An Excerpt from Nothing Special: Living Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck and Steve Smith
In this practical volume, Charlotte Joko Beck answers questions from students and comes up with many creative ways to look at the Zen path. Here is an excerpt on not judging.
"There's a passage in the Dhammapada, verse 50: 'Let none find fault in others. Let none see omissions and commissions in others. But let one see one's own acts, done and undone.' This is a key aspect of our practice. Though practice may make us more aware of our tendency to judge others, in ordinary life we still do it. Because we are human, we judge one another. Someone does something that seems to us rude or unkind or thoughtless, and we can't help noticing it. Many times a day, we see people doing things that seem lacking in some way.
"It's not that everyone always acts appropriately. People often do just what we are objecting to. When they do what they do, however, it's not necessary for us to judge them. I'm not immune from this; I find myself judging others, also. We all do. So I recommend a practice to help us catch ourselves in the act of judging: whenever we say the name of another person, we should watch what we add to the name. What do we say or think about the person? What kind of label do we use? Do we put the person into some category? No person should be reduced to a label; yet because of our preferences and dislikes, we do it anyway.
"I suspect that if you do this practice, you'll find that you can't go for five minutes without judgment. It's amazing. We want other people's behavior to be just what we want — and when it's not, we judge them. Our waking life is full of such judgments."
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