Quotes About Mindfulness

I used to care about how other people thought I led my life. But lately I've realized that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to give anybody else even the scantiest of thoughts.

Chronocanine Envy: Sadness experienced when one realized that, unlike one's dog, one cannot live only in the present tense. As Kierkegaard said, Life must be lived forward.

I like to go beach-combing, and I like to find interestingly shaped rocks. When I really get into the groove I start finding beautiful rocks everywhere, until I discover that all of the rocks on the beach are beautiful. And so I try to find beauty even in the smallest moments, because beauty is something that can grow if you let it.

If nothing else, we simply get used to being alive.

Be in the world but not of it.

The best way to not think of something is to possess it fully, and then cultivate indifference.

My speaking is meant to shake you awake, not to tell you how to dream better.

Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and aren't even generated by you. So why pay so much attention to your imagination when reality is for the realizing right now?

In the end it's all very simple. Either we give ourselves to Silence or we don't.

As long as you are trying to become, trying to get somewhere, trying to attain something, you are quite literally moving away from the Truth itself.

When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have a thought about you, that's something I've created. I've turned you into an idea. In a certain sense, if I have an idea about you that I believe, I've degraded you. I've made you into something very small. This is the way of human beings, this is what we do to each other.

Awareness isn't something we own; awareness isn't something we possess. Awareness is actually what we are.

The way they perceive the world suddenly changes, and they find themselves without any sense of separation between themselves and the rest of the world.

The greatest dream that we can have is to forget that we are dreaming.

Effortless doesn't mean no effort; effortless means just enough effort to be vivid, to be present, to be here, to be now. To be bright. My teacher used to call this "effortless effort." We each need to find out for ourselves what this means. Too much effort and we get too tight; too little effort and we get dreamy. Somewhere in the middle is a state of vividness and clarity and inner brightness.

You are an incredible mystery that you will never figure out. To be this mystery consciously is the greatest joy.

When our minds start to open, we're no longer in a constant state of evaluation and judgment. Naturally, then, our senses open—and we can really see what is before us. Our eyes open in a different way, our hearing opens in a different way, our emotions open, our hearts open to all of existence. We see how judging and condemning actually close our hearts and harden us to our experience of life and others.

When you argue with reality, reality always wins

We can only start to allow consciousness to wake up from its identification with thought and feeling, with body and mind and personality, by allowing ourselves to rest in the natural state from the very beginning.

Those who are free don't want anything. They don't want anything from their mind, they don't want anything from their emotions, they don't want anything from anyone, and they don't want anything from life. They don't want anything. If you don't want, all that's left is an incredible sense of being free.

To be intimate is to feel the silence, the space that everything is happening in.

Silence reveals itself only to itself. Only when we enter as nothing and stay as nothing, will silence open its secret

Now is just what's happening – minus everything you think.

Abiding means letting everything be as it already is – no matter what it is. If you're feeling good, let that be as it is. If you're feeling bad, let that be as it is. No matter what your emotional, physical, or mental state, let it be as it is and don't wish it to be otherwise. If you want it to be different from what it is, you're not abiding; you're picking and choosing and trying to control your experience. (p. 29)