Everyday Zen

by Charlotte Joko Beck

If we find that certain thoughts come up hundreds of times, we know something about ourselves that we didn’t know before. Perhaps we incessantly think about the past, or the future. Some people always think about events, some people always think about other people. Some people always think about themselves. Some people’s thoughts are almost entirely judgments about other people. Until we have labeled for four or five years, we don’t know ourselves very well. When we label thoughts precisely and carefully, what happens to them? They begin to quiet down. We don’t have to force ourselves to get rid of them. When they quiet down, we return to the experience of the body and the breath, over and over and over. I can’t emphasize enough that we don’t just do this three times, we do it ten thousand times; and as we do it, our life transforms. That’s a theoretical description of sitting. It’s very simple; there’s nothing complicated about it.