Nothing Special: Living Zen

by Charlotte Joko Beck

JOKO: Yes. As we become clearer with our own practice, we tend to find more skillful means to deal with whatever comes up.

  STUDENT : Rather than talking about the person being criticized, it helps to come back to the person who is judging and show some sympathetic understanding of his or her feelings. For example, if someone says, “That guy is always late,” we can say, “It must be difficult for you to have to wait. I can see that you’re upset.”

  STUDENT : What about positive judgments? There’s a school of thought about working with children that holds that it’s not healthy for children to label them in any way, negatively or positively. When we say, “You’re such a good boy!” or “You’re smart!,” we put them in a box.

  JOKO : It’s better not to judge the person at all. We can be approving of their actions, however. To a child, we might say, “That’s a great drawing!” The more specific we can be, the better. Instead of “Great paper!” we can say, “The opening is particularly good” or “You give good examples to back up your points.”

  Children are less threatening to us than adults. We expect adults to know what they’re doing, and so we’re very ready to judge them and find fault. Likewise with ourselves: we think we should know what we’re doing.

  STUDENT: When I find myself judging others, what should I do?

  JOKO : When we catch ourselves judging, we need to notice the thoughts that comprise the judgment, such as “thinking that she’s stupid,” and feel the tension in our body. Behind our judgments is always anger or fear. It’s helpful to experience the anger or fear directly, rather than letting them drive our actions.

  The problem is that we enjoy talking about people critically, and that constantly causes problems. If something happens that we feel fairly neutral about, we usually handle it quite well. But about most things we aren’t particularly neutral. That’s why our practice is so valuable.

  STUDENT : I notice that if I judge people in my first contact with them, that judgment colors my whole relationship with them. I tend to hang on to my judgments and just forget about practicing with it.

  JOKO : Yes. We form a fixed notion. The next time we meet them, our notion is already fixed, and we can observe even less about how they actually are.

  STUDENT : Criticizing the person to someone else seems to make the judgment even stronger. If, for example, another person and I agree that someone is thoughtless, the judgment becomes really solid and difficult to shake.

  JOKO: Yes. Much of what we call friendship amounts to shared judgments and critical attitudes about other people and events.

  STUDENT: Aren’t judgments always false? We see such a little bit of each person.

  JOKO : I wouldn’t say we’re always mistaken. We’re incomplete. For example: everyone is sometimes thoughtless; we just don’t think things through, we just don’t pay attention fully.

  When we label others “thoughtless,” however, we don’t see the hundreds and thousands of other things they do. We tend to be interested only in what affects us directly. That’s why when we remember our childhoods, we always remember the bad stuff. We’re not as interested in the good things that people did to us. We tend to remember anything that felt threatening. If someone hurts us, we’re not interested in the other things she does. So far as we’re concerned, she’s unacceptable. If we complain about her to others and they agree with us, a solid network of judgment is set up. The negative attitude we have formed about her poisons the way she is received by others, including those who have no personal experience of her. Having heard the gossip, they dismiss her, too. Such cumulative judgment is the most harmful thing humans do to each other. We judge people and reject them without knowing them at all.

  Have you ever had the experience of hearing people described whom you have never met? You feel that you know them before you’ve ever met them. And when you meet them, they’re totally different from the description. It’s amazing.

  STUDENT : Sometimes it feels therapeutic to talk to a friendly ear about a difficult situation I have with someone else. Is that ever okay?

  JOKO : Only if the exchange is completely confidential. And even then, it’s better simply to describe the other person’s behavior in factual terms, and then talk about your own feelings. We need to be very careful. If we can stick to “I notice myself thinking that she’s thoughtless” or “I feel really upset and tight,” that’s okay. But when we slip into “She’s really thoughtless, isn’t she?” we’ve lost our practice.

  STUDENT : I think it’s important to remember your point that when we do speak ill of another person, then we are hurting ourselves. There’s a contraction that occurs when we speak ill

  of someone or even think ill of someone.

  JOKO : Yes. Our body and mind are contracted. We always pay for that, in many ways. Other people pay, too. I suggest that the minute somebody’s name escapes our mouth, we watch what we’ve added on. Is what we’ve said a fact? Or is it a judgment? For example, if Lisa has left something where I might trip over it, we can say, “Lisa left something where I might trip over it. I’d better be careful” or we can say, “Lisa’s a pain. She’s so thoughtless!” That’s not a fact, but my judgment.

  STUDENT : My judgments seem very persistent. I go through periods where I have negative thoughts about a person, over and over. It seems as though I label it a million times and still miss another million times.

  JOKO: Yes. We may have to do that many, many times over before it fades.

  STUDENT : I’m puzzling over the difference between facts and judgments. Suppose that someone really does pick on me repeatedly. If I say, “She’s always picking on me,” is that a fact or a judgment?

  JOKO : The difference is in how we say it and the feeling behind it. If we’re simply observing, “Yes, it’s true. She does pick on me,” that’s simply a fact. If we’re complaining, that’s a judgment. The tone of voice is one clue.

  STUDENT : If we catch ourselves just as we’re about to judge another person, and we don’t say anything, it seems like we have to be willing to be nothing in that moment.

  JOKO : That’s true. When we judge, we reinforce our separate identity as a person who judges. When we keep our mouth shut, we have to give that identity up for a moment. That’s why the technique I have suggested is really training in what Buddhism calls “no self.” STUDENT: I find that when I encounter persons whom I don’t know, if I deliberately refrain from saying anything about them, I don’t seem to be able to get a handle on opinions about them. That makes me realize how important talking is in forming judgments.

  JOKO : Yes, though we can also form judgments without saying anything at all. Again, we need to notice the judgment we have formed. We need to remember that most of practice can be summed up in kindness. In any situation, what is kindness?

  IV

  CHANGE

  Preparing the Ground

  From time to time, one of my students has a little break-through, a small realization or kensho. Some Zen centers focus on such experiences and make much out of them. That’s not true here. The experiences are interesting: if for a moment one comes into the absolute present, a shift takes place. The shift does not last; we always slip back into our usual ways of doing things. But for a while—perhaps for just a second, perhaps for an hour, perhaps for weeks—everything that was a problem is not a problem. Troublesome ailments and struggles of various kinds suddenly quiet down. Life has been turned upside down for a moment; we see how things really are. Having such an experience doesn’t mean much by itself. But it may point the way for us to be in the absolute present more and more. Being in the present is the point of sitting and of practice in general: it helps us to be wiser about life, more compassionate, more oriented to what needs to be done. We become more effective in our work. Such outcomes are wonderful; yet we cannot strive for them or make them happen. All that we can do is to prepare the necessary conditions. We need to be sure that the soil is well prepared, rich and loose and fertile, so that if the seed falls, it w
ill spring forth rapidly. The student’s job is not to be hunting for outcomes, but to be preparing the way. As the Bible says, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” That is our work.

  In a sense, our path is no path. The object is not to get somewhere. There is no great mystery, really; what we need to do is straightforward. I don’t mean that it is easy; the “path” of practice is not a smooth road. It is littered with sharp rocks that can make us stumble or that can cut right through our shoes. Life itself is hazardous. Encountering the hazards is usually what brings people into Zen centers. The path of life seems to be mostly difficulties, things that give trouble. Yet the longer we practice, the more we begin to understand that those sharp rocks on the road are in fact like precious jewels; they help us to prepare the proper condition for our lives. The rocks are different for each person. One person might desperately need more time alone; another might desperately need more time with other people. The sharp rock might be working with a nasty person or living with somebody who is hard to get along with. The sharp rocks might be your children, your parents, anyone. Not feeling well could be your sharp rock. Losing your job could be it, or getting a new job and being worried about it. There are sharp rocks everywhere. What changes from years of practice is coming to know something you didn’t know before: that there are no sharp rocks—the road is covered with diamonds. What are other sharp rocks that are really diamonds?

  STUDENT: My husband’s death.

  STUDENT: Deadlines.

  STUDENT: Illness.

  JOKO : Yes, good. What is necessary for us to begin to realize that the sharp stones of our lives are really diamonds? What are some of the conditions that make it possible for us to practice?

  If we are very new to practice, it may be impossible for us to see a huge trauma as a gift, to see a sharp rock as a diamond. It is usually best to begin to practice at a time when one’s life is not too upset. For example, when one has a new baby, the first month is not a good time to begin practice—as I well remember. It is usually advisable to begin practice in a relatively calm period. It’s better to be in fairly good health. Mildly poor health does not rule out practice, but severe illness makes it extremely difficult to begin. It helps to be in reasonably good physical condition, too. Practice is physically demanding.

  The longer we practice, the less important are these prerequisites. But without them at the beginning, the rocks are just too big. We can’t see any way to practice. When one has been

  up all night with a screaming baby and has had two hours’ sleep, that’s not a good time to begin to do zazen. If one’s body is falling apart, if one is thoroughly miserable, that’s not a good time to begin. But the longer we practice, the very difficulties that life presents more and more can be seen as jewels. Increasingly, problems do not rule out practice, but support it. Instead of finding that practice is too difficult, that we have too many problems, we see that the problems themselves are the jewels, and we devote ourselves to being with them in a way we never dreamt of before. In my interviews with students, I constantly hear about such shifts: “Three years ago, I couldn’t possibly have handled this situation, but now…” That’s the turning over, preparing the ground. That’s what is necessary for the body and mind truly to transform. It’s not that problems disappear or that life “improves,” but that life slowly transforms—and the sharp rocks that we hated become welcome jewels. We may not delight to see them when they appear, but we appreciate the opportunity that they give, and so we embrace them rather than running away from them. This is the end of complaints about our life. Even that difficult person, the one who criticizes you, the one who doesn’t respect your opinion, or whatever—everybody has somebody or something, some sharp rock. Such a rock is precious; it is an opportunity, a jewel to embrace.

  No one sees the jewel all at once; no one sees it completely. Sometimes we may see it in one area but not in another. Sometimes we can see the jewel, and sometimes we absolutely cannot see it. We may absolutely refuse to see it; we may not want to have anything to do with it.

  Yet we must constantly wrestle with this basic problem. Because we are human, much of the time we don’t even want to know about it. Why? Because to wrestle with it means a life that is open to difficulty rather than hiding from it. We are usually trying to substitute something for the difficulty. When we are fed up with our children, for example, we’d like to turn them in and get new ones. Even when we stay stuck with them, we find subtle ways of “turning them in,” instead of being with the reality of who they really are. We deal with other problems in the same way: we have subtle ways of turning almost anything in, of choosing not to deal with it.

  Wrestling with the reality of our lives is part of the endless preparation of the ground. Sometimes we prepare a little piece of ground well. We may have little insights, moments that spring out. Still, there are acres of land that are not yet prepared—so we keep going, opening up more and more of our life. This is all that really matters. Human life should be like a vow, dedicated to uncovering the meaning of life. The meaning of life is in fact not complicated; yet it is veiled from us by the way we see our difficulties. It takes the most patient practice to begin to see through that, to discover that the sharp rocks are truly jewels.

  None of this has anything to do with judgment, with being “good” or “bad” persons. We just do the best we can at any given moment; what we don’t see, we don’t see. That’s the point of practice: to enlarge that little “peek hole” we get sometimes, so that it becomes bigger and bigger. No one sees it all the time. I certainly don’t. And so we keep poking away.

  In a way, practice is fun: to look at my own life and be honest about it is fun. It is difficult, humiliating, discouraging; yet in another sense, it’s fun—because it’s alive. To see myself and my life as they truly are is joy. After all the struggle and avoiding and denying and going the other way, it is deeply satisfying for a second to be there with life as it is. The satisfaction is the very core of ourselves. Who we are is beyond words—just that open power of life, manifesting constantly in all sorts of interesting things, even in our own misery and struggles. The hassle is both horrendous and wholesome. That’s what it means to prepare the ground. We don’t need to worry about the little moments or openings that pop up. If we have fertile, wellprepared soil, we can throw anything in there and it will grow.

  As we patiently do this work, we come to a different sense of our lives. Recently, I had a call from a student who lives some distance away who told me, “I can’t believe it. Most of the time my life is very enjoyable.” I thought, yes, that’s great, but…life is enjoyable. An enjoyable life includes heartache, disappointment, grief. That’s part of the flow of life, to let such experiences be. They come and go, and the grief finally dissolves into something else. But if we are complaining and holding on and being rigid (which is what we like to do), then we have very little enjoyment. If we have been aware of the process of our lives, including moments that we hate, and are just aware of our hating—“I don’t want to do it, but I’ll do it anyway”—that very awareness is life itself. When we stay with that awareness, we don’t have that reactive feeling about it; we’re just doing it. Then for a second we begin to see, “Oh, this is terrible—and at the same time, it’s really quite enjoyable.” We just keep going, preparing the ground. That’s enough.

  Experiences and Experiencing

  At each second, we are at a crossroad: between unawareness and awareness, between being absent and being present—or between experiences and experiencing. Practice is about moving from experiences to experiencing. What is meant by this?

  We tend to overwork the word experience, and when we say, “Be with your experience,” we are speaking carelessly. It may not be helpful to follow this advice. Ordinarily we see our lives as series of experiences. For example, I have an experience of one or another person, an experience of my lunch or my office. From this point of view, my life is nothing but having one experience after another. Entwi
ned around each experience there may be a slight halo or a neurotic emotional veil. Often the veil takes the form of memories, fantasies, or hopes for the future—the associations we bring to experience, as a result of our past conditioning. When we do zazen, our experience may be dominated by our memories, which can be overwhelming.

  Is there anything wrong with this? Humans do have memories, fantasies, hopes; that’s natural. When we clothe our experience with these associations, however, experience becomes an object: a noun rather than a verb. So our lives become encounters with one object after another: persons, my lunch, my office. Memories and hopes are similar: life becomes a series of “this” and “that.” We ordinarily see our lives as encounters with things “out there.” Life becomes dualistic: subject and object, me and that.

  There’s no problem with this process—unless we believe it. For when we really believe that we’re meeting objects all day long, we’re enslaved. Why? Because any object “out there” will have a slight veil of emotional context. And we then react in terms of our emotional associations. In classical Zen teaching, we are enslaved by greed, anger, and ignorance. To see the world exclusively in this way is to be in chains. When our world consists of objects, we guide our lives by what we can expect from each object: “Does he like me?” “Is that to my advantage?” “Should I be afraid of her?” Our history and our memories take over, and we divide the world up into things to avoid and things to pursue.