Quotes About Mindfulness

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better.

Whatever you're given can wake you up or put you to sleep. That's the challenge of now: What are you going to do with what you have already—your body, your speech, your mind?

Strive at first to meditate Upon the sameness of yourself and others. In joy and sorrow all are equal. Thus be guardian of all, as of yourself. We

There's a richness to all of the smelly stuff that we so dislike and so little desire. The delightful things—what we love so dearly about ourselves, the places in which we feel some sense of pride or inspiration—these also are our wealth.

Whether we're eating or working or meditating or listening or talking, the reason that we're here in this world at all is to study ourselves. In fact, it has been said that studying ourselves provides all the books we need.

A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next.

When our main goals are to gain comfort and avoid discomfort, we begin to feel disconnected from, and even threatened by, others.

In order to work with difficult outer circumstances, we need to gather our inner strength. If even ten or twenty minutes of meditation a day helps us to do this, let's go for it!

What awakens my heart, and what blocks that process from happening?

Happiness "disappears in a moment," he says, "like a dewdrop on a blade of grass."* Basing your comfort on things that don't last is a futile strategy for living.

To be fearless isn't really to overcome fear, it's to come to know its nature.

A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet.

For one thing, I let go much more easily: knowing that it's all passing so quickly makes everything I encounter exceedingly precious. I know that every taste, every smell, every day, every meeting, every parting, could be my last. When I see people bent over, shuffling along on walkers, I know what could be ahead for me. I've begun to identify with the very elderly so intimately that instead of recoiling, I feel immense compassion.

expanding our ability to feel comfortable in our own skin and in the world, so that we can be there as much as possible for other people, is a very worthy way to spend a human life.

We're here to get to know and study ourselves. The path, the way to do that, our main vehicle, is going to be meditation, and some sense of general wakefulness.

But we don't have to close down when we feel groundlessness in any form. Instead, we can turn toward it and say, "This is what freedom from fixed mind feels like. This is what freedom from closed-heartedness feels like. This is what unbiased, unfettered goodness feels like. Maybe I'll get curious and see if I can go beyond my resistance and experience the goodness." Buddhism holds

Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm.

If you acknowledge what's happening and refrain from acting, that opens up some space in your mind. Clinging to views and opinions, thinking you're always right and lording it over others, keeps you endlessly stuck.

Our journey of making friends with ourselves is not a selfish thing. We're not trying to get all the goodies for ourselves. It's a process of developing loving-kindness and a true understanding for other people as well.

Life's work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will.

Good or bad, happy or sad, all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.

When we don't act out and we don't repress, our passion, our aggression, and our ignorance become our wealth. We don't have to transform anything. Simply letting go of the story line is what it takes, which is not all that easy.

We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we're doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we're doing.

May bodhichitta, precious and sublime, Arise where it has not yet come to be; And where it has arisen, may it never fail, But grow and flourish ever more and more.