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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