Nothing Special: Living Zen

by Charlotte Joko Beck

  You may say, “That may be true with simple problems, but I doubt that it will work with the big, complex problems I face.” In fact, however, the process works, no matter how “big” the problem is. We may not get the solution we were looking for, and the resolution may not be immediate, but we will see what step to take next. Over time, we learn to trust the process, to have faith that things will work out as best they can under the circumstances. The person we counted on who didn’t come through, the job we failed to get, the physical ailment that worries us: instead of going round and round in our thoughts, worrying about the problem, if we reestablish the foundation of our lives in immediate experience, we will see how to act appropriately.

  I’m not suggesting that we should act blindly, out of mere impulse. We need to be informed, to know the obvious things about the problem; we need to use our natural intelligence, our functional thinking. For example, suppose I have a twinge in my tooth. If I begin to think of how I hate dental work, the drilling and the needles and the discomfort, I’ll go round and round in my head and create a huge problem for myself. If I return to the foundation of my life in my direct experience, on the other hand, I’ll say to myself, “Well, it’s just a twinge, right now. I’ll keep an eye on it and go about my business. If the twinge persists or gets worse, I’ll call the dentist and make an appointment.” With that approach everything falls into place.

  STUDENT : The danger for me in returning to my ordinary sensations is that I may block out my anxiety or worry entirely, as if it didn’t exist.

  JOKO : The anxiety is no more than certain thoughts and an accompanying tension or contraction in the body. Returning to our senses means to notice the thoughts for what they are, and to be aware of the tension in the body. Awareness of the tension is, after all, just another physical sensation, along with seeing, smelling, and the like.

  It sounds crazy to say that when we have a problem we should listen to the traffic. But if we truly listen, our other senses come to life also. We feel the contraction in our body, too. When we do that, something shifts, and how to respond becomes clearer.

  STUDENT : Aren’t the senses on a kind of “time-share” basis? If we totally listen to a sound, don’t we block out smell, taste, and so on? Really listening to the traffic may mean that I’m ignoring the rest of my body.

  JOKO : That kind of exclusive attention to one mode of sensation is the result of subtle thinking, perhaps an anxious thought that “I have to do this” or “I’m in danger.” If we’re fully open, we engage all of our senses simultaneously.

  STUDENT : Returning to the senses doesn’t always happen quickly with me. If I’m worried about a problem, I may think about it for a week, despite my efforts to pay attention to the traffic or whatever.

  JOKO : Yes, depending upon how long and how well we have practiced, the process does take time. The ability to move quickly is the mark of a practice that has gone on for many years. Some people can hold on to their misery for a long time. They really enjoy it. Someone was telling me recently how much she enjoys her selfrighteousness. Who wants to listen to the traffic when we can enjoy our self-righteousness? We don’t want to abandon our patterns, our thoughts of who we are, even when we recognize intellectually that they get us into trouble. So we cling to them and return to them, even after reminding ourselves to come back to our senses. We’re not ready to trust the process fully, to have faith in our direct experience.

  STUDENT : I have another question about the “time-share” issue. You included functional thinking as one of the six legs of real experience. Suppose I’m working at a computer or fixing a watch; isn’t it natural to block out other sensations in order to give full attention to what I’m doing?

  JOKO : Yes, there can be a mechanical narrowing of attention for a specific task. That’s different from the psychological narrowing that comes from self-centered thinking, which generates a subtle rigidity.

  STUDENT: So if one of my tasks while I’m sitting by the stream is to plan the day’s menu, that’s okay?

  JOKO : Yes, assuming that planning the menu is an appropriate task for that moment, instead of arising out of anxious thoughts about oneself. We just do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done. Once we’ve handled the task, we turn to whatever else is going on. It’s okay to narrow attention as needed to undertake a task. That’s different from shutting out our life because we are thinking about ourselves, which is an unnecessary psychological impediment.

  The distinction concerns false emotion versus true emotion. If a remark made to us days ago is still upsetting us, that’s false emotion. A true emotion is immediate to the situation: maybe someone hits me, or I see somebody in trouble. For a second I’m upset and I do something—and it’s over. The emotions are a response to a real event; when the event is no longer going on, then the emotions settle back. That’s a natural response to life. There’s nothing wrong with true emotion. Most people run their lives out of false emotion, however. They carry memories from the past or worries about the future and create upset for themselves. The upset is unrelated to what’s happening in the moment. We’re stewing about what happened last week, and we can’t sleep.

  STUDENT : Even though the memory is generating false emotion, there is a present sensation in the body. The emotion is stuck in me; I can feel it.

  JOKO : Yes. So we notice the accompanying thoughts and feel the tension in the body. When we do that enough times, the blockage eases. Something shifts.

  STUDENT: If my day is particularly busy, a lot of anxiety can build up, and it feels more comfortable to be daydreaming. Is that wrong?

  JOKO : If you do it, you do it. The problem is that by daydreaming, we cut ourselves off from life. When we’re cut off from life, we overlook things, and we get into trouble. It’s as though we’re floating down a turbulent stream. Here and there are rocks and tree stumps projecting out of the water. Looking at them may make us anxious. But if we ignore them and instead just gaze at the beautiful clouds in the sky, sooner or later we’re in the drink. Paying attention to the white water and rocks may feel scary, but it’s a very good idea, nonetheless.

  STUDENT: Gazing up at the sky gives me the illusion that I can control things. Returning to the senses, I often have a fear of loss of control. It feels reassuring to stay in the old conditioning and try to figure everything out in my head.

  JOKO : Yes. All practice brings up fear. So we alternate between experiencing the fear and retreating into thinking. Most people’s lives consist of a rapid alternation, in and out of direct experience. No wonder life feels jangly.

  STUDENT: Returning to direct experience feels like a grounding of one’s life.

  JOKO : Yes. The minute we feel the sensory input of life, we are grounded. If we are still upset, it means that we are not fully feeling it; there is still some thinking.

  STUDENT : When I was learning to play tennis, my teacher kept saying, “You can’t hit the ball properly unless you’ve got your two feet on the ground. If you have one leg up in the air, you are out of balance.”

  JOKO : If we don’t maintain our groundedness, we tend not to see what’s going on around us, and we’ll hit the tree stump or the rock, or whatever. An awakened life is not some airy-fairy thing. It’s very down-to-earth.

  STUDENT : When I lived on a mountaintop in Maui, it was very easy to lie down on the earth and reconnect with my sensations, but when I’m in the middle of a noisy classroom with all of the children screaming, I don’t want to experience it all, including the noise and the tension in my stomach.

  JOKO: Right. Yet the point remains: to negotiate our lives effectively, we need to stay in touch as much as possible.

  STUDENT : In the past, instead of simply opening up to my experience, I have tended to exaggerate the process by wallowing in my sensations, chasing after them and going round and round in them. JOKO: There’s thinking behind that effort: “I have to get into my drama.”

  STUDENT : Now, I’m beginning to learn another
way. I ask myself, “Where’s the tension in my body?” Without forcing it, I just stay with the sensations. Eventually I feel a soft spreading out and sinking feeling inside, and I’m more aware of my connection to everything.

  JOKO : Good. As that happens, we have a much clearer space in which to act. We simply know what to do, without calculating or guessing. The degree of clarity we find is a function of how long and how well we have practiced. It’s important, however, not to create another ideal in our minds (“I have to make that happen!”) and strive to achieve it. Where we are is where we need to be.

  As the chorale said, there is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but this present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we’re stuck in our thoughts. We’re out of touch with the open space that is always right here. Only after years of practice are we able to live in an open, aware space most of the time.

  STUDENT : I tend to seek out quiet, calming places where it’s easier for me to open up to the present and to avoid places, such as the noisy classroom, where I get tense and distracted.

  JOKO : Yes, that’s a natural impulse, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Still, it’s a kind of avoidance. As our practice becomes stronger, we are able to maintain openness and steadiness in situations where we formerly would have lost it. The important thing is to learn to be open to whatever life brings, wherever we are. If we are alert enough, we notice our impulse to avoid, and we can return to awareness of the present, without flinching. These endless little jogs of attention are practice itself. When we’re trying to avoid or escape something, we’re back in thought rather than direct experience.

  STUDENT : Sometimes when I try to concentrate on my experience—say, my feeling of anger, or the tension in my jaw—it seems to expand to fill the whole room. All of my other sensations disappear.

  JOKO : There’s some veiled thought behind such experiences and not just open sensation. If we fully experience one sense, we experience all the rest as well. If we name our anger and concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else, we haven’t really encountered our life.

  STUDENT: What about simply observing one’s sensations?

  JOKO : There’s value in that. But it’s transitional; there’s still an element of thinking, of subject-object duality. If we truly hear the traffic, we are absorbed in it. There’s no me, and there’s no traffic. There’s no observer and no object of sensation. We return to what we are, which is simply life itself.

  Attention Means Attention

  There’s an old Zen story: a student said to Master Ichu, “Please write for me something of great wisdom.” Master Ichu picked up his brush and wrote one word: “Attention.” The student said, “Is that all?” The master wrote, “Attention. Attention.” The student became irritable. “That doesn’t seem profound or subtle to me.” In response, Master Ichu wrote simply, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” In frustration, the student demanded, “What does this word attention mean?” Master Ichu replied, “Attention means attention.”

  For attention, we could substitute the word awareness. Attention or awareness is the secret of life, and the heart of practice. Like the student in the story, we find such a teaching disappointing; it seems dry and uninteresting. We want something exciting in our practice! Simple attention is boring; we ask, is that all there is to practice?

  When students come in to see me, I hear complaint after complaint: about the schedule of the retreat, about the food, about the service, about me, on and on. But the issues that people bring to me are no more relevant or important than a “trivial” event, such as stubbing a toe. How do we place our cushions? How do we brush our teeth? How do we sweep the floor, or slice a carrot? We think we’re here to deal with “more important” issues, such as our problems with our partner, our jobs, our health, and the like. We don’t want to bother with the “little” things, like how we hold our chopsticks or where we place our spoon. Yet these acts are the stuff of our life, moment to moment. It’s not a question of importance; it’s a question of paying attention, being aware. Why? Because every moment in life is absolute in itself. That’s all there is. There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future; there is nothing but this. So when we don’t pay attention to each little this, we miss the whole thing. And the contents of this can be anything. This can be straightening our sitting mats, chopping an onion, visiting someone we don’t want to visit. It doesn’t matter what the contents of the moment are; each moment is absolute. That’s all there is and all there ever will be. If we could totally pay attention, we would never be upset. If we’re upset, it’s axiomatic that we’re not paying attention. If we miss not just one moment but one moment after another, we’re in trouble.

  Suppose I’m condemned to have my head chopped off in a guillotine. Now I’m being marched up the steps onto the plat-form. Can I maintain attention to the moment? Can I be aware of each step, step-by-step? Can I place my head in the guillotine carefully so that I serve the executioner well? If I am able to live and die in this way, no problem arises.

  Our problems arise when we subordinate this moment to something else, to our self-centered thoughts: not just this moment, but what I want. We bring to the moment our personal priorities, all day long. And so our troubles arise.

  Another old story concerns a group of thieves who broke into the study of a Zen master and told him that they were going to slice off his head. He said, “Please wait until morning; I have some work to complete.” So he spent the night completing his work, drinking tea, and enjoying himself. He wrote a simple poem, comparing the severing of his head to a spring breeze, and gave it to the thieves as a present when they returned. The master understood practice well.

  We have trouble comprehending this story because we are so attached to keeping our heads on our shoulders. We don’t particularly want our heads severed. We’re determined that life go as we want it to go. When it doesn’t, we’re angry, confused, depressed, or otherwise upset. To have such feelings is not bad in itself, but who wants a life dominated by such feelings?

  When attention to the present moment falters and we drift into some version of “I have to have it my way,” a gap is created in our awareness of reality as it is, right now. Into that gap pours all the mischief of our life. We create gap after gap after

  gap, all day long. The point of practice is to close these gaps, to reduce the amount of time that we spend being absent, caught in our self-centered dream.

  We make a mistake, however, if we think that the solution is that I pay attention. Not “I sweep the floor,” “I slice the onions,” “I drive the car.” Though such practice is okay in the preliminary stages, it preserves self-centered thought in naming oneself as an “I” to which experience is present. A better understanding is simple awareness: just experiencing, experiencing, experiencing. In mere awareness there is no gap, no space for self-centered thoughts to arise.

  At some Zen centers, students are asked to engage in exaggerated slow-motion actions, such as slowly putting things down and slowly picking them up. Such self-conscious attention is different from simple awareness, just doing it. The recipe for living is simply to do what we’re doing. Don’t be self-conscious about it; just do it. When self-centered thoughts come up, then we’ve missed the boat; we’ve got a gap. That gap is the birthplace of the troubles and upsets that plague us.

  Many forms of practice, commonly called concentrative meditation, seek to narrow awareness in some way. Examples include reciting a mantra, focusing on a visualization, working on Mu (if done in a concentrated way), even following the breath if that involves shutting out the other senses. In narrowing the attention, such practices quickly create certain pleasant states. We may feel that we have escaped from our troubles because we feel calmer. As we settle into this na
rrow focus, we may eventually go into a trance, like a drugged and peaceful state in which everything escapes us. Though at times useful, any practice that narrows our awareness is limited. If we don’t take into account everything in our world, both mental and physical, we miss something. A narrow practice does not transfer well to the rest of our life; when we take it into the world, we don’t know how to act and may still get quite upset. A concentrative practice, if we’re very persistent (as I used to be), may momentarily force us through our resistance, to a glimpse of the absolute. Such a forced opening isn’t truly gen

  uine; it misses something. Though we get a glimpse of the other side of the phenomenal world, into nothingness or pure emptiness, there’s still me realizing that. The experience remains dualistic and limited in its usefulness.

  In contrast, ours is an awareness practice that takes in everything. The “absolute” is simply everything in our world, emptied of personal emotional content. We begin to empty ourselves of such selfcentered thoughts by learning more and more to be aware in all our moments. Whereas a concentrative practice might focus on the breath, but block out the sound of cars or the talking in our minds (leaving us at a loss when we allow any and all experience back into consciousness), awareness practice is open to any present experience—all this upsetting universe—and it helps us slowly to extricate ourselves from our emotional reactions and attachments.