In Dharma talks, Joko explicitly cited Hubert Benoit's book "The Supreme Doctrine" as the most important influence on her own practice and teaching. Benoit's book is technically very difficult. But students familiar with it will recognize Joko's fundamental emphasis on sitting still and experiencing bodily sensation:
"The Icy Couch" Dharma Talk by Charlotte Joko Beck
AS WE SIT, THE ENDLESS SPINNING in our heads reveals to us our strategy. If we label our thoughts long enough we’re going to recognize our strategy. It’s the strategy itself that generates the buzzing thoughts. Only one thing in our life is not caught by this strategy, and that’s the physical, organic life of the body.
Of course, the body is taking punishment because it reflects our self-centeredness. The body has to obey the mind, so if the mind is saying that the world is a terrible place, the body says “Oh, I’m so depressed!” The minute the images appear-thinking, fantasizing, hoping-the body has to respond. It has a chronic response, and at times that response exacerbates into depression or illness.
The main teacher I’ve had all my life has been a book. It may be the best book on Zen ever written. However, it’s a translation from French, and the writing is unwieldy, with sentences that are whole paragraphs. After reading one of those sentences, you may ask yourself in puzzlement, “What did he say?” So it’s a difficult book; still, it’s the best explanation of the human problem that I’ve ever found. I studied it at one time for ten or fifteen years. I have a copy that looks like it’s been through the washing machine.
The book is "The Supreme Doctrine" by Hubert Benoit, a French psychiatrist who was in a severe accident that left him almost completely helpless for years. All he could do was just lie there. The human problem was his all-consuming interest, so he used those years of recovery to thoroughly delve into it. Benoit’s term for the emotional contraction arising from our efforts to protect ourselves is “spasm.” He calls the ceaseless chatter of our internal dialogue “the imaginary film.” The turning point for him comes when he realizes “that this spasm, which I have called abnormal, is on the road that leads to satori (enlightenment) . . . One can indeed say that what should be perceived, under the imaginary film, is a certain profound sensation of cramp, of a paralyzing grip, of immobilizing cold . . . and that it is on this hard couch, immobile and cold, that our attention should remain fixed; as though we tranquilly stretched out our body on a hard but friendly rock that exactly molded to our form.”
What Benoit is saying is that when we rest at peace with our pain, this repose is the “gateless gate.” And it’s the last place we want to be; it’s not pleasant, and our whole strategic drive is for pleasantness. No, we want somebody to comfort us, save us, give us peace. Our ceaseless thinking, planning, and plotting are always about this. Only when we stay with what is beneath the imaginary film and rest there, do we begin to have a clue.
The way I usually explain it is: instead of remaining with our thoughts, we label them until they settle down a little and then we do our best to stay with that which really is, the nonduality that is the sensation of our life at this very moment that goes against everything we want, everything our culture teaches us. But it’s the only real solution, the only gate to peace. As we settle into our sensation of pain, we find it so appalling, that we skitter off again. The minute we land in the sensation of discomfort, we spin back into the imaginary film. We simply don’t want to be in the reality of what we are. That’s human, neither good or bad, and it takes years of patient practice to begin to touch this reality more and more, becoming comfortable in resting there-until finally, as Benoit says, it’s just a hard and friendly rock that is molded to us, and where we can finally rest and be at peace.
Sometimes we can rest for a short time, but because we are so habituated, we soon go back into the same old mental stuff. And so we go through the process again and again. Over time, it’s that ceaseless process that brings us to peace. If it’s complete, it can be called satori, or enlightenment. The imaginary film generates the spasm, and the spasm generates the imaginary film. It’s a ceaseless cycle, and it’s only broken when we have become willing to rest in our pain. The ability to do this means we have become somewhat disillusioned, no longer hoping that our thoughts and feelings will be a solution to anything. As long as we hold out hope that the promise will be kept, we’re not going to rest in the painful body sensations.
This audio compilation from Dharma talks as follows:
• Joko Beck Dharma Talk:...
• Joko Beck Dharma Talk:...
• Joko Beck Dharma Talk ...
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