Three Excerpts from Joko Beck’s ‘Everyday Zen,’ and some commentary.

I recall the first time I read a similar thought in one of Roshi Steve Hagen’s books that profoundly shaped my love for the Dharma and affinity with the Zen tradition. Just as birds do not seek the sky, and fish do not seek the water, all of our seeking is in vane.

My seeking behavior (even seeking enlightenment/full awakening) is another form of attachment to something outside of myself. The Buddha taught that I am already complete, and as Shunryu Suzuki Roshi characterized it, I still need a little improvement.

However, seeking awakening or enlightenment is the same as adding something else on top of what I already am. If I am complete already, then, as Charlotte Joko Beck writes, dropping my seeking behavior and all other forms of attachment, helps me uncover the enlightenment within.

Sitting zazen (sitting meditation) in order to achieve anything —inner peace, less stress, insights— is a fallacy. We may experience any or all of these when sitting, but it isn’t a transactional practice.

This is an important distinction — we sit not to achieve anything — but we sit as an act of rebellion against our habitual reactivity and confusion-prone thinking, and in dedication to opening up completely and finding what is deep within already.

My next tattoo will be these words: “life is practice, practice is life.”

For me, this perfectly summarizes my experience and what Joko Beck is urging in the excerpt above. Regardless of the traditions I follow or adopt (or blend), what I learn from my practice on the cushion shows up off the cushion every single day.

But, it’s not automatic. I must work to apply what I learn from my sitting to my everyday life experiences.

In my experience, when a driver distracted by a child or their phone cuts me off in traffic, when the person ahead of me in the grocery checkout line insists on reviewing the receipt before leaving, when the teenager who hurls an insult out of a passing car just because he can, etc., these are the situations that invite me to apply what I leaned from my formal practice to real life situations and experiences off the cushion.