Nothing Special: Living Zen

by Charlotte Joko Beck

  STUDENT : If we want to operate from the second viewpoint and do what is most fruitful for life, how do we know what to do? How can we tell whether this job or that relationship is the right one?

  JOKO : Living from the second viewpoint, we don’t bring in ideals or agendas; it’s more a matter of seeing clearly what is before us. We act without turning the question over and over in our mind.

  Sitting with the issue helps; as we pay attention to our thoughts and the tension in our body, we begin to see more clearly how to act. The actual practice of sitting is always somewhat murky. If we keep sitting long enough, however, slowly over time things get clearer. There’s a continuum, and to sit is to move along that continuum. It’s not that we get somewhere; more and more we just get ourselves. I don’t mean only sitting on a cushion. If we’re practicing well, we’re doing zazen all the time.

  STUDENT : We dream that we’re going to know the right thing to do, when in fact at some point we just take a course of action and then, whatever it is, we learn from it. If we make mistakes and hurt people, we apologize. When I watch my mind and stay with my body, out of that comes some course of action. It may be a very confused course of action. If I’m staying with my practice, however, in some way I will learn from it, and that’s the best I can do. I can’t hope always to know what’s best for life. I can only do what I can do.

  JOKO : Yes. The thought that there should come a time when we absolutely know what to do is part of the first viewpoint. On the way to the second viewpoint, we say, “I’ll practice, I’ll do my best, and I’ll learn from the results.”

  STUDENT : On the question of helping others, I think that as we see increasingly well our feelings and our tendencies to manipulate a situation, to that extent we’re going to be acting more in harmony, or at least creating less havoc. So we don’t have to go far to help people. Simply seeing what we’re doing as we interact tends to help people naturally without our even really trying.

  JOKO : Yes. In contrast, if we view someone outside ourselves as being someone to help, we can be sure we’ve got a problem. As we just sit over time with our own confusions and limitations, without trying to do anything we do something.

  STUDENT: Sometimes what’s valuable is not what we do for other people, but what we don’t do to them.

  JOKO : Right. Often the right course of action is just to let people be. For example, it would be a mistake for me to try to do something for my former student who has cancer. I can only listen to him and be myself. He is living through his situation; that’s his learning. I can’t do anything about that.

  STUDENT : In myself lately I have discovered a greater availability. I seem to be less self-conscious, and more open-ended and available to others. Part of it is simply being more relaxed. People come to me with their concerns. It’s not that they’re asking for help; usually they just want someone to listen. All I have to do is just be myself and be available, say, to someone at the other end of the telephone line who says, “I want to share something with you….”

  JOKO: Yes.

  STUDENT: Joko, you seem to be available all of the time in that way.

  JOKO: Not always; I turn off the phone sometimes.

  STUDENT: I think you don’t do it enough for your own good. There are some people who really take advantage of you.

  JOKO: But that’s my job. And, remember, no one can “take advantage” of me.

  STUDENT : Are you saying that whenever somebody cries out to you, “I need help, I need help, I need help!” you must always respond? What do you do with people who call up and complain the whole time?

  JOKO: I say something like “I hear what you’re saying. Maybe you could practice with this. How would you practice with this?”

  I don’t mind if somebody complains; we’re all complaining, though we may not admit it. We all like to complain. I do mind, however, if people just want to tell their story endlessly, without any space for reflection on what they might do to deal with their life. I have no place in that. They may have to suffer until they are willing to wake up a little.

  STUDENT : I was very touched by your story of your former student with cancer. I have tremendous resistance to acknowledging that amount of suffering as okay.

  JOKO: It’s not for us to say that the suffering is okay. I don’t want him to suffer either. But it’s what he says that matters.

  Life presents us with lessons all the time. It’s better if we can learn each one, including the small ones. But we don’t want to learn them. We want to blame a problem on somebody else just brush it aside, or block it out. When we refuse to learn from the smaller problems, we’re forced to confront bigger ones. Practice is about learning from each thing as it comes up, so that when bigger issues confront us, we’re more able to handle them.

  STUDENT : I recently got reacquainted with the fact that when I start moving away from the rut I’ve been traveling in and moving more in the direction that I need to be going, it will occasion all kinds of chaos. It’s not going to feel good.

  JOKO : Right. As we begin serious practice, and for some time thereafter, life often feels worse, not better. That’s another part of the talk nobody wants to hear.

  The Eye of the Hurricane

  Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

  Helen Keller

  Some students here work on koans, though not all. While there is much to be learned from koan study, I believe that to rely on koan study exclusively can be limited. If we understand our lives, we understand koans. And working directly with our lives is more valuable and more difficult. Those who work with koans for a time may begin to get a knack for seeing what the koan’s about, but seeing isn’t necessarily the same as being. Though koan practice is based on the idea that if we see what is true, we’ll be it, that’s not always the case. Still, koans can be very useful. Let’s begin with one from the Gateless Gate, Kyogun’s Man up a Tree: Master Kyogun said, “It’s like a man up a tree hanging from a branch with his mouth; his hands cannot grasp a bough, his feet won’t reach one. Suppose there is another man under the tree who asks him, ‘What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?’ If he does not respond, he goes against the wish of the questioner. If he answers, he will lose his life. At such a time, how should he respond?” We might restate the koan as asking, “What is the meaning of life?” Not to respond is to fail in our responsibility; to answer is to lose our lives.

  To approach this koan, I’ll tell another story. Many years ago I was living in Providence, Rhode Island. A severe hurricane came up the coast and battered New England. I moved the crib of my baby against the wall and covered the crib so that if windows were broken the glass wouldn’t hit the baby, and we made other appropriate preparations. But we were directly in the path of the hurricane, and it was fierce. In front of the house we could see enormous old trees cracking and falling over. The winds were one hundred thirty to one hundred forty miles an hour.

  Then after three or four hours, within a matter of minutes, it became quiet. The sun came out, and the birds started to sing. The wind ceased. We were in the eye of the hurricane. In another hour or so, the eye had moved on, the winds began again, and we went through the other side of the whirling mass of winds. Though not as bad as the first side, it was also fierce. Eventually we were left with a huge mess to clean up. I learned later that sometimes pilots are accidentally caught in hurricanes, subjecting the plane and themselves to terrible stresses. When this happens, they often try to fly into the center, the eye of the hurricane, to give themselves a little chance to recover.

  Most of us are like the man up the tree or the pilot in the plane, just holding on, hoping we’ll make it out of the storm. We feel ourselves caught up in the buffetings of life. These may be natural occurrences, such as severe illness. They may be difficulties in rel
ationships, which can seem quite unfair. From birth to death, we’re caught in this swirling of winds, which is really what life is: an enormous energy, moving and changing. Our aim is like that of the pilot: to protect ourselves and our plane. We don’t want to stay where we are. So we do everything possible to preserve our own lives and the structure of our plane so that we can escape the hurricane. There is this enormously powerful thing we call our life, and we’re somewhere sitting in the middle of it in our little plane, hoping to make our way through without being hurt.

  Suppose that instead of being in a plane, we were in a glider in the middle of the hurricane, without the control and power that an engine provides. We’re caught in the sweeping winds. If we have any idea that we’re going to get out alive, we’re foolish. Still, as long as we live within that enormous mass of wind, we have a good ride. Even with the fear and terror, it can be exhilarating and joyful—like riding a roller coaster.

  The man up the tree, holding on for dear life, is like the pilot in the plane, desperately hoping he can save himself from the buffetings of life. And then he is asked, “What is the meaning of life?” How does he answer? How do we answer? As we live our lives, and as we do zazen, we’re trying to protect ourselves. This mind that thinks, pictures, gets excited, gets emotional, blames other people, and feels like a victim is like the pilot in the airplane who’s trying desperately to make his way through the hurricane. In such a life of tension and constriction, it takes everything we have just to survive. All of our attention is on ourselves and our control panel; in trying to save ourselves, we don’t notice anything else. But the man in the glider can enjoy everything—the lightning, the warm rain, the scream of the wind. He can have a great time. What will happen at the end? Both men die, of course. But which one knows the meaning of life? Who knows joy?

  Like the first pilot, we spend our lives trying to protect ourselves. The more intent we are upon protecting ourselves from the buffeting of our current situation, the more stress we feel, the more miserable we are, and the less we truly experience our lives. We must ignore most of the landscape if we’re obsessed with our control panels, which will fail us sooner or later in any case.

  As we do zazen, we can watch our protective mechanisms by watching our minds. We can notice how we try to explain our pain away by blaming our troubles on someone else. We can see our ruthless and fruitless attempts to save ourselves. Our efforts don’t work, of course. The harder we try, the more tense and upset we get.

  Only one thing finally solves the problem, but nobody wants to hear about it. Think about the man in the glider. Would we really want to be up there? From the very beginning, he doesn’t have a chance. He’s just there for the ride—the greatest ride in the world. Our own lives are like a ride, which inevitably ends in our death. We’re trying to do the impossible, to save ourselves. We can’t do that; in fact, we’re all dying right now. How many minutes do we have? Like the glider, perhaps we have just one minute, perhaps a hundred minutes. It doesn’t matter which; in the end, we’re going down. But the one who can answer “What is the meaning of life?” is the glider pilot, not the airplane pilot. The glider pilot will know before he crashes, and he will probably crash with “Wow!”

  We come to sesshin hoping that within the hurricane of our own turmoil, we’re going to find the little eye, the little nirvana. We think: “It must be somewhere. Where is it? Where is it?” Sometimes we hit a little spot of quiet, of good feelings. Then we try to cling to it. But we can’t hold onto the eye of a hurricane. The hurricane is racing on. Nirvana is not finding that little calm space where we’re sheltered and protected by something and someone. That’s an illusion. Nothing in the world will ever protect us: not our partner, not our life circumstances, not our children. After all, other people are busy protecting themselves. If we spend our life looking for the eye of the hurricane, we live a life that is fruitless. We die without having really lived.

  I don’t feel sorry for the pilot in the glider. When he dies, at least he has lived. I feel sorry for those who so blind themselves with their protective endeavors that they never live. When we’re with them, we can sense the fear and futility. In sesshin we can see the mistake more clearly: we’re not trying to live our life; we’re trying to find the eye of the hurricane, the place where we’ll be safe at last.

  No one can know what life is. But we can experience life directly. Only that is given to us as human beings. But we don’t accept the gift; we don’t experience our lives directly. Instead, we spend our lives protecting ourselves. When our protective systems break down, then we blame ourselves or others. We have systems to cover up our problems; we’re unwilling to

  face the pain of life directly. In fact, when we face it directly, life is a great ride.

  Of course it’s fine to buy life insurance and make sure the brakes work on our car. But in the end, even these don’t save us; sooner or later, all of our protective mechanisms will fail. No one can solve the koan of life completely—though we imagine that the other guy maybe has done it. We blame other people because we think they should have life all figured out. We don’t, but we still think others should never be sloppy about how they live. In fact, we’re all sloppy, because we’re all immersed in this game of self-protection instead of the real game of life. Life is not a safe space. It never was, and it never will be. If we’ve hit the eye of the hurricane for a year or two, it still cannot be counted on. There is no safe space, not for our money, not for ourselves, not for those we love. And it’s not our business to worry about that.

  Until we see through the game that doesn’t work, we don’t play the real game. Some people never see through it and die without ever having lived. And that’s too bad. We can spend our life blaming other people, circumstances, or our bad luck and thinking about the way life should have been. We can die that way if we want. That’s our privilege, but it’s not much fun. We have to open up to the enormous game going on that we’re part of. Our practice must be careful, meticulous, patient. We have to face everything.

  III

  SEPARATION AND CONNECTION

  Can Anything Hurt Us?

  A Zen student called me recently to complain about my emphasis on the difficulty of practice. She said, “I think you make a mistake in urging your students to take their practice so seriously. Life should be about enjoying ourselves and having a good time.” I asked her, “Has that approach ever worked for you?” She said, “Well, not really…yet. But I have hope.”

  I understand her attitude, and I sympathize with anyone who feels that practice is really hard work. It is. But I also feel sad for those who are not yet willing to do this kind of serious work, because they will suffer most. Still, people have to make their own choices, and some are just not ready for serious practice. I said to the Zen student, “Just do your practice or not according to your own lights, and I’ll support you in doing that.” Whatever people are doing, I want to support them—because that’s where they are, and that’s fine.

  The fact is that for most of us, our lives are not working well. Until we engage in a serious practice, our basic view of life usually remains pretty much untouched. In fact, life continues to aggravate us, and even gets worse. Serious practice is needed if we are to see into the fallacy that is at the bottom of almost all human action, thinking, and emotion.

  As human beings we see life by means of a certain sensory apparatus and because people and objects seem external to us, we experience much misery. Our misery stems from the misconception that we are separate. Certainly it looks as though I am separate from other people and from all else in the phenomenal world. This misconception that we’re separate creates all the difficulties of human life.

  As long as we think we’re separate, we’re going to suffer. If we feel separate we’re going to feel that we have to defend ourselves, that we have to try to be happy, that we have to find something in the world around us that’s going to make us happy.

  Now the truth of the matter is
that we’re not separate. We are all expressions or emanations of a central point—call it multidimensional energy. We can’t picture this; the central point or energy has no size, no space, no time. I’m speaking metaphorically about what can’t really be spoken of in ordinary terms.

  Following this metaphor, it’s as though this central point radiates out in billions of rays, each thinking that it’s separate from all others. In truth, each of us is always that center, and that center is us. Because everything is connected in that center, we’re all just one thing.

  We don’t see that unity, however. Perhaps if we know enough contemporary theoretical physics, we can see the point intellectually. As we practice over the years, however, some inkling of this truth begins to creep into our experience here and there: we don’t feel so separate from others. As we begin to feel less separate, life as it happens around us isn’t as upsetting. Situations, people, and difficulties begin to land on us a little more lightly. A subtle shift is taking place. Over a lifetime of sitting this process slowly strengthens. There may be brief moments when we flash into who we really are, though by themselves, such moments are not terribly important. More important is the slowly growing realization that we’re not separate. In ordinary terms, we still appear to exist separately, but we don’t feel as separate. Consequently, we don’t struggle with life as much: we don’t have to fight it, we don’t have to please it, we don’t have to worry about it. This is the path of practice.