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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

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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
Whole
Tend
Giving
Objects
Displeases
Trying
Hurt
Pursuing
Think
Situation
Noticing
Thinking
Pleasure
Avoiding
Life
Pain
Hurts
People
Running
Situations
Give
Avoid

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There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.
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Meditation is not about doing something
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeking it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Life is a second-by-second miracle.
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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.
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Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.
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But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future—ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality.
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