Joko Beck Quotes, Thoughts and images

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

An old Zen rule of thumb is not to answer until one has been asked three times.

Life is a second-by-second miracle.

We are always doing something to cover up our basic existential anxiety. Some people live that way until the day they die.

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.

There are many people in the world who feel that if only they had a bigger car, a nicer house, better vacations, a more understanding boss, or a more interesting partner, then their life would work. We all go through that one. Slowly we wear out most of our 'if onlies.

We learn in our guts, not just in our brain, that a life of joy is not in seeking happiness, but in experiencing and simply being the circumstances of our life as they are; not in fulfilling personal wants, but in fulfilling the needs of life.

You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeking it.

There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being.

Trust in things being as they are is the secret of life. But we don't want to hear that. I can absolutely trust that in the next year my life is going to be changed, different, yet always just the way it is.

None of us would choose to be Sisyphus; yet in a sense, we all are.

To some degree we all find life difficult, perplexing, and oppressive. Even when it goes well, as it may for a time, we worry that it probably won't keep on that way.

Meditation is not about doing something

Whenever we say a person's name, notice whether we have stated more than a fact. For example, the judgment, 'She's thoughtless' goes beyond the facts 'She said she'd call me and she didn't.