Quotes from Charlotte Joko Beck

In practice, we work with the complex of physical sensation and thought that is "I feel hurt." If we totally experience the sensations and thought, then the "feeling hurt" evaporates. I never would say that we shouldn't feel what we feel.

When we discover Zen practice, we may hold out a hope that it is going to solve our problems and make our life perfect. But Zen practice simply returns us to life as it is. Being our lives more and more is what Zen practice is about. Our lives are simply what they are, and Zen helps us to recognize that fact. The thought If I do this practice patiently enough, everything will be different is simply another belief system, another version of the promise that is never kept.

Zazen is actually not complicated. The real problem is, we don' t want to do it. If my boyfriend begins to look at other women, how long am I going to be willing simply to experience that? We all have problems constantly, but our willingness just to be is very low on our list of priorities, until we have practiced long enough to have faith in just being, so that solutions can appear naturally. Another mark of a maturing practice is the development of such trust and faith.

When we're engaged in pure activity, we're a presence, an awareness. But that's all we are. And that doesn't feel like anything. People feel that the so-called enlightened state is flooded with emotional and loving feelings. But true love or compassion is simply to be nonseparate from the object. Essentially, it's a flow of activity in which we do not exist as a being separate from our activity.

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.

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.

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

There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we're stuck in our thoughts. We're out of touch with the open space that is always right here.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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. The mark of mature students is that most of the time, they don't do something else. They're just here, living their life. Nothing special.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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