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We are always doing something to cover up our basic existential anxiety. Some people live that way until the day they die.
Joko Beck
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Joko Beck
Age: 94 †
Born: 1917
Born: March 27
Died: 2011
Died: June 15
Author
Writer
New Jersey
United States
Charlotte Joko Beck
Something
Way
Always
Existential
People
Cover
Basic
Anxiety
Dies
Live
More quotes by 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
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
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
Life is a second-by-second miracle.
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
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
You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeking it.
Joko Beck
Meditation is not about doing something
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 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
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
Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.
Joko Beck
There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.
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
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
There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being.
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
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
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
