Quotes About Mindfulness

It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.

Never pass by a chance to shut up.

There isn't any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life.

THE SECOND MARK of existence is egolessness, sometimes called no-self. These words can be misleading. They don't mean that we disappear—or that we erase our personality. Egolessness means that the fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is painfully limiting. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem. Self-importance is like a prison for

More simply, regard everything as a dream. Life is a dream. Death is also a dream, for that matter; waking is a dream and sleeping is a dream. Another way to put this is, "Every situation is a passing memory.

getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.

But the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves, but by all means make it go away. We don't need that kind of encouragement, because dissociating from fear is what we do naturally. We habitually spin off and freak out when there's even the merest hint of fear. We feel it coming and we check out.

None of what we've learned seems very relevant when our lover leaves us, when our child has a tantrum in the supermarket, when we're insulted by our colleague.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don't have to feel it's happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long

WE ALREADY HAVE everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves—the heavy-duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds—never touch our basic wealth.

The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself.

Make the dharma personal, explore it wholeheartedly, and relax.

Thich Nhat Hanh says, "It's not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

examine is an interesting word. It's not a matter of looking and seeing—"Now I've got it!"—but a process of examination and contemplation that leads into being able to relax with insecurity or edginess or restlessness. Much joy comes from that.

A question that has intrigued me for years is this: how can we start exactly where we are, with all our entanglements, and still develop unconditional acceptance

elemental struggle is with our feeling of being wrong, with our guilt and shame at what we are.

We can explore the nature of that piece of shit. We can know the nature of dislike, shame, and embarrassment and not believe there's something wrong with that. We can drop the fundamental hope that there is a better "me" who one day will emerge. We can't just jump over ourselves as if we were not there. It's better to take a straight look at all our hopes and fears.

Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.

My experience is that by practicing without shoulds, we gradually discover our wakefulness and our confidence. Gradually, without any agenda except to be honest and kind, we assume responsibility for being here in this unpredictable world, in this unique moment, in this precious human body.

Sitting meditation begins with good posture.

Labeling our thoughts during meditation practice is a powerful support that reconnects us with the fresh, open, unbiased dimension of our mind.

we cannot be in the present and run our story lines at the same time!

How sad it is that we become so expert at causing harm to ourselves and others. The trick then is to practice gentleness and letting go. We

When you find yourself slumping, that's the motivation to sit up, not out of self-denigration but actually out of pride in everything that occurs to you, pride in who you are just as you are, pride in the goodness or the fairness or the worstness of yourself—however you find yourself—some sort of sense of taking pride and using it to spur you on.