Quotes About Mindfulness

The secure attachment of Western psychology is actually akin to Buddhist non-attachment; avoid-ant attachment is the inverse of being mindful and present; and anxious attachment aligns with Buddhist notions of clinging and grasping.

You don't have to love yourself unconditionally before you can give or receive real love.

Thich Nhat Hanh: "To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future," he says. "The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future.

IF WE TRY to block off or deny a big part of what we experience, our wakeful, connected relationship to ourselves gets sharply whittled down. How then can we possibly feel alive?

Any time we find ourselves relying on the ideas of an absolute, frozen state of right and wrong—or fairness versus unfairness—that we are used to, we can compare the habit to distraction during meditation.

All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how.

I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful, deceitful. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene." The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight. The grandfather answers, "The one I feed.

Without equanimity, we might give love to others only in an effort to bridge the inevitable and healthy space that always exists between two people.

But to take delight in our generosity helps us immeasurably in our spiritual practice.

To imagine the way we think is the singular causative agent of all we go through is to practice cruelty toward ourselves.

It's affirming that we can look at any experience from the fullness of our being and get past the shame we carry.

A lack of real love for ourselves is one of the most constricting, painful conditions we can know.

We can use meditation as a way to experiment with new ways of relating to ourselves, even our uncomfortable thoughts.

Often when we believe we are practicing self-control or self-discipline, we're actually confining ourselves inside an overly analytical, self-conscious mental chamber.

if we really look at our actions with eyes of love, we see that our lives can be more straightforward, simpler, less sculpted by regret and fear, more in alignment with our deepest values.

When we experience dissatisfaction at work, which everyone does we can use our disappointment as fuel to wake up.

with every action we take, we send love or suffering into the web that connects us.

Setting the intention to practice kindness toward one's partner or family members or friends does not preclude getting angry or upset.

When we do our best to treat others with kindness, it's often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves.

Our minds tend to race ahead into the future or replay the past, but our bodies are always in the present moment.

Awareness levels the playing field. We are all humans doing the best we can.

Meditation is not about what's happening, it is about how we're relating to what's happening.

Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves.

When we are willing to explore our own experiences, we open the doorway to deeper connection and intimacy.