List of Joko Beck Quotes

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.

Meditation Is Not About Doing Something

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.

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.

None Of Us Would Choose To Be Sisyphus; Yet In A Sense, We All Are.

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.

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.

We Tend To Run Our Whole Life Trying To Avoid All That Hurts Or Displeases Us, Noticing The Objects, People, Or Situations That We Think Will Give Us Pain Or Pleasure, Avoiding One And Pursuing The Other.

There Is No End To The Opening Up That Is Possible For A Human Being.

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.

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.