I have relied upon it since I was very small, and I don’t want to get rid of it. If I were to drop my baseboard, I would have to face my terror; instead, I’d much rather fight with Gloria. That’s what sitting is: to face the terror and to be the tension—marginal or major—in the body. We don’t want to do this. We want to deal with our problems through our baseboard.

  Years ago I worked for a large company. I was the assistant to the boss of my section, the scientific research lab. I was assigned a parking spot close to the entrance to the lab. That was nice; when it rained, I could jump from my car into the building without getting very wet. A problem developed around my parking space, however, because the door also led directly to the vice president’s office. So the vice president’s secretary decided that I had the best parking spot. She raised a fuss, and memos began to fly. She sent memos to the personnel office, to my boss, to her boss, and to a few other places. She was upset because on paper she outranked me, yet I had the best parking spot. I thought, “She’s trying to take away my parking spot. I’ve always had that parking spot. It’s legally mine.” My boss, who was head of the scientific research laboratory, identified with me and started to fight with the vice president. Their egos became involved. Who was more important? There wasn’t a clear answer. So now, instead of simply the two of us quarreling, our bosses were battling also. Every night when I pulled out of my parking spot, I knew I was right!

  The battle went on for months. The memos would die down, then—whenever the secretary saw me—they would start to fly again. Finally one night at an intersection as I sat in my car waiting for the light to change, I realized, “I’m not married to that parking spot. If she wants it, let her have it.” So the next day, I got my own memos going. With permission from personnel, I gave her my parking spot. My boss was furious with me. Since it wasn’t a big issue, however, he got used to it. A week later, the secretary called me and invited me to lunch. We never became close friends, but we had a cordial relationship.

  The real issue wasn’t between that secretary and me. The parking spot was a symbol for other kinds of struggles. I don’t mean to imply that one should always give up one’s parking spot. In this case, however, the issue was trivial: I had to walk maybe forty or fifty feet instead of seven feet. Once or twice a winter, I got a bit wetter. Yet until the controversy was resolved, it kept many people busy for many months.

  Our issues are not ever with others, but with our own baseboard. If we have a baseboard with many outlets just asking to be plugged into, almost anything will serve. We like our baseboard; without it we would feel terrified, as we felt when we were children.

  The point of practice is to become friendly with the baseboard. We’re not going to get rid of it all at once; we’re too fond of it for that. But as the mind truly quiets and becomes less interested in fighting with the world, when we give up our position in some pointless battle, when we don’t have to do all of that fighting because we come to see it for what it is, then our ability to just sit increases. At that point, we begin to sense what the real problem is: that ancient creation made of grief—a little child’s grief that life isn’t what we want it to be. The grief is layered with anger, fear, and other such feelings. There’s no escape from the dilemma except to go back the way we came and just experience these feelings. We’re not interested in doing this, however; that’s what makes sitting difficult.

  When we go back to the body, it’s not that we uncover some great melodrama going on inside of us. For most of us most of the time, the contraction is so marginal that we can hardly tell it’s there. Yet it is. When we just sit and keep getting closer to feeling this contraction, we learn to rest in it for longer and longer periods: five seconds, ten seconds, and eventually thirty

  minutes or more. Because the baseboard is our creation and has no fundamental reality, it begins to resolve a bit, here and there. After sesshin for a time we may find that it’s gone. Then it may be back. If we understand our practice, over years of sitting the baseboard becomes thinner and less dominating. Momentary openings in it may occur. In themselves, such openings are unimportant, since the baseboard usually goes right back into operation as soon as we have another unpleasant encounter with somebody. I’m not particularly interested in creating openings in the baseboard; the real work lies in slowly dissolving it altogether. We know that the baseboard is functioning when we’re upset with somebody or something. Undoubtedly we do have issues in the outside world to resolve, some of them very difficult. But such issues are not what upsets us. What upsets us is being plugged into our baseboard. When that happens, there is no serenity, no peace.

  This kind of practice—working directly with the baseboard, our underlying contraction—can be harder than koan practice. With koan practice,* one always has a little incentive or reward to pass the next koan. There’s nothing wrong with this, and I sometimes work on koans with my students. Still, this approach is not as fundamental as the baseboard, which is present in each one of us. Are we aware of it? Do we know what it means to practice? How seriously do we take our difficulties with other people or with life? When we are plugged in, life is so hopeless. We’re all plugged in to varying degrees, including myself. Over the years, I have become better able to recognize when I’m plugged in. I don’t miss much anymore. We can catch ourselves being plugged in by watching how we talk to ourselves and others: “There is something wrong with him. It’s his fault. He should be different.” “I should be better.” “Life’s just unfair to me.” “I am truly hopeless.”

  *Koan: a traditional paradoxical question not amenable to rational analysis, used to deepen meditation.

  When we play these sentences through our minds without questioning them, then we’re waging a false fight and we end up where any false fight leads: nowhere, or into more trouble. We have to wage the real fight: to stay with that which we do not want to stay with. Practice takes courage. The courage builds with practice, but there is no quick, easy fix. Even after much sitting, when we become angry we have an impulse to attack another. We look for ways to punish others for what they have done. Such activity is not experiencing our anger, but avoiding it through drama.

  Many schools of therapy encourage the client to express hostility. When we express our hostility, however, our attention goes outward, toward another person or thing, and not on the real problem. Expressing our feelings is natural, and not a terrible thing in itself. But it often creates problems for us. When truly experienced, anger is very quiet. It has a certain dignity. There’s no display, no acting out. It’s just being with that fundamental contraction that I have called the baseboard. When we truly stay with anger, then the personal and self-centered thoughts separate out and we’re left with pure energy, which can be used in a compassionate way.

  That’s the whole story of practice. A person who can do this with great consistency is a person we call enlightened. Having a momentary experience of being without the baseboard is not true enlightenment. A truly enlightened person is one who can transform the energy nearly all of the time. It’s not that the energy no longer arises; the question is, what do we do with it? If somebody bashes into the side of our car without paying attention, we’re not just going to smile sweetly. We’ll have a reaction: “Damn it!” But then what? How long do we stay with that reaction? Most of us prolong the reaction and enlarge upon it. An example is our propensity for lawsuits. I’m not saying that a suit is never justified; it may sometimes be necessary to resolve an issue. But many lawsuits are about something else and are counterproductive. If I express my anger at Gloria, Gloria in some way will direct it back at me. My friendship with Gloria may be over. When the personal element—how I feel about her—is removed, then there is just energy. When we sit with great dignity with this energy, though it is painful at first, it turns into the place of great rest. A phrase from a Bach chorale comes back to me: �
�In Thine arms I rest me.” That means resting in who I truly am. “Those who would molest me cannot find me here.” Why can’t they find me here? Because there is no one home. There is no one here. When I am pure energy, I am no longer me. I am a functioning for good. That transformation is why we’re sitting. It’s not easy. And it doesn’t happen overnight. But if we sit well, over time we become less and less engaged in interpersonal mischief, harming ourselves and others. Sitting burns up the self-centered element and leaves us with the energy of our emotions, without the destructiveness.

  Sesshins, regular sitting, and life practice are the best ways to bring about this transformation. Bit by bit, there is a shift in our energy, and more of the baseboard is burned out. As our self-centered preoccupations drop away, we can’t go back to the way we were. A fundamental transformation has taken place.

  “In Thine arms I rest me.” There is real peace when we rest within that fundamental contraction, just experiencing the body as it is. As Hubert Benoit says in his wonderful book The Supreme Doctrine, when I am in real despair, at least let me rest on that icy couch. If I truly rest on it, my body conforms to it, and there is no separation. At that point, something shifts. How do I feel about Gloria now? Oh, we had a little disagreement, so we’ll take a nice walk today and talk about it. No problem.

  II

  SACRIFICE

  Sacrifice and Victims

  As I listen to many people talk about their lives, I am struck that the first layer we encounter in sitting practice is our feeling of being a victim—our feeling that we have been sacrificed to others. We have been sacrificed to others’ greed, anger, and ignorance, to their lack of knowledge of who they are. Often this victimization comes from our parents. Nobody has two buddhas for parents. Instead of buddhas, we have parents for parents: flawed, confused, angry, selfcentered—like all of us. I was mistreated by my parents, and I certainly mistreated my children at times. Even the very best of parents sometimes mistreat their children, because they’re human.