In Memoriam
It came to my attention last month that the American Zen master Charlotte Joko Beck died June 15, 2011 at age 94. I only know of her through her rather odd books such as, Everyday Zen. For anyone who has read classical Zen literature Charlotte Joko Beck's Zen seems more like Western self-help psychology repackaged under the name, Zen. There is nothing Buddhist or Zen in her booksthat's my opinion.
Almost all of what she has written is somewhat like doing a movie about Mark Twains book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), without including Jim, the slave. (Checking out the Internet Movie Data base [IMDb], in 1955 there was a made for TV movie, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that didnt have a Jim in it! I cant find Jim listed in the cast.)
I believe that the beginner shouldn't read pop Buddhist teachers like Charlotte Joko Beck until they have studied classical Zen which came out of China before and during the Sung period. There is plenty of such material available for the needs of a beginner in bookstores and online. After a year or two of reading classical Zenyeah, okaytake a look at Beck's books. There is absolutely no connection between, say the Zen of Huang-po and the Zen of Charlotte Joko Beck. One is helping you paddle to the other shore of nirvana; the other (Beck's) is helping you cope, for example with "with a difficult person" which she says is nirvana but is actually samsara.
