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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.

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
Reality
Essential
Dream
Essentials
Around
Judgment
Judgments
Thoughts
Spinning
Percent
Ninety
Memories
Dreaming
Opinion
Heads
Future
Opinions

More quotes by Joko Beck

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Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others.
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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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Meditation is not about doing something
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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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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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Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.
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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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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.
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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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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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There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is.
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You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeking it.
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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.
Joko Beck
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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.
Joko Beck
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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