Everyday Zen

by Charlotte Joko Beck

If we cease looking, searching, what are we left with? We’re left with what’s been right there at the center all the time. Underneath all that searching there is distress. There is unease. The minute that we realize that, we see that the point isn’t the search, but rather the distress and unease which motivate the search. That’s the magic moment—when we realize that searching outside of ourselves is not the way. At first it dawns on us just a little bit. And its gets clearer over time, as we continue to suffer. See, anything that we search for is going to disappoint us. Because there are no perfect beings, perfect jobs, perfect places to live. So the search ends exactly in one place, which is…disappointment. A good place. If we have any brains at all, it finally dawns on us: “I’ve done this before.” And we begin to see that it isn’t the searching that’s at fault, but something about where we look. And we return more and more to the disappointment, which is always at the center. What’s underneath all that search is what? Fear. Unease. Distress. Feeling miserable. We’re in pain and we use the search to alleviate that pain. We begin to see that the pain comes because we are pinching ourselves. And just this knowledge is relief, even peace. The very peace we’ve been searching for so hard lies in recognizing this fact: I’m pinching myself. No one’s doing it to me.

It never happens all at once. Our drive to go after things is so powerful it overwhelms us. No matter what I say, after we all leave here, in five minutes we’ll all be looking around for something to save us. As the vow says, “Desires are inexhaustible.” But you won’t exhaust desires by searching; you will exhaust them by experiencing that which underlies them.

Practice is being too busy, being harried—just experiencing that.

STUDENT: I think practice is moment to moment being open to all the sensory input that’s coming in to me, as well as my thoughts. JOKO: Experientially that’s true, though it needs to be expanded. But in terms of how we practice, that’s fine.

STUDENT: When we’re really angry, for instance: to be the anger, to experience it physically, to see the thoughts it generates.

reason. I often notice that when people get up from the table on the patio, they don’t push their chair back in. They have no commitment to that chair. They feel, “The chair isn’t important, I have to get into the zendo and hear about the truth.” But the truth is the chair. It’s where we are right now. When we leave the door open, it’s that part of us that does not want to be in relationship to anything, so we run out the door. We’re looking for the truth instead of being the unease and distress of where we are right now.

Intelligent zazen means making a subtle shift constantly, step by step; first from the grosser levels to the more subtle, and to the more subtle, and to the more subtle; beginning to see right through what we call our personality, this one that we’ve been talking about. We begin to really look at the mind, the body, the thoughts, the sense perceptions, everything that we thought was ourself.

Then we go further, to the stage of being the witness of our life. It’s all going on, it’s all enjoyable; we’re not caught by any of it. And in the final state of our practice we’re back in the street, back in the marketplace, right in the middle of the hubbub. But seeing the confusion for what it is, we’re free of it. We can love it, enjoy it, serve it, and our life is seen as what it always has been—free and liberated.

However, as we endeavor to practice with relationships, we begin to see that they are our best way to grow. In them we can see what our mind, our body, our senses, and our thoughts really are. Why are relationships such excellent practice? Why do they help us to go into what we might call the slow death of the ego? Because, aside from our formal sitting, there is no way that is superior to relationships in helping us see where we’re stuck and what we’re holding on to. As long as our buttons are pushed, we have a great chance to learn and grow. So a relationship is a great gift, not because it makes us happy—it often doesn’t—but because any intimate relationship, if we view it as practice, is the clearest mirror we can find.

Only people of intelligence, energy, and patience will find that still point on which the universe turns. And unfortunately life for those who cannot or will not face this present moment is often violent and punishing; it’s not nice; it doesn’t care. Still, the truth is that it’s not life, it’s ourselves who are creating this misery. But if we really refuse to look at what we are doing—and I’m sorry how few people will look—then we’re going to be punished by our life. And then we wonder why it’s so hard on us. However, for those who patiently practice—sitting, sitting, sitting; who begin to practice steadily in their daily life—for those people there will be more and more a taste of the joy in a relationship in which no-self meets no-self. In other words openness meets openness. It’s very rare, but it does happen. And when it happens I don’t even know if we can use the word “relationship.” Who is there to relate to whom? You can’t say no-self relates to no-self. So for this state there are no words. And in this timeless love and compassion there is, as the Third Patriarch said, “No yesterday, no tomorrow, and no today.”

By experiencing, I mean that first moment when we receive life before the mind arises. For example: before I think, “Oh, that’s a red shirt,” there’s just seeing. We could also speak of just hearing, just touching, just tasting, just thinking. This is the absolute: call it God, Buddha-nature, whatever you wish.

So we can distinguish the arising—which is God, Buddha-nature, the absolute, just what is—from the world which is formed instantaneously, the other side of the arising. In fact, the two sides are one: the arising and what we call the world are not different. If we could really get this, we’d never again have any trouble in our lives, because it would be obvious that there is no past or future—and we’d see that all the stuff we worry about is nonsense.

To truly support somebody means that you give them everything and expect nothing.

There is nothing wrong with wanting it, unless it is at variance with that which is more important to me than comfort, my primary orientation in life. If that primary orientation doesn’t emerge from practice, then practice isn’t practice.

So (remembering the definition of the word “suffer”) until we bow down and bear the suffering of life—not opposing it, but absorbing it and being it—we cannot see what our life is.

It isn’t a matter of protecting ourselves, or accepting something else. Complete openness, complete vulnerability to life, is (surprisingly enough) the only satisfactory way of living our life.

Practice annihilates the small self, and the small self isn’t interested in that one bit.

There is another side to practice, however: As our small self dies—our angry, demanding, complaining, maneuvering, manipulative self-a real cookie appears: joy and genuine self-confidence. We begin to taste what it feels like to care about someone else without expecting anything in return. And this is true compassion.

As our sitting settles down into the present moment we say, “Isn’t this boring!—the cars going by, feel my knees hurting, notice my tummy growling…” We have no interest in the infinite perfection of the universe. In fact the infinite perfection of the universe might be the person sitting next to us who breathes noisily or is sweaty. The infinite perfection is this being inconvenienced: “I’m not having it my way at all.” At any moment there is just what’s happening. Yet we’re not interested in that. Instead we’re bored. Our attention goes in another direction. “Forget reality! I’m here to be enlightened!”

Every moment offers us a wealth of opportunities. Even on the calmest, most uneventful day we get many opportunities to see the clash between what we want and the way it really is.

“He who knows does not say, and he who says does not know.”

When we talk about practice all the time, our talk is another form of resistance, a barrier, a cover. It’s like academics who save the world every night at the dinner table. They talk and talk and talk—but what difference does it make? At the other end of that pole would be someone like Mother Teresa. I don’t think she does much talking. She is busy doing.

Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that. I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid. I fear to see what I am: an ever-changing energy field. I don’t want to be that. So good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloudy cover to keep ourselves safe in a make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it’s anything but safe. But we don’t like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality. The only thing that matters is se...

If I am told “Joko, you have one more day to live,” is that OK with me? Or if someone told you that, is it OK with you?

This bothers me because I am away from my family and would like to see them again. This means I am not ready for death. I don't accept the current moment because I have some ideal of what it should look like in a better sense. "This will get better when, blah blah blah". This is a direction where my energy of awareness can stay with for a bit.

If I am in a severe accident, and my legs and arms have to be amputated, is this OK with me? If that were to happen to you, is it OK?

Yes, but I notice fear of relying on others for care and burdening them.

If I were never again to receive a kind or friendly encouraging word from any...

My fear of what people think of me is where my current practice has been working. This is not a current concern of mine.

If I, for whatever reason, have to be bedridden and in pain for the rest of my l...

I don't think I am at a point in my practice where dealing with real and consistent pain would be something I could manage or be with effectively. This will just require some more zazen.

If I make a complete fool of myself, in the worst possible circumstance...

Yes, Not a concern.

If for whatever reason I have to live out my life as a beggar, with little food and no shelter, exposed to the cold, is this OK with me? With you?

Yes, this simplifies life. Again, being with pain is not a milestone I have prepared for but through more sitting, I believe I can get there.

If I must lose whatever or whomever I care for, is it OK with me?

Yes, but more practice would make being with that moment more genuine and the contraction of pain could be met with more awareness.

What is the enlightened state? When there is no longer any separation between myself and the circumstances of my life, whatever they may be, that is it.

But a person who has no aversion to any circumstance is not a human being as we usually know human beings. I’ve known a few people who approximated this condition. And this is the enlightened state: the state of a person who, to a great degree, can embrace any or all conditions, good or bad. I’m not talking about a saint; I’m talking about that state (often preceded by enormous struggle) when it’s OK.

For instance, we often wonder how we will die. The key is not to learn to die bravely, but to learn not to need to die bravely. We may have that in small areas, but mostly we wish to be something other than we are. An interesting attitude indeed: not to learn to put up with any circumstance, but to learn not to need a particular attitude toward a circumstance.

From the usual point of view life is a tragedy—yet we spend our lives in a hopeless attempt to hide from the tragedy.

From the moment of conception our life is on its way out. And from a personal point of view this is a tragedy. So we spend our life in a pointless battle to avoid that end. That misdirected battle is the real tragedy.

We are only assaulted by our thoughts, our needs, our attachments, all born from our identification with our false thinking which in turn creates a closed-in, separate, miserable life. In daily sitting we can sometimes avoid this realization. But it’s hard to avoid it when we sit eight hours a day; and the more days we sit, the harder it is.

In years of sitting we slowly uncover the anatomy of anger and other emotion-thoughts. In an episode of anger we need to know all thoughts related to the event. These thoughts are not real; but they are connected with sensations, the bodily feelings of contraction. We need to observe where the muscles contract and where they don’t. Some people get angry in their faces, some people get angry in their backs, some people get angry all over. The more we know—the stronger the observer is—the less mysterious these emotions are, and the less we tend to get caught by them.

The point is not that a positive emotion is better than a negative one, but that all thoughts and emotions are impermanent, changing, or (in Buddhist terms) empty. They have no reality whatsoever.

There is an old koan about a monk who went to his master and said, “I’m a very angry person, and I want you to help me.” The master said, “Show me your anger.” The monk said, “Well, right now I’m not angry. I can’t show it to you.” And the master said, “Then obviously it’s not you, since sometimes it’s not even there.” Who we are has many faces, but these faces are not who we are.

We are confused about the basic core of practice, and we get sidetracked with all sorts of incorrect notions about it. The degree to which we’re sidetracked or confused is the degree to which we suffer.

Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple—except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are. When we substitute our ideas about what should be (such notions as “I should not be angry, or confused, or unwilling”) for our life as it truly is, then we’re off base and our practice is barren.

It’s very difficult for us to conceive of someone just standing and doing nothing because we are always frantically trying to get somewhere to do something. It’s impossible to move outside of this moment; nevertheless, we habitually try to.

If we try to make ourselves calm and wise and wonderfully enlightened through Zen practice, we’re not going to understand. Each moment, just as it is, is the sudden manifestation of absolute truth. And if we practice with the aspiration just to be the present moment, our lives will gradually transform and grow wonderfully.

Zen practice isn’t about a special place or a special peace, or something other than being with our life just as it is. It’s one of the hardest things for people to get: that my very difficulties in this very moment are the perfection.

People have been known to kill themselves rather than demolish their structure.

Discipline has a connotation for some of us of forcing ourselves to do something. But discipline is simply bringing all the light we can summon to bear on our practice, so that we can see a little bit more. Discipline can be formal, as in the zendo, or informal, as in our daily life. Disciplined students are those who in their everyday activities constantly try to find means of waking themselves up.

Practice is to keep that subtle pressure operating from morning till night.

To move from being selfish and greedy to trying not to be that way is like taking down all the drab and ugly pictures in your room and putting up pretty pictures. But if that room is a prison cell, you’ve changed the decorations and they look a little better; but still the freedom you want isn’t there; you’re still imprisoned in the same room. Changing the pictures on the wall from greed, anger, and ignorance into ideals (that we should not be greedy, angry, or ignorant) improves the decoration, perhaps—but leaves us without freedom.

The prison cell we live in, whose walls we are frantically redecorating, is not a prison cell. In fact the door has never been locked. There is no lock. We don’t need to sit in our cells and struggle for freedom by frantically trying to change ourselves—because we are already free.

“This is the Truth. Do not search for the Truth anywhere else.”