Quotes About Mindfulness

unbalanced view of the nature of sensory experience.

a beginning meditator can sometimes get a taste of the stage that, according to the Visuddhimagga, immediately precedes enlightenment.

your attention is pointed directly toward the richness of the Source.

It's not intuitively obvious that noting Gone would bring fulfillment, but many people over the ages have discovered this, hence the Sanskrit word nirvana. Are there any other counterintuitive "Gone goodies"? Indeed, yes. There is one more major one.

Gone points to the Source of your own consciousness.

The myriad of complex meanings is simplified into a tetrad of basic states: mental image without any accompanying mental talk, mental talk without any accompanying mental image, image and talk at the same time, or absence of both image and talk (a moment of total mental tranquility).

But in my experience as a teacher, enlightenment usually sneaks up on people. Sometimes they don't quite realize how enlightened they've become over time because they have gradually acclimatized to it.

A sensory experience is just some tiny part of the universe—the wind touching your face, an act of making love, tying your shoes, being angry with a student—yet when we experience any of these completely, it links us to the fullness of Creation and the vacuity of the Creator.

Five decades ago, some very kind people in Japan slipped me the secret: you can dramatically extend life—not by multiplying the number of your years, but by expanding the fullness of your moments. Knowing that I have

I make no secret of the fact that I would rather lie on a sofa than sweep beneath it.

You prepare as best you can for the bad times- then live every moment with joy.

Our thoughts are causes. You sow a thought, you reap an action. You sow an action, you reap a habit. You sow a habit, you reap a character. You sow a character, you reap a destiny. It all starts with a thought.

Super achievers don't waste time in unproductive thoughts, esoteric thoughts or catastrophic thoughts. They think constructively and they know that their level of thinking determines their success.

Success is not an accident. It is the result of your attitude and your attitude is a choice. Hence success is a matter of choice and not chance.

If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a blessing over them before and after.

As I got older, I began to appreciate eating with my hands, which allowed me to savor the warm food through pliant fingers rather than a cold, hard fork or spoon. In fact, Indians believe that hands add flavor to food.

All we can do is to try in each moment, whatever we are doing, to practice the Buddha Way; we just keep opening the hand of thought and continuing to practice. There is no time when one can say, "I'm finished—now I have finally reached the level of an enlightened person.

Shikantaza is not a practice carried out by the individual. It is, rather, a practice in which we let go of the individual karmic self that is constantly seeking to satisfy its own desires.

Within nirvana we can appreciate both positive and negative experiences as simply the scenery of our lives.

Pain was simply pain, pleasure was simply pleasure; for him they were no longer part of the cycle of suffering.

When we wear the okesa, we are also farming. This is the meaning of "robe of virtuous field" (fukuden-e). This body and mind is the field we work. It is not a field of fortune from which we can expect to receive blessings without practice. We have to cultivate our life.

When practicing shikantaza, we do nothing but sit with the whole body and mind. We do nothing with the mind, so this is not actually a meditation practice. In this zazen we don't practice with a mantra or contemplate anything. We don't count or watch the breath. We don't try to concentrate the mind on any particular object or use any other meditation techniques; we really just sit with both body and mind.

Within this world of likes and dislikes, we do not perceive the myriad dharmas as they really are.

If we open the hand of thought that grasps "this person" (that is, our self) as the center of the world, then our lives broaden and our hearts open to all beings. This is the basic teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha.