Quotes About Mindfulness

But where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are.

I rest in silence and music and long strides, while Sam rests in noise and motion.

Just take it bird by bird

Why am I here? To love this dumb old day. Ugh. If I could only remember this.

Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we're going to for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment.

You pay twenty-five dollars to hear one of my heroes, Thich Nhat Hanh, say: "When you walk, just walk." You think: I paid good money for this? Notice your feet as they connect to the earth? Left foot, right foot, breathe? Crazy.

Sometimes we have to get cancer or have a heart attack to stop the train of wired meaninglessness, to stop faking or stuffing it all back down.

My elderly priest friend Terry says, "Don't try harder—resist less.

Writing Down the Bones

I desperately want to stop minding so much about other people, life, and myself. Krishnamurti, the great Indian teacher, when asked what was the secret to his serenity, said in his soft, shy voice, "I don't mind what happens." This is so not me—I mind his having even said this.

Don't try harder—resist less." This

This is not a bad line to have taped to the wall of your office. Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we're going to do for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment.

It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony

My therapist said starving and dieting are like putting ice cream on a leg wound. I said that ice cream would feel cool and numbing. She said yes and then it would melt.

You unconscious can't work when youare breathing down it's neck. You'll sit there going, Are you done in there yet? Are you done in there yet?. But it is trying to tell you nicely, Shut up and go away.

Your unconscious can't work when you are breathing down it's neck. You'll sit there going, Are you done in there yet? Are you done in there yet?. But it is trying to tell you nicely, Shut up and go away.

I need to bring up radio station KFKD, or K-Fucked, here. It is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to listening to your broccoli that exists for writers.

It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.

You can change the world with a hot bath if you sink into from a place of knowing you are worthy of profound care, even if you are dirty and rattled.

Discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.

Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings. Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move. Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

T. S. Eliot wrote, 'Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.' We long for this, and yet we check our smartphones every ten minutes for news, texts, distraction.

If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.