Quotes About Mindfulness

I have learned that silence is a way of hearing the voices within and of exploring unexpressed and nascent thoughts and feelings.

A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

If you pray why worry, and if you worry, why pray.

A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.

Freedom is not having everything we crave, it's being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.

Pain represents 10 percent of the problem, while suffering, which is not wanting to feel the pain, represents 90 percent of the problem.

When you feel confident in using the breath support, you can experiment with letting go of the support and just resting. In this way, you can try alternating between using the breath support and resting, and notice how this feels.

All traditions of Buddhism stress the importance of first practicing calm abiding meditation (shamatha) and then insight meditation (vipassana).

Another problem arises if we work with technique: we work with something which is manipulating the mind, whereas the purpose of meditation is to release the grasping action of the mind so that the inherently enlightened qualities can manifest.

This is the order of things then: First, training ourselves to be present in the moment with what is there. Second, developing the attitude of self-acceptance so that whatever arises is OK, thus coming to terms with ourselves. Third, abandoning all goals.

By freeing the mind from its negative and neurotic patterns and liberating our inner potential, we experience a spontaneous response which will be helpful and beneficial to others.

When you meditate you cannot clear your mind, you cannot stop thoughts, you cannot get rid of emotions,

our resistance to the inevitable pain of life is what really causes us to suffer, not the pain itself.

I thought, There is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count the places I would not rather be. I've always wanted to see New Zealand, but I'd rather be here.

What you buy doesn't make you cool, it makes you the opposite. Stop buying stuff just to have more stuff. Most of us have enough of everything already. Let's care for what we've got, instead, and dispose of our disposable society.

Too often we develop a blindness for all of the wonderful things in life.

Ask a friend or family member to do the same. I know several people who keep a gratitude stone in their pocket. Every time they put their hand in their pocket and touch the stone or remove it from their pocket, they think about things for which they are grateful.

No sane person fears nothingness.

How can we hope, after all, to see a tree or rock or clear north sky if we do not adopt a little of their mode of life, a little of their time? ...if the time it takes to cross space is a way by which we define it, then to arrive at a view of space "in no time" is to have denied its reality...

Watching gardeners label their plants I vow with all beings to practice the old horticulture and let plants identify me.

When I'm moved to complain about others I vow with all beings to remember that karma is endless and it's loving that leads to love.

In realizing all this, we understand how we are just bundles of sense perceptions, with the substance of a dream or a bubble on the surface of the sea. The vanity of the usual kind of self-preoccupation becomes clear, and we are freed from selfish concerns in our enjoyment of the universe as it is, and of our own previously unsuspected depths.

Always remember; wherever you go; there you are!