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Charlotte Joko Beck

Charlotte Joko Beck

1917 CE2011 CE · Modern · Los Angeles, CA

March 27, 1917 – June 15, 2011

Charlotte Joko Beck (1917–2011) was an American Zen teacher who founded the Zen Center of San Diego and the Ordinary Mind Zen School. A dharma heir of Taizan Maezumi, she became known for a down-to-earth approach that wove Zen practice together with attention to everyday psychological life, expressed in her widely read books Everyday Zen and Nothing Special. She died in 2011.

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Los Angeles, CACalifornia, USA

What they did here

DOCUMENTED: became a dharma heir of Taizan Maezumi, also studying with Yasutani and Sōen Nakagawa.

About Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles, California, USA, was an early West Coast centre of American Zen. The pioneer Japanese teacher Nyogen Senzaki opened a meditation 'zendo' there from the 1920s, and the Sōtō priest Taizan Maezumi founded the Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1967, training a generation of Western teachers.

In Los Angeles, CA at the same time

Nyogen Senzaki, Taizan Maezumi, Bernie Glassman

Across the traditions, in Los Angeles, CA at the same time

See other sages who lived in Los Angeles, CA

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Charlotte Joko Beck’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Charlotte Joko Beck’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.