Quotes About Stillness

Be still and quiet, tune in with the Infinite Intelligence, and continue in right thought, right feeling, and right action, and you will arrive at your goal.

A mind too active is no mind at all.

Make your heart like a lake, with calm, still surface, and great depths of kindness.

el conticinio, un latinajo, la hora de la noche en que todo guarda silencio de mutuo acuerdo

Presence is a noun, not a verb; it is a state of being, not doing. States of being are not highly valued in a culture that places a high priority on doing. Yet, true presence or "being with" another person carries with it a silent power.

I want to hold my breath for as long as it takes. I want to stop breathing just long enough to know what it would be like to be totally sitll. Like being a cough away from death. Not really there- not really here.

Silence moves faster when it's going backward.

Il y a des jours, des mois, des années interminables où il ne se passe presque rien. Il y a des minutes et des secondes qui contiennent tout un monde.

They spent their time doing nothing... they let intimacy fuse them.

Ce matin, c'est le grand gel et le silence. C'est le silence, mais le vent n'est pas bien mort ; il ondule encore un peu ; il bat encore un peu de la queue contre le ciel dur. Il n'y a pas encore de soleil. Le ciel est vide ; le ciel est tout gelé comme un linge étendu.

ISABELLE Je viendrai... Je viendrai... Mais je n'ai pas le sentiment que je serai particulièrement forte et volontaire, une fois disparue. Je sens très bien au contraire que ce qui me plaira dans la mort, c'est la paresses de la mort, c'est cette fluidité un peu dense te engourdie de la mort, que fait qu'en somme, il n'y a pas des morts, mais uniquement des noyés...

Go deeply into the urge to be silent and not the mental interference of how, where and when. If you follow silence to its source you can be taken by it in a moment.

When you become responsive to the solicitations of silence, you may be called to explore the invitation. This exploration is a kind of laboratory. You may sit and observe the coming and going of perceptions. You remain present to them but do not follow them. Following a thought is what maintains it. If you remain present without becoming an accomplice, agitation slows down through lack of fuel. In the absence of agitation you are taken by the resonance of stillness.

First you recognize stillness, then you are it. You feel yourself as autonomous, that is, not identified with what is all around you. And now true relation is possible.

The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.

When your mind is stable, move into shikantaza by just sitting. Allow whatever comes up to come up, whether it is a sound or a thought or a physical sensation. Observe it until it drops away. Just let whatever is present be present. Continue this way until the end of your sitting period.

Trauma waits for stillness. Lydia feels like a cracked egg, and she doesn't know if she's the shell or the yolk or the white. She is scrambled.

Trauma waits for stillness.

Lead us toward a speech, which is as beautiful as silence, and toward a silence, which is as beautiful as the sweetest and truest of words. (119)

Both In and Out of the Game   Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.   Walt Whitman

Some flavor of all of this would have remained undiscovered to me. If you try to observe the world for long enough through the perfect lens, then one day it will surely settle permanently into place, and then every object is a still life. You live in the moments between blinks.

If you try to observe the world for long enough through the perfect lens, then one day it will surely settle permanently into place, and then every object is a still life. You live in the moments between blinks.

As the storm washed over them and they huddled there not knowing their futures until it had passed and all was still. None of them ready. Thought they were in the middle. Not the end.

If you are in a state of intense presence you are free of thought, yet highly alert. If your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in, the mental noise returns, stillness is lost, you're back in time.