When we refuse to work with our disappointment, we break the Precepts: rather than experience the disappointment, we resort to anger, greed, gossip, criticism. Yet it's the moment of being that disappointment which is fruitful; and, if we are not willing to do that, at least we should notice that we are not willing. The moment of disappointment in life is an incomparable gift that we receive many times a day if we're alert. This gift is always present in anyone's life, that moment when 'It's not the way I want it!'
Charlotte Joko Beck was an American Zen teacher and the author of the books Everyday Zen: Love and Work and Nothing Special: Living Zen.
Biography [Source: Wikipedia]: Born in New Jersey, Beck studied music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and worked for some time as a pianist and piano teacher. She married and raised a family of four children, then separated from her husband and worked as a teacher, secretary, and assistant in a university department. She began Zen practice in her 40s with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi in Los Angeles, and later with Hakuun Yasutani and Soen Nakagawa. Beck received Dharma transmission from Taizan Maezumi Roshi in 1978, but broke with Maezumi over his actions and opened Zen Center San Diego in 1983, serving as its head teacher until July 2006.
Wandering Ronin commentary: Zen is Zen, no matter where you happen to find it. Zen and buddha nature are one and the same. It is not dead and it is not confined to the past, because it is here right now. You are free to live it, practice it, and gain an understanding of it, or not. Nothing is true, and everything is permitted. To believe that Zen is merely a technical thing or confined to a few ordinary people or moments in history is to miss the true teachings of the Dharma. I was not here, I did not say this...
Submitted March 28, 2018 at 08:29PM by WanderingRonin77 https://ift.tt/2GELV8N
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