Quotes About Mindfulness

Love. Buddha nature. Courage. These are code words for things we don't know in our minds, but any of us could experience them. These are words that point to what life really is when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.

When the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of enlightenment.

If the object of meditation were something concrete, something solid and graspable - an image or a statue or a dot on the floor or a candle - it would be much more of a concentration exercise. But the breath is very elusive; even if you wanted to give it one hundred percent attention, it would be difficult because it is so ephemeral, so light, so airy and spacious. As the object of meditation, it brings a sense of softness and gentleness.

Just where you are—that's the place to start.

The joy comes from not giving up on ourselves, from mindfully sticking with ourselves and beginning to experience our great warrior spirit.

The old joke is that a Buddhist is someone who is either meditating or feeling guilty about not meditating.

Being fully present isn't something that happens once and then you have achieved it; it's being awake to the ebb and flow and movement and creation of life, being alive to the process of life itself.

Tú eres el cielo. Todo lo demás es solo el clima

Podemos toparnos con un perro de lanas o con un furioso perro guardián, pero lo interesante es: ¿qué ocurre a continuación?

We start with ourselves. We make ourselves right or we make ourselves wrong, every day, every week, every month and year of our lives. We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good. We don't want to be wrong because then we'll feel bad. But we could be more compassionate toward all these parts of ourselves.

When we practice discipline with flexibility, we become less moralistic and more tolerant.

Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved. The same is true for any other experience we might have.

What you do for yourself, any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself, will affect how you experience your world. In fact, it will transform how you experience the world. What you do for yourself, you're doing for others, and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself. When you exchange yourself for others in the practice of tonglen, it becomes increasingly uncertain what is out there and what is in

If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.

When people ask me how long this will take, I say, "At least until you die.

It's as if you just looked at yourself in the mirror, and you saw a gorilla. The mirror's there; it's showing you, and what you see looks bad. You try to angle the mirror so you will look a little better, but no matter what you do, you still look like a gorilla. That's being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what's happening or push it away.

A thoroughly good relationship with ourselves results in being still, which doesn't mean we don't run and jump and dance about. It means there's no compulsiveness. We don't overwork, overeat, oversmoke, overseduce. In short, we begin to stop causing harm.

When anything difficult arises—any kind of conflict, any notion of unworthiness, anything that feels distasteful, embarrassing, or painful—instead of trying to get rid of it, we breathe it in. The three poisons are passion (this includes craving or addiction), aggression, and ignorance (which includes denial or the tendency to shut down and close out). We would usually think of these poisons as something bad, something to

This was because I could see it for what it was, instead of getting immersed in it and sowing more seeds of feeling rejected.

A warrior begins to take responsibility for the direction of her life. It's as if we are lugging around unnecessary baggage. Our training encourages us to open the bags and look closely at what we are carrying. In doing this we begin to understand that much of it isn't needed anymore.

We can learn to meet whatever arises with curiosity and not make it such a big deal.

We acknowledge our aversions and our cravings. We become familiar with the strategies and beliefs we use to fortify our cocoon.

Los pensamientos, emociones, estados de ánimo y recuerdos vienen y van, y el ahora básico está siempre

But in this meditation technique, we are with the out-breath; there's no particular instruction about what to do until the next out-breath.