Joko Quotes & Sayings

Joy is being willing for things to be as they are. — Charlotte Joko Beck

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

I was beginning to realize that zazen was not a cure-all. People who attain a certain degree of understanding of zazen begin to understand zazen, period. I had to remind myself not to expect Joko to be equipped to advise me how to live my life or to decide important ethical questions such as the proper stance of religion toward war. — Arthur Braverman

At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. — Charlotte Joko Beck

We are caught in the contradiction of finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which causes us a lot of misery, and at the same time being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless nature of life. So we begin looking for an answer to the puzzle. — Joko Beck

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

Flee from those who seek to make you doubt yourself! — Joko Ono

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

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

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

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. — Joko Beck

Sometimes, I would have preferred be deaf not to hear negative words and all kinds of insanities.
Sometimes, I would have preferred be blind not to watch certain scenes of everyday life who dishonor humanity. — Joko Ono

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

Caught in the self-centered dream, only suffering;
holding to self-centered thoughts, exactly the dream;
each moment, life as it is, the only teacher;
being just this moment, compassion's way. — Joko Beck

When we have a corporation, we must know what the customer wants, what the customers needs. Also, the politician must know what the people want, what the people need. — Joko Widodo

I'm willing to work with all parties to reform Indonesia. — Joko Widodo

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

There is one thing in life that you can always rely on: life being as it is. — Joko Beck

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

Our failure to know joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive. — Joko Beck

But opinions, judgments, memories, dreaming about the future - ninety percent of the thoughts spinning around in our heads have no essential reality. — Joko Beck

For me, democracy must deliver a better life for the people. — Joko Widodo

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

Who knows how we should be? We simply do our best, over and over and over. — Charlotte Joko Beck

We need peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region. It is important to have political and security stability to build up our economic growth. — Joko Widodo

Renunciation Suzuki Roshi said, "Renunciation is not giving up the things of this world, but accepting that they go away." Everything is impermanent; sooner or later everything goes away. Renunciation is a state of nonattachment, acceptance of this going away. Impermanence is, in fact, just another name for perfection. Leaves fall; debris and garbage accumulate; out of the debris come flowers, greenery, things that we think are lovely. Destruction is necessary. A good forest fire is necessary. The way we interfere with forest fires may not be a good thing. Without destruction, there could be no new life; and the wonder of life, the constant change, could not be. We must live and die. And this process is perfection itself. — Charlotte Joko Beck

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. — Charlotte Joko Beck

To find out if you really are friends with someone, consider what you can sacrifice to help him. — Joko Ono

An old Zen rule of thumb is not to answer until one has been asked three times. — Joko Beck

In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice but compassion. — Joko Beck

Living Zen is nothing special: life as it is. Zen is life itself, nothing added. — Charlotte Joko Beck

My dog doesn't worry about the meaning of life. — Charlotte Joko Beck

Indonesia is the world's third-largest democracy. And we also have the world's largest Muslim population. This demonstrates that democracy and Islam are not incompatible. Terrorism is not associated with any religion. — Joko Widodo

Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple-except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are. When we substitute our ideas about what should be (such notions as "I should not be angry or confused or unwilling") for our life as it truly is, then we're off base and our practice is barren. — Joko Beck

None of us would choose to be Sisyphus; yet in a sense, we all are. — Joko Beck

Most of our difficulties, our hopes, and our worries are empty fantasies. Nothing has ever existed except this moment. That's all there is. That's all we are. Yet most human beings spend 50 to 90 percent or more of their time in their imagination, living in fantasy. We think about what has happened to us, what might have happened, how we feel about it, how we should be different, how others should be different, how it's all a shame, and on and on; it's all fantasy, all imagination. Memory is imagination. Every memory that we stick to devastates our life. — Charlotte Joko Beck

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

To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like. — Joko Beck

When we refuse to work with our disappointment, we break the Precepts: rather than experience the disappointment, we resort to anger, greed, gossip, criticism. Yet it's the moment of being that disappointment which is fruitful; and, if we are not willing to do that, at least we should notice that we are not willing. The moment of disappointment in life is an incomparable gift that we receive many times a day if we're alert. This gift is always present in anyone's life, that moment when 'It's not the way I want it! — Charlotte Joko Beck

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. — Joko Beck

To deal with radicalism and extremism, we need to deal with economic inequality. This is what I learned from my experience in Solo and then in Jakarta. — Joko Widodo

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

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

You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeking it. — Joko Beck

Essentially, this extra structure covering our life has no reality. It has come to be there because of the misuse of our minds. It's not a question of getting rid of it, since it has no reality; but it is a question of seeing its nature. And as we see its nature, instead of it being so thick and dark, the covering becomes more transparent: we see through it. Enlightenment (bringing in more light) is what happens in practice. Actually we're not getting rid of a structure, we're seeing through it as the dream it is, and as we realize its true nature its whole function in our life weakens; and at the same time we can see more accurately what is going on in our daily life. It's as if we have to go full circle. Our life is always all right. There's nothing — Charlotte Joko Beck

When I watch my mind and stay with my body, out of that comes some course of action. — Charlotte Joko Beck

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

What does open us is sharing our vulnerabilities. Sometimes we see a couple who has done this difficult work over a lifetime. In the process, they have grown old together. We can sense the enormous comfort, the shared quality of ease between these people. It is beautiful, and very rare. Without this quality of openness and vulnerability, partners don't really know each other; they are one image living with another image ... — Joko Beck

Meditation practice is simply moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. — Joko Beck

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

It's now our responsibility to prove to ourselves, to other nations, and especially to our children and our grandchildren, that politics is full of fun; politics has some wisdom. Politics is freedom. — Joko Widodo

Religion really means to rejoin that which seems to be separate. — Charlotte Joko Beck

Trust in things being as they are is the secret of life. But we don't want to hear that. I can absolutely trust that in the next year my life is going to be changed, different, yet always just the way it is. — Joko Beck

I struggle with my life because instead of just doing what needs to be done, I fight the underlying fear; I try to unlock the door. Paradoxically, the only way to unlock the door is to forget the door.
Instead of obsessing about the locked door, we need to be going about our lives, which means cleaning up the house, taking care of the baby, going to work, whatever. — Charlotte Joko Beck

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. — Charlotte Joko Beck

There are many people in the world who feel that if only they had a bigger car, a nicer house, better vacations, a more understanding boss, or a more interesting partner, then their life would work. We all go through that one. Slowly we wear out most of our 'if onlies.' — Joko Beck

Anxiety is always a gap between the way things are and the way we think they ought to be. Anxiety is something that stretches between the real and unreal. Our human desire is to avoid what's real and instead to be with our ideas about the world:
"I'm terrible." "You're terrible." "You're wonderful." The idea is separated from reality and anxiety is the gap between the idea and the reality that things are just as they are.
When we cease to believe in the object that we've created
which is off to one side of reality, so to speak
things snap back to the center. That's what being centered means. The anxiety then fades out. — Charlotte Joko Beck

If I were to tell you that your life is already perfect, whole, and complete just as it is, you would think I was crazy. Nobody believes his or her life is perfect. And yet there is something within each of us that basically knows we are boundless, limitless. — Joko Beck

In my opinion, the most important thing in governance is management control. — Joko Widodo

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

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

Joy is being the circumstances of our life just as they are. — Charlotte Joko Beck

Life is a second-by-second miracle. — Joko Beck

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

The weight of words.
Words can be fearsome weapons, tools or means powerful! — Joko Ono

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

When bad news sells, money politics buys. — Toba Beta

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

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

There is no end to the opening up that is possible for a human being. — Joko Beck

A man who cheats on the mother of his children, the woman with whom he works and to whom he said I love you, is not worthy of being a friend. — Joko Ono

Meditation is not about doing something — Joko Beck

That's essentially what Zen practice is about: functioning from moment to moment. — Charlotte Joko Beck

When we seek from Zen (or from any spiritual path) the fulfillment of our fantasies, we separate from the earth and sky, from our loved ones, from our aching backs and hearts, from the very soles of our feet. Such fantasies insulate us for a time; yet in ten thousand ways reality intrudes, and our lives become anxious scurrying, quiet desperation, confusing melodrama. — Charlotte Joko Beck

If we cease looking, searching, what are we left with? We're left with what's been right there at the center all the time. Underneath all that searching there is distress. There is unease. The minute that we realize that, we see that the point isn't the search, but rather the distress and unease which motivate the search. That's the magic moment - when we realize that searching outside of ourselves is not the way. — Charlotte Joko Beck

To sit a long sesshin is a major blow to our hopes and dreams, the barriers to enlightenment. And to say that there is no hope is not at all pessimistic. There can be no hope because there is nothing but this very moment. When we hope, we are anxious because we get lost between where we are and where we hope to be. No hope (nonattachment, the enlightened state) is a life of settledness, of equanimity, of genuine thought and emotion. It is the fruit of true practice, always beneficial to oneself and to others, and worth the endless devotion and practice it entails. — Charlotte Joko Beck

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

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

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

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

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

In practice, we return over and over again to perception, to just sitting. Practice is just hearing, just seeing, just feeling. — Charlotte Joko Beck

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

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

How do we know if our practice is a real practice? Only by one thing: more and more, we just see the wonder. What is the wonder? I don't know. We can't know such things through thinking. But we always know it when it's there. — Joko Beck

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

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

I don't mind being called a puppet. But I'm the puppet of the people. — Joko Widodo