Beyond Happiness: Where’s The Zen?

Beyond Happiness: The Zen Way to True Contentment is a clearly written, warm book with lots a specific instructions for working with unhappiness. Ezra Bayda studied Zen with Joko Beck and his book reads much like Joko’s books, although without the occasional bite. He also shares generously from his own process, grounding the book nicely, and adding an occasional joke – which I found myself looking for as I read.

To make a point about how our fixed identities can make us unhappy, for example, he tells one about a cowboy on a park bench. “… A woman comes and sits down next to him. She looks at his hat and boots and says, ‘Are you a real cowboy?’ He answers, ‘Well, I’ve worked on ranches tending cows and horses all my life, so, yep, I guess I’m a real cowboy.’ She thinks for a moment and then says, ‘I’m a lesbian. I think about women when I wake up. I think about them all day long. And I think about them when I’m going to sleep.’ After they talk a little more she gets up and leaves. Some time later a man comes along and sits down next to him on the bench, checks him out, and asks, ‘Are you really a cowboy?’ ‘Well,’ he answers, ‘I used to think I was, but now I think I’m a lesbian.'”

The practice Bayda encourages is asking three questions: Am I truly happy right now? What blocks happiness? And can I surrender to what is?

Reminded me of Byron Katie’s four questions: Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? Who would you be without the thought?

Beyond Happiness struck me similarly as belonging to the Buddhist self-help genre, suggesting using mindfulness of mental factors as a cognitive psychological tool to relieve suffering. Despite the “beyond” part of the title, what I got out of the book was about how to be happy in the usual sense. And that seems like a kind and generous thing to offer.

I was, however, left wondering about this Zen business. What about this presentation is Zen? Even Bayda’s chapter on meditation recommends following the breath in a pan-Buddhist kind-of-way and includes what he calls intermediate instructions for letting go of thinking and attending to emotions. Good, helpful stuff but where’s the beyond in that?

It seems that in order to appeal to the widest range of people, the contemporary Zen narrative sometimes constricts to a narrow, limited range of vocabulary and story, addressing existential psychological issues from a well-educated, therapy-savvy perspective, disconnected from the rich fabric of the Zen tradition (koan and/or Shobogenzo) and too embarrassed to address enlightenment – that which has usually been regarded in Zen as “beyond happiness.”

Beyond Happiness: Where’s the Zen?