So Many Ways to Cope with Life

In "The Cocoon of Pain" from Nothing Special: Living Zen, Charlotte Joko Beck writes:

We have many ways to cope with life, many ways to worship comfort and pleasantness. All are based on the same thing: the fear of encountering any kind of unpleasantness.

I don't have personal knowledge of Joko Beck's teachings, but I've been told she studied and talked about the Enneagram with her students in the past, and she does refer to Gurdjieff (page 24) when she discusses the importance of awareness of our "chief feature."  Another Zen teacher, Cheri Huber, teaches the Enneagram at her retreats. (A Zen practitioner, Barry Keesan, wrote to me, "With the right guidance, the Enneagram can be a valuable adjunct to, but is not a substitute for, Zen practice.") In the passages below (pages 10-11), Joko Beck seems to be referring to the nine Enneagram types as she summarizes all the ways in which we avoid encountering life mindfully (and I think we all suffer all illusions, just stronger within our own "type"):

• If we must have absolute order and control, it's because we're trying to avoid any unpleasantness. If we can have things our way, and get angry if they're not, then we think we can survive and shut out our anxiety about death.

• If we can please everyone, then we imagine no unpleasantness will enter our life.

• We hope that if we can be the star of the show, shining and wonderful and efficient, we can have such an admiring audience that we won't have to feel anything.

• If we can withdraw from the world and just entertain ourselves with our own dreams and fantasies and emotional upheavals, we think we can escape unpleasantness.

• If we can figure everything out, if we can be so smart that we can fit everything into some sort of a plan or order, a complete intellectual understanding, then perhaps we won't be threatened.

• If we can submit to an authority, have it tell us what to do, then we can give someone else the responsibility for our lives and we don't have to carry it anymore. We don't have to feel the anxiety of making a decision.

• If we pursue life madly, going after any pleasant sensation, any excitement, any entertainment, perhaps we won't have to feel any pain.

• If we can tell others what to do, keep them well under control, under our foot, maybe they can't hurt us.

• If we can "bliss out," if we can be a mindless "buddha" just relaxing in the sun, we don't have to assume any responsibility for the world's unpleasantness. We can just be happy.

As Joko Beck reminds us, in these many ways we worship "the god of no discomfort and no unpleasantness." We get lost in our "feverish efforts" and lose touch with life - the life that presents itself to us every moment.

In the end these coping strategies can't work, because they are not based on reality, they are based on a perception of life that we create. When this happens -- when our attempts to control life fail us -- we are finally ready, she writes, "to begin serious practice."

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