Joko Beck
Charlotte Joko Beck, 81, started practicing Zen in the mid-sixties after raising four children on her own. She grew up in New Jersey, where she attended a Methodist church and “learned a lot of good quotes.” At Oberlin College, she studied piano, and later performed professionally “with little symphony orchestras—no big deal.” She supported her family by working as a schoolteacher, a secretary, and finally as an administrator in the chemistry department at the University of California, San Diego. When she retired in 1977, she went to live at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. In 1983, the Zen Center of San Diego opened—in two little houses, side by side, no sign—with Joko as teacher. She’s evolved her own way of teaching, which is always open to change. “I’ll pick up anything if it’s useful. It’s a question of seeing what really transforms human life. That’s what we’re interested in, isn’t it?” She’s just discovered Pilates, a form of exercise combining yoga, dance, and resistance training, and “probably I’m learning something there that will get mixed in, too.”
Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen Practice is about experiencing the truth of who we really are. Practice is about being with our life as it is, not as we would like it to be. Practice is about the clash between what we want and what is. Practice is about the transformation of our unnecessary suffering. Charlotte Joko Beck (1917-2011) established the Zen Center of San Diego in 1983 and the 'Ordinary Mind Zen' lineage in 1995. This recording of a live Dharma. Joko Beck Charlotte Joko Beck (1917-2011) was a Dharma heir of Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi and also studied with Haku'un Yasutani and Soen Nakagawa. She established the Zen Center of San Diego in 1983 and was the author of Everyday Zen (1989) and Nothing Special (1993).
I had a fine life. I was divorced—my husband was mentally ill—but I had a nice man in my life. My kids were okay. I had a good job. And I used to wake up and say, “Is this all there is?”
Joko Beck Books
Then I met Maezumi Roshi, who was a monk at the time. He was giving a talk in the Unitarian Church downtown. I was out for the evening with a friend, a woman, a sort of hard-boiled business type, and we decided to hear his talk. And as we went in, he bowed to each person and looked right at us. It was absolutely direct contact. When we sat down, my friend said to me, “What was that?” He wasn’t doing anything special—except, for once, somebody was paying attention.
Joko Beck, American Zen Buddhist teacher, founder of the Ordinary Mind School, died after a long illness he was , 94.
Charlotte Joko Beck was an American Zen teacher and the author of the books Everyday Zen: Love and Work and Nothing Special: Living Zen. Born in New Jersey, she studied music at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and worked for some time as a pianist and piano teacher died after a long illness he was , 94.. She married and raised a family of four children, then separated from her husband and worked as a teacher, secretary, and assistant in a university department. She began Zen practice in her 40s with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi in Los Angeles, and later with Yasutani Roshi and Soen Roshi. Having received Dharma transmission from Taizan Maezumi Roshi, she opened the San Diego Zen Center in 1983, serving as its head teacher until July 2006.
(March 27, 1917 – June 15, 2011)
Joko was responsible for a number of important innovations in Zen teaching. In particular, she taught students to work with the emotions of everyday life rather than attempting to avoid or escape them. Because she was adept at teaching students to work with their psychological states, she attracted a number of students who were interested in the relationship between Zen and modern psychology. Several of her Dharma heirs are practicing psychologists/psychiatrists. In 1995 Joko, along with 3 of her Dharma heirs, founded the Ordinary Mind Zen School. In 2006 Joko moved to Prescott, Arizona, where she continued to teach until she retired as a teacher in late 2010. In the spring of 2010, Joko announced that she had chosen Gary Nafstad to be her Dharma successor.
Shortly after Joko’s departure in 2006 a controversy arose over the future of the San Diego Zen Center. Joko Beck sent a letter in which she stated that she was revoking Dharma transmission from two senior students: Ezra Bayda and Elizabeth Hamilton. Joko also stated that the San Diego Zen Center should not claim to represent her or her teaching. Joko’s actions caught some long-time students off guard and led one of her Dharma heirs to question her judgment.[1]
After years of declining health, Beck was placed under hospice care in June 2011 after her health rapidly deteriorated, she stopped eating and was dramatically losing weight. According to Beck’s daughter, Brenda, up until the end “She is happy as a clam and, as she told me, will die when she’s ready. She says it’s soon.” Beck died on June 15, 2011.[2] According to the Twitter account of fellow Zen teacher Joan Halifax, Beck’s last words were, ”This too is wonder.”[3]
Books
- Everyday Zen: Love and Work (edited by Steve Smith; 1989) ISBN 0-06-060734-3.
- Nothing Special: Living Zen (1993) ISBN 0-06-251117-3
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Joko Beck Books
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