Quotes About Mindfulness

I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.

A great musician once told me that one should never play a single note without hearing it, feeling that it is true, thinking it beautiful.

4It is hard to be carefree when you have many anxieties. But the more you have, the more necessary it is to feel carefree for a time, so that you will get some new ideas on how to deal with your anxieties.]

No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.

No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves today.

The body is sensitive. It registers every thought and feeling. Be tender with it.

I've decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn't only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one.

In prayer Jesus slows us down, teaches us to count how few days we have, and gifts us with wisdom. He reveals to us that we are so caught up in what is urgent that we have overlooked what is essential. He ends our indecision and liberates us from the oppression of false deadlines and myopic vision.

Coming to interior stillness requires waiting.

After reading Brodie, I've decided that if I had my life to live over again, I would not only climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets; I wouldn't only jettison my hot water bottle, raincoat, umbrella, parachute, and raft; I would not only go barefoot earlier in the spring and stay out later in the fall; but I would devote not one more minute to monitoring my spiritual growth. No, not one.

In the beginning, you will likely experience meditation as a struggle. It is a very odd struggle, since it is a struggle with yourself, a struggle between different parts of yourself, between the part of you that wants to meditate and the part of you that does not.

Whereas some schools of Buddhism distinguish more sharply between the preparatory practice of concentration and the liberating practice of insight, Zen views concentration and insight as two sides of the same coin: when the mind is cleared, settled, and focused, it naturally attains insight and manifests its innate wisdom.

Don't flee from boredom. Go all the way into it; go all the way through the bottom of boredom!

In general, the problem with secularized mindfulness techniques is that when they find it convenient, they abandon—or at least put out of sight on the sidelines— the crucial ethical and religious contexts in which these Buddhist meditative practices have traditionally been embedded.

Zen meditation is meant to bring an end to the delusory and destructive ego, not to serve it as a means for achieving its ends.

Something vital is lost when practices of mindfulness are transplanted from their original ethical and religious contexts into the contemporary context of neoliberal capitalism with its primary aim of profit based on maximizing productivity and consumption.

Our society has largely forgotten the importance of bodily posture for alertness, for digestion, and most importantly for one's psychophysical disposition. Zazen reminds the body, as well as the mind, of the beneficial effects of good posture. Moreover, zazen increases physical as well as mental flexibility, and in general it attunes our minds to the needs of the body, allowing the body to mindfully retune itself.

I recommend that you begin with short ten-minute meditation periods, once or twice a day, and over several weeks gradually lengthen your meditation periods to twenty-five minutes, even if you can only find time to do this once a day. Even for an experienced meditator, it often takes ten or fifteen minutes to really settle into a meditative state, and so it is not surprising that the minimum length of time for a meditation period in temples and monasteries is usually twenty-five minutes.

Keep in mind that meditation is a holistic discipline, and you are rehabilitating your posture and flexibility at the same time as you are training your mind—and, moreover, you are realizing how interconnected body and mind actually are.

To properly set out on the path to Zen, we must empty our cups—in other words, we need to open our minds.

Faith does play an important role in Buddhism, including in Zen: faith as preliminary trust and ultimately faith as true self-confidence.

Simply sit still, with a straight back, eyes partially but not completely closed. . . . Relax all your muscles. . . . Relax your mind. . . . Let the center of your awareness drop down into your lower abdomen. . . . Now breathe–deeply yet naturally. Thoughts will come and go. Just let them be. Don't pay them any attention. Don't feed them any energy, either by grasping on to them or by trying to force them to go away. Just breathe, just be.

Nothing is a blinding as neurotic self-pity. We walk around in a fog.