Quote

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

Joko Beck

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joko Beck
Age: 94 †
Born: 1917
Born: March 27
Died: 2011
Died: June 15
Author
Writer
New Jersey
United States
Charlotte Joko Beck
Always
Existential
People
Cover
Basic
Anxiety
Dies
Live
Something
Way

More quotes by Joko Beck

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.
Joko Beck
Image
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
Image
Life is a second-by-second miracle.
Joko Beck
Image
You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeking it.
Joko Beck
Image
Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.
Joko Beck
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.
Joko Beck
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality.
Joko Beck