Quotes About Contemplation

When he closed his eyes his mind began to roam, and only with his eyes closed did he not feel others watching and observing him. With his eyes closed, there was freedom and he could wander.

Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.

You contemplate and you wander without any worries, between heaven and earth, in your own private world, and in this way you acquire supreme freedom.

The search for religion is the starting point of thought.

The room was filled with a kind of stillness. Not simply an absence of noise, but an accumulation of layers of silence...

The sound of the rain seemed louder in the study, as if the sky were actually lower there.

The rays of the setting sun stretched far into the room. Root traced the circles around the twin primes as the steam from the rice cooker floated in from the kitchen. The Professor stared through the window as if he were looking out at the desert, though all he could really see was his tiny, neglected garden.

I stood in the middle of that emptiness, feeling myself on the verge of being drawn into its terrible depth

When I stand here in front of the cabinet, my heart feels like a silkworm slumbering in its cocoon.

and I found myself unable to resist turning around to see whether my footsteps were following me as I made my way across the field of white.

I'm thinking at the moment. Thinking. And to have my thought interrupted is like being strangled. Don't you know that barging in here when I'm with my numbers is as rude as interrupting someone in the bathroom?

Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.

As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.

history is like a mirror that helps you to see through yourself.

That's the reason why I chose to spend my last years here and die in my house on the seashore. A man who looks at the sea turns his back on the misfortunes of the world. Somehow, he resigns himself to them.

Is there a life outside oneself? Is there a reality outside oneself?

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Still, how I nearly felt. In the midst of all that looking.

How do you think the Dharma is able to describe the death process in such detail? It's not a whole bunch of lamas sit around speculating on what might happen. It's because they actually go through it. Frequently.

Mind is the forerunner of all actions.

renunciation is the start of our inner journey. Instead of fixating on external circumstances, we look within.

It is not morbid, not depressing to contemplate one's own death. Completely the opposite! It is only when we have faced the reality of our own death that we really know how to live.

The quiet this evening is unsettling. I hadn't realised how loud life was until it all stopped.

It was time for some serious thinking, and Jasper didn't reckon he should do that on an empty lung. Empty head was one thing; lungs needed smoke to survive – so his ol' Pap'd said.