38+ Joko Beck Quotes On Happiness, Education And World

Joko Beck was an American Zen teacher and author. She was the founder of the Ordinary Mind Zen School and wrote several books on Zen Buddhism, including Everyday Zen: Love and Work and Nothing Special: Living Zen. She was known for her compassionate and down-to-earth approach to Zen practice. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Joko Beck on life, happiness, leadership.

Top 10 Joko Beck Quotes

1. 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.
2. Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.
3. But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality.
4. There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.
5. None of us would choose to be Sisyphus; yet in a sense, we all are.
6. In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice but compassion.
7. You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeking it.
8. We are always doing something to cover up our basic existential anxiety. Some people live that way until the day they die.
9. To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being.
• Meditation is not about doing something
• Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.
• An old Zen rule of thumb is not to answer until one has been asked three times.

Joko Beck Quotes About Life

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

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

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

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

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. — Joko Beck

Life is a second-by-second miracle. — 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

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

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

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

Joko Beck Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life Lessons by Joko Beck

Joko Beck's work emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and living in the present moment. She encourages us to be aware of our thoughts and feelings, and to take responsibility for our actions. By cultivating self-awareness and compassion, we can create meaningful lives that are filled with joy and peace.