Quotes About Contemplation

The other day a monk told me, "The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.

my fourth day in Rome, my shadow has still not darkened the door way of a church or a museum..

at any given moment, and that night, going back to

Zen masters always say that you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens. The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not run red with blood. Life continues to go on.

But why must everything always have a practical application?

the Zen masters always say that you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

Om Namah Shivaya. I honor the divinity that resides within me. ...I repeat it again. Again. And again. It's not so much that I'm meditating as unpacking the mantra carefully, the way you would unpack your grandmother's best china if it had been stored in a box for a long time, unused.

as Walt Whitman once wrote, stand 'apart from the pulling and hauling…amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary… both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it all.

The other day in prayer I said to God, "Look—I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch?

sometimes you count the days, sometimes you weigh them.

It all called to mind the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington's memorable explanation of how the universe works: "Something unknown is doing we don't know what." But the best part is: I don't need to know what.

no vemos nuestro reflejo en el agua en movimiento, sino en el agua quieta.

Our whole business therefore in this life," wrote Saint Augustine, rather Yogically, "is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen.

TEMPERANCE STARED

Sometimes I imagine a whole future made out of the moment after I've died and you are still sitting beside me.' 'You imagine I'll be there at your deathbed?' 'Yes.' 'And if I stayed away, would you live for ever?

Ao sairmos para o anoitecer dourado das ruas bizantinas, refleti como era estranho que, mesmo sob as circunstâncias mais extraordinárias, durante episódios mais perturbadores da vida, nos lugares mais distantes de casa e de tudo que nos é familiar, possam existir esses momentos de incontestável alegria.

I preferred solitude anyway; it was the medium in which I had been raised, in which I swam comfortably.

it forces concentration, and thus opens up the world.

Independence of vision is a good thing," Dorrin said. "So is thinking. But speaking and acting well require reflection—consideration.

I always carry the book of Holy Writ...and something to read...

which he needs time and privacy. What better way of keeping us in Cairo

He read it over twenty times and though the darkness that sang on held steady about him, the unhurried words fell bright through his mind, going down golden through deep water, and when one passed another came, ceaselessly, shining.

It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.