Quotes About Stillness

La guitarra en el ropero para siempre está colgada, nadie en ella toca nada ni hace sus cuerdas sonar.

La noche queda para quien es

WELCOMING ANGELS In the arduous simplicity of this moment I open my heart, mind, and soul to stillness. In the deeper quiet I sense the greater Life that is my life. I do not live only; I am lived. I do not breathe only; I am breathed. I am not only the one I appear to be but also the One who appears as me. —rabbi rami m. shapiro

RENEWAL Imagine not that life is all doing. Stillness, too, is life; and in that stillness the mind cluttered with busyness quiets, the heart reaching to win rests, and we hear the whispered truths of God. —rabbi rami m. shapiro

Noi amiamo il silenzio, non ci disturba. Quando il topo gioca vicino a noi, quando il vento del bosco fa frusciare le foglie, noi non abbiamo paura.

He wanted to believe that his own lack of movement had stopped all movement in the world, the way a hibernating frog abolishes winter.

So nothing will ever be written down again. Perhaps the act of writing is necessary only when nothing happens.

I felt in need of a great pilgrimage, so I sat still for three days…

Our work is to cross a treshold into emptiness and stillness. It is like entering an empty room that proves to hold a great presence. The apparent emptiness of simple presence is richer than the crowded experience of ordinary personality. We can either be empty with Spirit or full of ourselves.

Silence is not a lack of words. Silence is presence itself. (p. 26)

Sometimes I would make myself very still and try to imagine myself dead. I tried to invoke the feeling of the very last breath I would take.

I find January hard. Nothing really happens.

Paralysis is the first stage of wisdom.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Standing quite still I looked at him. Needless to say Konradin hadn't giggled. He hadn't clapped either. But he looked at me.

It is strange how people always speak quietly in the darkness before dawn.

The only way I know of to get in touch with what God wants is to be very, very, very quiet.

If you don't want to be grabbed by God," Zen teacher Jiyu Kennet said, "don't stare at a wall. Definitely don't sit still.

When I teach zazen I often tell people that it's kind of like a yoga class where there is only one posture and you hold it for a very long time.

When you do zazen, you're not trying to achieve a totally empty mind. That would be impossible. But you are trying to avoid the deliberate habitual manipulation of thoughts and images we usually engage in.

As the French philosopher Blaise Pascal famously said, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." It's a shame that simply being quiet is so difficult for us.

The solution typically lies in the stillness at the base of mind within that shadowy place most refuse to look.