Saving Relationships: the Don’t Know Mind

This week’s Psychology Today has a wonderful piece dedicated to the late Charlotte Joko Beck (pictured left), one of the pioneers of Zen in America. In it, Toni Bernhard, J.D., a former law professor at UC Davis, gives us the perspectives of three great Zen teachers: Charlotte Joko Beck, Zen master Seung Sahn, and Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh.

The crux of the article is simple but profound: we often let our minds get away from us when it comes to ‘interpreting’ the words or actions of others. We can create a whole world of fantasy in which we are victims or victors, vikings or vicars (sorry, bad humor).

In any case, we tend to blow things out of proportion in one way or another, first in our minds, and then, if we’re not careful, in our own words and actions. Rather than trying to authentically understand the other, we manifest a grand story, a box to put him/her in, and act from there. Inevitably this leads to suffering, because nobody – not you, not me, nobody – lives long in the boxes we put them in.

In my experience this comes back to two words taught to me by one of my earliest Buddhist teachers: “let go.” Actually there were three, “just let go.” Either way, letting go of the stories is immensely freeing – it gets you out of your head and into the world around, a world filled with beauty (when you’re there to notice it).

Life is short, too short to be lived spinning around in one’s own stories. Let go.