Joko Beck Quotes

“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

“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.'”

— Joko Beck

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

“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

“Underneath our nice, friendly facades there is great unease. If I were to scratch below the surface of anyone I would find fear, pain, and anxiety running amok. We all have ways to cover them up. We overeat, over-drink, overwork; we watch too much television.”

— Joko Beck

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

— Joko Beck

“We are caught in the contradiction of finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which causes us a lot of misery, and at the same time being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless nature of life. So we begin looking for an answer to the puzzle.”

— Joko Beck

“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.”

— Joko Beck

“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.'”

— Joko Beck

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

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

— Joko Beck

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

— Joko Beck

“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

“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

“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

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

— Joko Beck

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 ...

— Joko Beck

“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

“Life is a second-by-second miracle.”

— Joko Beck

“Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple-except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are. When we substitute our ideas about what should be (such notions as "I should not be angry or confused or unwilling") for our life as it truly is, then we're off base and our practice is barren.”

— Joko Beck

“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

“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.”

— Joko Beck

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

— Joko Beck

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

— Joko Beck

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

— Joko Beck

“Meditation is not about doing something”

— Joko Beck

“Caught in the self-centered dream, only suffering;
holding to self-centered thoughts, exactly the dream;
each moment, life as it is, the only teacher;
being just this moment, compassion's way.”

— Joko Beck

We 'rid ourselves of conceptual thought' when, by persistent observation, we recognize the unreality of our self-centered thoughts. Then we can remain dispassionate and fundamentally unaffected by them. That does not mean to be a cold person. Rather, it means not to be caught and dragged around by circumstances.

— Joko Beck

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

— Joko Beck

“What does open us is sharing our vulnerabilities. Sometimes we see a couple who has done this difficult work over a lifetime. In the process, they have grown old together. We can sense the enormous comfort, the shared quality of ease between these people. It is beautiful, and very rare. Without this quality of openness and vulnerability, partners don't really know each other; they are one image living with another image ...”

— Joko Beck

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

— Joko Beck

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

— Joko Beck