Quotes About Mindfulness

The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us. It's like riding on a train sitting backwards. We can't see where we're headed, only where we've been. This is a very encouraging teaching, because it says that the source of wisdom is whatever is going to happen to us today. The source of wisdom is whatever is happening to us right at this very instant.

Right now, can you make an unconditional relationship with yourself? Just at the height you are, the weight you are, with the intelligence that you have, and your current burden of pain? Can you enter into an unconditional relationship with that?

Refraining is very powerful because it gives us an opportunity to acknowledge when we're caught and then to get unstuck.

Every challenge presents an opportunity for spiritual growth, whether it's a small irritation or when everything as you've known it falls apart.

According to this very simple teaching, becoming immersed in these four pairs of opposites—pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and disgrace, and praise and blame—is what keeps us stuck in the pain of samsara.

Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have.

Every time we are willing to let the story line go, and every time we are willing to let go at the end of the out-breath, that's fundamentally renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back.

the same old demons will always come up until finally you have learned your lesson, the lesson they came to teach you.

Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.

We can use our difficulties and problems to awaken our hearts.

The reason we're often not there for others - whether for our child or our mother or someone who is insulting us or someone who frightens us - is that we're not there for ourselves.

If we want to learn about our future, we should look at what we're doing now.

Refraining—not habitually acting out impulsively—has something to do with giving up entertainment mentality. Through refraining, we see that there's something between the arising of the craving—or the aggression or the loneliness or whatever it might be—and whatever action we take as a result. There's something there in us that we don't want to experience, and we never do experience, because we're so quick to act.

Gradually we can begin to cherish the preciousness of our whole life just as it is, with its ups and downs, its failures and successes, its roughness and smoothness.

The concepts of problem and solution can keep us stuck in thinking that there is an enemy and a saint or a right way and a wrong way.

The basic ground of compassionate action is the importance of working with rather than struggling against, and what I mean by that is working with your own unwanted, unacceptable stuff, so that when the unacceptable and unwanted appears out there, you relate to it based on having worked with loving-kindness for yourself. Then there is no condescension.

So the challenge is to notice the emotional tug of shenpa when it arises and to stay with it for one and a half minutes without the story line. Can you do this once a day, or many times throughout the day, as the feeling arises? This is the challenge. This is the process of unmasking, letting go, opening the mind and heart.

In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them thinking, and return to the breath.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

The point is that our true nature is not some ideal that we have to live up to. It's who we are right now, and that's what we can make friends with and celebrate.

Honestly, that is the best advice for life: no note cards.

It's painful to face how we harm others, and it takes a while. It's a journey that happens because of our commitment to gentleness and honesty, our commitment to staying awake, to being mindful. Because of mindfulness, we see our desires and our aggression, our jealousy and our ignorance. We don't act on them; we just see them. Without mindfulness

This is a standard meditation instruction that you can embody in the entirety of your life: do not act out and do not repress. See what happens if you don't do either of those things.

There is a deep-seated tendency, it's almost a compulsion, to distract ourselves, even when we're not consciously feeling uncomfortable. Everybody feels a little bit of an itch all the time. There's a background hum of edginess, boredom, restlessness. As I've said, during my time in retreat where there were almost no distractions, even there I experienced this deep uneasiness. The