Charlotte Joko Beck Quotes

#1. Daily sitting is our bread and butter, the basic stuff of dharma. Without it we tend to be confused.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#2. Who is there?" asks God. "It is I." "Go away," God says ... Later ... "Who is there?" asks God. "It is Thou." "Enter," replies God.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#3. We have a fictional "I" that we try to love and protect. We spend most of our life playing this futile game. "What will happen? How will it go? Will I get something out of it?" I, I, I - it's a mind game of illusion, and we are lost in it.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#4. 103When we try to be something that we are not, we become the slave of a rigid, fixed mind, following a rule about how things have to be. The violence and the anger in us remain unnoticed, because we are caught in our pictures of how we should be.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#5. The best way to let go is to notice the thoughts as they come up and to acknowledge them.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#6. If we have the patience to wait until the mud (our mind) settles and the water is clear, if we remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself, the right words will arise, without our thinking about them.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#7. At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#8. We all have to practice, and we have to practice with all of our might for the rest of our lives.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#9. Living Zen is nothing special: life as it is. Zen is life itself, nothing added.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#10. 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.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#11. Though for short periods it seems to be distinguishable as a separate event, the water in the whirlpools is just the river itself.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#12. We enter a discipline like Zen practice so that we can learn to live in a sane way.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#13. Joy is being willing for things to be as they are.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#14. That's essentially what Zen practice is about: functioning from moment to moment.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#15. When I watch my mind and stay with my body, out of that comes some course of action.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#16. Doing one thing at a time and giving oneself wholly to doing it is the most efficient way one can possibly live, because there's no blockage in the organism whatsoever. When we live and work in that way, we are extremely efficient without being rushed. Life is very smooth.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#17. Joy is being the circumstances of our life just as they are.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#18. 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.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#19. Who knows how we should be? We simply do our best, over and over and over.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#20. If we can accept things just the way they are, we're not going to be greatly upset by anything.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#21. 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.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#22. When we're lost in thought, when we're dreaming, what have we lost? We've lost reality. Our life has escaped us.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#23. If we can figure everything out, if we can be so smart that we can fit everything into some sort of a plan or order, a complete intellectual understanding, then perhaps we won't be threatened.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#24. 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.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#25. Religion really means to rejoin that which seems to be separate.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#26. My dog doesn't worry about the meaning of life.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#27. In practice, we return over and over again to perception, to just sitting. Practice is just hearing, just seeing, just feeling.

Charlotte Joko Beck

#28. If from morning to night we just took care of one thing after another, thoroughly and completely and without accompanying thoughts, such as "I'm a good person for doing this" or "Isn't it wonderful, that I can take care of everything?," then that would be sufficient.

Charlotte Joko Beck