Quotes About Mindfulness

Yesterday I talked about cultivating precision, gentleness, and openess, and described how the meditation technique helps us to remember the qualities that we already possess.

Every time your stream of thoughts solidifies into a heavy story line that seems to be taking you elsewhere, label that "thinking." Then you will be able to see how all the passion that's connected with these thoughts, or all the aggression or all the heartbreak, is simply passing memory. If even for a second you actually had a full experience that it was all just thought, that would be a moment of full awakening.

The instruction is to relate compassionately with where we find ourselves and to begin to see our predicament as workable.

Nobody else can really begin to sort out for you what do you accept and what to reject in terms of what wakes you up and what makes you fall asleep. No one else can really sort out for you what do you accept - what opens up your world – and what to reject – but seems to keep you going round and round in some kind of repetitive misery.

Expansion never happens through greediness or pushing or striving. It happens through some combination of learning to relax where you already are and, at the same time, keeping the possibility open that your capacity, my capacity, the capacity of all beings, is limitless. As we continue to relax where we are, our opening expands.

Estaba demasiado ocupada para ver el sol.» Ella se rió y me dijo: «¡Demasiado ocupada para vivir la vida!»

Clouds come and go without harming the sky. Like that, thoughts come and go without harming our mind. Whether we like it or not, the thoughts keep coming. That's just how things are. We don't have to see it as a problem

Everything in your life - every moment, every struggle - is the path. Everything is an opportunity for awakening.

We would practice as if a big snake had just landed in our lap.

May bodhichitta, precious and sublime, Arise where it has not yet come to be; And where it has arisen may it not decline, But grow and flourish ever more and more. The

This is called maitri—developing loving-kindness and an unconditional friendship with ourselves.

This starts with realizing that whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end. It is just the same kind of normal human experience that's been happening to everyday people from the beginning of time. Thoughts, emotions, moods, and memories come and they go, and basic nowness is always here.

In fact, we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.

It's up to you how the law of karma all works out.

If today the instruction is to put everything on the right, one does that as impeccably as one can. When tomorrow the instruction is to put everything on the left, one does that with one's whole heart. The idea of one right way sort of dissolves into the mist.

even in the most difficult situations, we do our best to smile at fear, to smile at our righteous indignation, our cowardliness, our avoidance of vulnerability.

The point is not to try to change ourselves. 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 the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

Sit quietly for a few minutes and become mindful of your breath as it goes in and out. Then contemplate what you do when you're unhappy or dissatisfied and want to feel better. Even make a list if you want to. Then ask yourself: Does it work? Has it ever worked? Does it soothe the pain? Does it escalate the pain? If you're really honest, you'll come up with some pretty interesting observations.

Meditation helps you to meet your edge; it's where you actually come up against it and you start to lose it.

We can begin to relate with what's underneath all the bubbles and burps and farts, all the stuff that comes out and expresses itself as uptight, controlling, manipulative behavior, or whatever it is.

you'll eventually come to feel like you're in a battle with reality and reality is always winning.

When we think that something is going to bring us pleasure, we don't know what's really going to happen. When we think something is going to give us misery, we don't know. Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all.

Whenever we let go of holding on to ourselves and look at the world around us, whenever we connect with sorrow, whenever we connect with joy, whenever we drop our resentment and complaint, in those moments bodhichitta is here.

By cultivating nonjudgmental openness to ourselves and to whatever arises, to our surprise and delight we will find ourselves genuinely welcoming the never-pin-downable quality of life, experiencing it as a friend, a teacher, and a support, and no longer as an enemy.