Joko Beck Quotes

Quotes about:

• Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.

  Joko Beck

  Inspirational, Life, Depression

  151 Copy quote

• Awareness is our true self; it's what we are. So we don't have to try to develop awareness; we simply need to notice how we block awareness with our thoughts, our fantasies, our opinions, and our judgments. We're either in awareness, which is our natural state, or we're doing something else.

  Joko Beck

  Uplifting, Block, Self

  46 Copy quote

• Most of our difficulties, our hopes, and our worries are empty fantasies. Nothing has ever existed except this moment. That's all there is. That's all we are. Yet most human beings spend 50 to 90 percent or more of their time in their imagination, living in fantasy. We think about what has happened to us, what might have happened, how we feel about it, how we should be different, how others should be different, how it's all a shame, and on and on; it's all fantasy, all imagination. Memory is imagination. Every memory that we stick to devastates our life.

  Joko Beck

  Memories, Thinking, Imagination

  64 Copy quote

• All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That's all I can do. The rest is the dream of the ego.

  Joko Beck

  Dream, Work, Who I Am

  36 Copy quote

• We have to face the pain we have been running from. In fact, we need to learn to rest in it and let its searing power transform us.

  Joko Beck

  Running, Pain, Needs

  59 Copy quote

• There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we're stuck in our thoughts. We're out of touch with the open space that is always right here.

  Joko Beck

  Sorry, Space, Foundation

  48 Copy quote

• Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.

  Joko Beck

  Life, Hurt, Moving

  "Mindfully Crazy" by Mack Paul, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 21, 2013.

  50 Copy quote

• Enlightenment is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.

  Joko Beck

  Goal, Enlightenment, Absence

  53 Copy quote

• Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.

  Joko Beck

  Joy, Willing

  "Nothing Special: Living Zen". Book by Charlotte Joko Beck, 1993.

  28 Copy quote

• Life is a second-by-second miracle.

  Joko Beck

  Miracle, Life Is

  12 Copy quote

• In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice but compassion.

  Joko Beck

  Spiritual, Compassion, Maturity

  11 Copy quote

• It's of no use to look back and say, "I should have been different." At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.

  Joko Beck

  Should Have, Guilt, Different

  28 Copy quote

• To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like.

  Joko Beck

  Life Is Like, World, Judgment

  10 Copy quote

• There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.

  Joko Beck

  Things In Life, Rely, One Thing

  25 Copy quote

• When we refuse to work with our disappointment, we break the Precepts: rather than experience the disappointment, we resort to anger, greed, gossip, criticism. Yet it's the moment of being that disappointment which is fruitful; and, if we are not willing to do that, at least we should notice that we are not willing. The moment of disappointment in life is an incomparable gift that we receive many times a day if we're alert. This gift is always present in anyone's life, that moment when 'It's not the way I want it!

  Joko Beck

  Disappointment, Gossip, Greed

  38 Copy quote

• Body tension will always be present if our good feeing is just ordinary, self-centered happiness. Joy has no tension in it, because joy accepts whatever is as it is.

  Joko Beck

  Self, Joy, Ordinary

  18 Copy quote

• We are just living this moment; we don't have to live 150,000 moments at once. We are only living one. That's why I say you might as well practice with each moment.

  Joko Beck

  Inspirational, Practice, Might

  18 Copy quote

• But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality.

  Joko Beck

  Dream, Memories, Future

  42 Copy quote

• We're constantly waking up to what we're about, what we're really doing in our lives. And the fact is, that's painful. But there's no possibility of freedom without this pain.

  Joko Beck

  Pain, Freedom, Wake Up

  9 Copy quote

• With unfailing kindness, your life always presents what you need to learn. Whether you stay home or work in an office or whatever, the next teacher is going to pop right up.

  Joko Beck

  Spiritual, Teacher, Kindness

  40 Copy quote

• My dog doesn't worry about the meaning of life. She may worry if she doesn't get her breakfast, but she doesn't sit around worrying whether she will get fulfilled or liberated or enlightened. As long as she gets some food and a little affection, her life is fine. But we human beings are not like dogs. We have self-centered minds which get us into plenty of trouble. If we do not come to understand the error in the way we think, our self-awareness, which is our greatest blessing, is also our downfall.

  Joko Beck

  Dog, Thinking, Blessing

  8 Copy quote

• How do we know if our practice is a real practice? Only by one thing: more and more, we just see the wonder. What is the wonder? I don't know. We can't know such things through thinking. But we always know it when it's there.

  Joko Beck

  Spiritual, Real, Thinking

  30 Copy quote

• If I were to tell you that your life is already perfect, whole, and complete just as it is, you would think I was crazy. Nobody believes his or her life is perfect. And yet there is something within each of us that basically knows we are boundless, limitless.

  Joko Beck

  Crazy, Believe, Thinking

  37 Copy quote

• Practice has to be a process of endless disappointment. We have to see that everything we demand (and even get) eventually disappoints us. This discovery is our teacher.

  Joko Beck

  Teacher, Disappointment, Discovery

  23 Copy quote

• We have self-centered minds which get us into plenty of trouble. If we do not come to understand the error in the way we think, our self-awareness, which is our greatest blessing, is also our downfall.

  Joko Beck

  Blessing, Thinking, Errors

  22 Copy quote

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