Quotes About Contemplation

Zazen is an activity that is an extension of the universe. Zazen is not the life of an individual, it's the universe that's breathing.

Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.

A mode of knowledge rooted in silence and intuitive insight which gives meaning to life but which cannot be explained in rational terms.

Life, this endless conversation with yourself. Silent in sanity, audible in madness.

Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.

although I love a rich life, I hate an overcrowded life. I believe in rumination and lose half the beauty of all things when I am deprived of the time to ruminate.

In the absence of wake-up calls, many of us never really confront the critical issues of life.

Try to realize it's all within yourself no one else can make you change, and to see you're only very small and life flows on within you and without you.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.

In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.

When going to the temple to adore Divinity neither say nor do any thing in the interim pertaining to the common affairs of life.

Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.

I seem to have spent a good part of my life - probably too much – in just standing and staring.

The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing.

She liked to imagine that when she passed the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was.

In every aspect of my life, I tend to look for the deeper side.

The life which is not examined is not worth living.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

"I do not want to get material life, do not want the sense-life, but something higher." That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.

I meditate on God's life and I read the scriptures. I read something about Him, go through it and spend a lot of time by myself.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.

Watch yourself as you go about your daily business and later reflect on what you saw, trying to identify the sources of distress in your life and thinking about how to avoid that distress.

I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed.

...what I dread more than anything else in this life is noise...silence helps you to go inward..anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence.