Quotes About Contemplation

We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And

There must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men have used them for self-communion. Being

It was, in the night, as though I had been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a somber and immense mirror.

I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.

No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work— the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

brooding over the upper reaches, became

pisica z?cea în braÈ›ele ei într-o aristocrat? beatitudine È™i meditativ? ca un sfinx.

It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention.

I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took council with this great solitude - and the whisper has proved irresistibly fascinating.

La noche, sin importar cuán muda sea, nunca es totalmente silenciosa a los oídos atentos

consideration, whether by discourse or correspondence.

celebrated Cistercian intellectual and

If you want to understand your mind, sit down and observe it.

When we are with people and feeling bored, can we listen a little more carefully, stepping off the train of our own inner commenting? If we are sitting in meditation and feeling uninterested, can we come in closer to the object, not with force but with gentleness and care? What is this experience we call the breath? If someone were holding your head under water, would the breath be boring? Each breath is actually sustaining our life. Can we be with it fully, just once?

An interviewer once asked Mother Teresa what she says to God when she prays. "I don't say anything," she replied. "I just listen." Then the interviewer asked her what God says to her. "He doesn't say anything," said Mother Teresa. "He just listens. And if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you.

The last of these wholesome actions is meditation, the development of tranquillity and insight.

But in their deeper meaning, these refuges always point back to our own actions and mind states. Although there may be many false starts and dead ends as we begin our journey, if our interest is sincere, we soon make a life-changing discovery: what we are seeking is within us.

Some people think the longer you can sit, the wiser you must be. I have seen chickens sitting on their nests for days on end. Wisdom comes from being mindful at all times."3

Whenever we are mindful of a physical sensation — hardness, softness, pressure, vibration, heat, cold, lightness, heaviness — we are contemplating the first aggregate.

An interviewer once asked Mother Teresa what she says to God when she prays. "I don't say anything," she replied. "I just listen." Then the interviewer asked her what God says to her. "He doesn't say anything," said Mother Teresa. "He just listens. And if you don't understand that, I can't explain it to you."1

meditate upon thoughts is simply to be aware, as thoughts arise, that the mind is thinking, without getting involved in the content: not going off on a train of association, not analyzing the thought and why it came, but merely to be aware that at the particular moment "thinking" is happening

Let's take a drive into the middle of nowhere with a packet of Marlboro lights and talk about our lives.

All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.

Yossarian was not sure he liked being invested in.