Quotes About Mindfulness

The Tibetans sometimes describe thoughts as writing on water, in essence empty, insubstantial, and transient.

Our lives are simply bigger than thought.

But meditation is not just about sitting, either. It is about stopping and being present, that is all. Mostly we run around doing. Are you able to come to a stop in your life, even for one moment? Could it be this moment? What would happen if you did?

we have more efficient, more focused, and more effective ways of achieving the ends we want.

We see that thoughts, when brought into and held in awareness in this way, readily lose their power to dominate and dictate our responses to life, no matter what their content and emotional charge. They then become workable rather than imprisoning. And thus, we become a bit freer in the knowing and the recognizing of them as events in the field of awareness.

It has to do with examining who we are, with questioning our view of the world and our place in it, and with cultivating some appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive.

New Yorker cartoon: Two Zen monks in robes and shaved heads, one young, one old, sitting side by side cross-legged on the floor. The younger one is looking somewhat quizzically at the older one, who is turned toward him and saying: "Nothing happens next. This is it.

Can we trust that things unfold in their own time and that we do not have to fix everything or even anything?

Patience is an ever present alternative to the mind's endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly, is anger. It's the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it. This doesn't mean you can't hurry when you have to. It is possible even to hurry patiently, mindfully, moving fast because you have chosen to.

If this is true, maybe you don't need to make one more phone call right now, even if you think you do. Maybe you don't need to read something just now, or run one more errand. By taking a few moments to "die on purpose" to the rush of time while you are still living, you free yourself to have time for the present. By "dying" now in this way, you actually become more alive now. This is what stopping can do.

What happens now is what matters.

immersed in a seemingly never-ending stream of thoughts, coming willy-nilly one after another in rapid succession.

How you are in relationship to this moment influences the quality and character of the next moment. In this way, we can shape the future by taking care of the present. What a remarkable opportunity.

Either wherever you go there you are or wherever you go there you aren't.

Perhaps most of all, you need to give to yourself first for a while. Then you might try giving others a tiny bit more than you think you can, consciously noting and letting go of any ideas of getting anything in return.

This really is your life. You only have this moment. All the rest is memory (which is also here now) and anticipation (which is also happening here and now). This moment is as good as any other. In fact, it's perfect.

to stop trying so hard to be "somebody" and instead just experience being, perhaps we would be a lot happier and more relaxed.

If you are mindful as emotional storms occur, perhaps you will see in yourself an unwillingness to accept things as they already are, whether you like them or not. Perhaps that part of you that does see this has, in one way or another, already come to terms with what has happened or with your situation. Perhaps, at the same time, it recognizes that your feelings still need to play themselves out, that they are not ready to accept the situation or to calm down, and that this too is all right.

Bhavana translates as "development through mental training." To me, this strikes the mark; meditation really is about human development.

even and especially as we are being confronted with the law of impermanence and the inevitability of change, conditions we are subject to as individuals regardless of how much we resist or protest or try to control outcomes. If we wish to make a quantum leap to greater awareness, there is no getting around the need for us to be willing to wake up, and to care deeply about waking up.

look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.

coming to acceptance is one of the hardest things in the world. Ultimately, it means realizing how things are and finding ways to be in wise relationship with them.

However, when we start paying attention a little more closely to the way our own mind actually works, as we do when we meditate, we are likely to find that much of the time our mind is more in the past or the future than it is in the present.

Coming to our senses involves cultivating an overarching awareness of all our senses, including our own minds, and their limitations, including the temptation when we feel deeply insecure and have a lot of resources, to try to control as rigidly and as tightly as possible all variables in the external world, an impossible and ultimately depleting, intrinsically violent