Everyday Zen

by Charlotte Joko Beck

“From the withered tree, a flower blooms.”

Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that. But to talk about it is of little use. The practice has to be done by each individual. There is no substitute. We can read about it until we are a thousand years old and it won’t do a thing for us. We all have to practice, and we have to practice with all of our might for the rest of our lives.

Sitting is something we do for a lifetime. There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being. Eventually we see that we are the limitless, boundless ground of the universe. Our job for the rest of our life is to open up into that immensity and to express it. Having more and more contact with this reality always brings compassion for others and changes our daily life. We live differently, work differently, relate to people differently. Zen is a lifelong study. It isn’t just sitting on a cushion for thirty or forty minutes a day. Our whole life becomes practice, twenty-four hours a day.

There are two kinds of thoughts. There is nothing wrong with thinking in the sense of what I call “technical thinking.” We have to think in order to walk from here to the corner or to bake a cake or to solve a physics problem. That use of the mind is fine. It isn’t real or unreal; it is just what it is. But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality. And we go from birth to death, unless we wake up, wasting most of our life with them. The gruesome part of sitting (and it is gruesome, believe me) is to begin to see what is really going on in our mind. It is a shocker for all of us. We see that we are violent, prejudiced, and selfish.

Work is the best part of Zen practice and training. No matter what the work is, it should be done with effort and total attention to what’s in front of our nose. If we are cleaning the oven, we should just totally do that and also be aware of any thoughts that interrupt the work. “I hate to clean the oven. Ammonia smells! Who likes to clean the oven, anyway? With all my education I shouldn’t have to do this.” All those are extra thoughts that have nothing to do with cleaning the oven. If the mind drifts in any way, return it to the work. There is the actual task we are doing and then there are all the considerations we have about it. Work is just taking care of what needs to be done right now, but very few of us work that way. When we practice patiently, eventually work begins to flow. We just do whatever needs to be done.

That’s our practice. The intensity and ability to be right-here-now is what we have to develop. We have to be able to develop the ability to say, “No, I won’t spin off up here” to make that choice. Moment by moment our practice is like a choice, a fork in the road: we can go this way, we can go that way.

It’s always a choice, moment by moment, between our nice world that we want to set up in our heads and what really is.

Our Zen training is designed to enable us to live comfortable lives. But the only people who live comfortably are those who learn not to dream their lives away, but to be with what’s right-here-now, no matter what it is: good, bad, nice, not nice, headache, being ill, being happy. It doesn’t make any difference.

The Buddha is nothing but exactly what you are, right now: hearing the cars, feeling the pain in your legs, hearing my voice; that’s the Buddha. You can’t catch hold of it; the minute you try to catch it, it’s changed. Being what we are at each moment means, for example, fully being our anger when we are angry. That kind of anger never hurts anybody because it’s total, complete. We really feel this anger, this knot in our stomach, and we’re not going to hurt anybody with it. The kind of anger that hurts people is when we smile sweetly and underneath we’re seething.

Shibayama Roshi said once in sesshin, “This Buddha that you all want to see, this Buddha is very shy. It’s hard to get him to come out and show himself.” Why is that? Because the Buddha is ourselves, and we’ll never see the Buddha until we’re no longer attached to all this extra stuff. We’ve got to be willing to go into ourselves honestly. When we can be totally honest with what’s happening right now, then we’ll see it. We can’t have just a piece of the Buddha. Buddhas come whole. Our practice has nothing to do with, “Oh, I should be good, I should be nice, I should be this…or that.” I am who I am right now. And that very state of being is the Buddha.

“To do this practice, we have to give up hope.” Not many were happy about that. But what did I mean? I mean that we have to give up this idea in our heads that somehow, if we could only figure it out, there’s some way to have this perfect life that is just right for us. Life is the way it is.

The last words of the Buddha were, “Be a lamp unto yourself.”

There is only one teacher. What is that teacher? Life itself.

If our boat full of hope, illusions, and ambition (to get somewhere, to be spiritual, to be perfect, to be enlightened) is capsized, what is that empty boat? Who are we? What, in terms of our lives, can we realize? And what is practice?

Once we have assumed our best posture (which should be balanced, easy), we just sit there, we do zazen. What do I mean by “just sit there”? It’s the most demanding of all activities. Usually in meditation we don’t shut our eyes. But right now I’d like you to shut your eyes and just sit there. What’s going on? All sorts of things. A tiny twitch in your left shoulder; a pressure in your side…Notice your face for a moment. Feel it. Is it tense anywhere? Around the mouth, around the forehead? Now move down a bit. Notice your neck, just feel it. Then your shoulders, your back, chest, abdominal area, your arms, thighs. Keep feeling whatever you find. And feel your breath as it comes and goes. Don’t try to control it, just feel it. Our first instinct is to try to control the breath. Just let your breath be as it is. It may be high in your chest, it may be in the middle, it may be low. It may feel tense. Just experience it as it is. Now just feel all of that. If a car goes by outside, hear it. If a plane flies over, notice that. You might hear a refrigerator going on and off. Just be that. That’s all you have to do, absolutely all you have to do: experience that, and just stay with it. Now you can open your eyes.

So what should we do when the thoughts come up? We should label the thoughts. Be specific in your labeling: not just “thinking, thinking” or “worrying, worrying,” but a specific label. For example: “Having a thought she’s very bossy.” “Having a thought that he’s very unfair to me.” “Having a thought that I never do anything right.” Be specific.

All emotional agitation is caused by the mind.

There is no person on earth whom we can completely rely on, though we can certainly love others and enjoy them.

There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.

Trust in things being as they are is the secret of life. But we don’t want to hear that. I can absolutely trust that in the next year my life is going to be changed, different, yet always just the way it is. If tomorrow I have a heart attack, I can rely on that, because if I have it, I have it. I can rest in life as it is.

When we make a personal investment in our thoughts we create the “I”

A zendo is not a place for bliss and relaxation, but a furnace room for the combustion of our egoistic delusions. What tools do we need to use? Only one. We’ve all heard of it, yet we use it very seldom. It’s called attention.

When the fire in the furnace is banked, and you want a brightly burning fire, what do you do? You increase the air intake. We are fires too; and when the mind quiets down we can breathe more deeply and the oxygen intake goes up. We burn with a cleaner flame, and our action comes out of that flame. Instead of trying to figure out in our minds what action to take, we only need to purify the base of ourselves; the action will flow out of that. The mind quiets down because we observe it instead of getting lost in it. Then the breathing deepens and, when the fire really burns, there’s nothing it can’t consume. When the fire gets hot enough, there is no self, because now the fire is consuming everything; there is no separation between self and other.

When all human grasping and human need are ended, there is wisdom and compassion. This is the state of a Buddha. Personally I doubt that there ever was a person who completely realized this state.

We can’t love something we need.

If we need approval, we haven’t died. If we need power, if we need to have a certain position, if it’s not okay with us to do the most menial job, we haven’t died. If we need to be seen in a particular way, we haven’t died. If we want to have things our way, we haven’t died. I haven’t died in any of these ways. I’m just very aware of my attachments and I don’t act on them very often. But having died means they’re not there. In this sense a truly enlightened being is not human—and I don’t know anyone like that. I’ve been around some remarkable persons during a lifetime and still I haven’t met anyone like that. So let’s be content to be where we are and working hard. For us to be as we are at this point in time is perfect.

All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That’s all I can do. The rest is the dream of the ego.

A jewel of great price is never a giveaway. We must earn it, with steady, unrelenting practice.

To have a “self” means we are self-centered. Being self-centered—and therefore opposing ourselves to external things—we are anxious and worried about ourselves. We bristle quickly when the external environment opposes us; we are easily upset. And being self-centered, we are often confused. This is how most of us experience our lives.

To realize one’s true nature as no-self—a Buddha—is the fruit of zazen and the path of practice. The important thing (because only it is truly satisfying) is to follow this path.

Then we can attempt the next stage: an intelligent, persistent filtering of the various characteristics of mind and body through zazen. We begin to see our patterns: we begin to see our desires, our needs, our ego drives, and we begin to realize that these patterns, these desires, these addictions are what we call the self. As our practice continues and we begin to understand the emptiness and impermanence of these patterns, we find we can abandon them.

for when the light of awareness plays on anything, it diminishes the false and encourages the true—and nothing brightens that light as much as intelligent zazen, done daily and in sesshin.

Nevertheless that which can witness my mind and body must be other than my mind and body. If I can observe my mind and body in an angry state, who is this “I” who observes? It shows me that I am other than my anger, bigger than my anger, and this knowledge enables me to build A Bigger Container, to grow.

As the ability grows first to observe, and second to experience, two factors simultaneously increase: wisdom, the ability to see life as it is (not the way I want it to be) and compassion, the natural action which comes from seeing life as it is. We can’t have compassion for anyone or anything if our encounter with them is ensnarled in pride and anger; it’s impossible.

Now one of the illusions we may have about our practice is that practice will make things more comfortable, clearer, easier, more peaceful, and so on. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The other story is about Pandora’s box. You remember—somebody was so curious about the contents of that mysterious box that he finally opened it—and the evil contents poured out, creating chaos. Practice is often like that for us; it opens Pandora’s box.

We don’t have to analyze it, pick it apart, or “communicate” about it. The wonder of living with anything is…what? It’s perfect in being as it is.

but always there’s that point where we can’t possibly see the perfection, and that’s the point where our practice is.

If you’ve been sitting a short time, it’s here, that’s fine; why should it be anyplace else? And then over a lifetime that cut-off point just moves and it never ceases to occur. There’s always that point. And that’s what we’re doing here. Sitting as we sit, just letting what comes up in ourselves come up, be there, and die. Come up, be there, and die. But when we get to the cut-off point we’re not going to remember any of that! Because it’s tough when we’re at this point. Practice is not easy.

By experiencing the anger nonverbally, physically. You can’t force it to go, but you don’t necessarily have to visit it on other people.

False fear exists because we misuse our minds. Because we see our self or “I” as a separate entity, we create various sentences with “I”” as the subject. Our sentences are about what has happened to this “I” or what might happen to it, or how these happenings might be analyzed or controlled—and all of this almost ceaseless mental activity entails a constant, uneasy evaluation of ourselves and others.

We spend most of our life playing this futile game. “What will happen? How will it go? Will I get something out of it?” I, I, I—it’s a mind game of illusion, and we are lost in it.

It’s not that “I” hears the birds, it’s just hearing the birds. Let yourself be seeing, hearing, thinking. That is what sitting is. It is the false “I” that interrupts the wonder with the constant desire to think about “I.” And all the while the wonder is occurring: the birds sing, the cars go by, the body sensations continue, the heart is beating—life is a second-by-second miracle, but dreaming our I-dreams we miss it. So let’s just sit with what may seem like confusion. Just feel it, be it, appreciate it. Then we may more often see through the false dream which obscures our life. And then, what is there?

It’s a precious opportunity we have, to be alive as human beings. It has been said that the chance of having a human life is something like being picked up as one grain of sand out of all the grains on the beach. It’s such a rare chance and yet somehow, as in the case of my friend, some error arises. Some of that error is present in each one of us—not fully appreciating what we have just in being alive.

Then I went on to ask him why he never used any assistants. He answered, “Other people are not me.” “You are right,” I said; “I can see that your work is the activity of the Buddha-dharma, but why are you working so hard in this scorching sun?” He replied, “If I do not do it now, when else can I do it.” There was nothing else for me to say. As I walked on along that passageway, I began to sense inwardly the true significance of the role of tenzo.

in totally owning the pain, the joy, the responsibility of my life—if I see this point clearly—then I’m free. I have no hope, I have no need for anything else.

Dōgen Zenji speaks of the self settling naturally on the self. What does he mean by that? He means that only you can experience your own pain, your own joy. If there is one impression that comes into your life that is not received, then in that second you die a little bit. None of us completely lives like that, but at least we don’t need to lose ninety percent of the experience of our life.

“If I do not do it now, when else can I do it.” Only I can take care of the self from morning to night. Only I can receive life. And it’s this contact, second by second by second, which Dōgen Zenji is talking about as he describes the day of the tenzo. Take care of this. Take care of that, and that. Not just washing the rice but doing it carefully, grain by grain. Not just throwing the water out. Each bite we take of our food. Each word I say. Each word you say. Each encounter, each second. That’s it. Not chanting with your mind somewhere else; not half doing the dishes, not half doing anything.

We’re saying, once again, that zazen, sitting, is enlightenment. Why? Because second after second as we sit, that’s it. The old tenzo spreading seaweed—that’s a passionate life, spending his life preparing food for others. Actually, all of us are constantly preparing food for others. This “food” can be typing; it can be doing math or physics; it can be taking care of our children. But do we live our life with that attitude of appreciation for our work? Or are we always hoping, “Oh, somewhere there’s got to be more than this”? Yes, we’re all hoping.

Let’s remember that old tenzo. If we practice the way he spread seaweed, then we can be rewarded with this nothing at all.