Quotes About Mindfulness

This equation has helped many people I know identify the difference between practicing happiness and pursuing it. When my happiness feels elusive, I tend to ask myself, "What am I not being grateful for, and what am I pursuing that's distracting me from that gratitude?

As Viktor Frankl wrote, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." You have the power to choose how you respond. You are a product of your decisions, not your conditions. In

That may seem like a brain tease, but think of it this way: "Wanting What You Have" is like practicing gratitude. It means appreciating the good fortune in your life. "Having What You Want," to me, means that you are pursuing something that will give you gratification, potentially to the neglect of what you already have. In other words, The

Wanting What You Have" is like practicing gratitude. It means appreciating the good fortune in your life. "Having What You Want," to me, means that you are pursuing something that will give you gratification, potentially to the neglect of what you already have.

So how can you avoid letting these subtle emotions get the best of you? Get some distance.

Picking out tiny chunks of work at a time stays the panic.

Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink [Dieting

Peter Bregman, a productivity guru and blogger for the Harvard Business Review, recommends a simple trick for dodging this fate. He advises us to set a timer that goes off once every hour, and when it beeps, we should ask ourselves, "Am I doing what I most need to be doing right now?

I found the only time I had to shut down—to become mindful of nothing more than the present moment—was whenever I was peeing.

I'd go into the bathroom, pee, close my eyes, and try to find a mental black dot. Then I'd float through that black dot for almost sixty seconds and be in nothing. I'd come out of the bathroom thinking how perfect I felt.

Everyone breathes in air, but it's a wise person who knows when to use that air to speak and when to exhale in silence.

I closed my eyes and willed my breath to slow, my conscious mind to fold itself inward. I could feel heat pulsing from my daughter's head, her frantic thoughts whirling like broken glass. I loosened my hold on my body and dropped into that whirlpool.

Try to remember that you are the instrument and I the doer. If you can hold on to this, no sin can touch you. Instrument

Anger and self-pity are useless emotions, so I push them away and speak calmly, even though my heart is breaking all over again.

made to the other women when I joined them at night. The pleasures that arise from sense-objects are bound to end, and thus they are only sources of pain. Don't get attached to them.

again: Let the past go. Be at ease. Allow the future to arrive at its own pace, unfurling its secrets when it will.

Let the past go. Be at ease. Allow the future to arrive at its own pace, unfurling its secrets when it will.

How, without detaching ourselves from the spell of the past, can we focus fully on the moment that faces us?

Avoid intense anger or hatred. Intense negative emotions rupture the protective webs, thereby attracting and enabling foreign intruders or negative elementals to overwhelm the person. As a result, the person becomes temporarily "insane" or "possessed" and does very bad things.

Practice only when you really want to practice and not because everybody is meditating. When you have decided to meditate regularly, make a schedule and follow it. Constancy of aim and effort and non-laziness is the key to success and spiritual development.

Thoughts and emotions are living beings so when you look at them and you do not react, you do not feed them. In this way they gradually lose their energy and just disintegrate.

Meditating regularly is like being fertilized. Throw the fertilizer on the ground and whatever is in the ground - either good or bad seeds - will grow. Everything, whether vice or virtue, is magnified. Unless a person in the spiritual path practices character-building, (s)he may tend to become worse.

When you eat with awareness, you find that there is more space, more beauty. You begin to watch yourself, to see yourself, and you notice how clumsy you are or how accurate you are…When you practice awareness, everything becomes majestic and good. You begin to see that you have been leading a different kind of life in the past. You had the essence of mindfulness already, but you hadn't discovered it.

Someone who is seriously interested in meditation should not expect any feedback or promises from the practice. Most