Quotes About Mindfulness

it is okay to have anxiety. What is not okay is to let your anxiety control you.

I guess my life hasn't always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they'll break my heart.

You're either reading a book or you're not.

In sleep things are simpler. No regret over the past. No worry for the future. Only the present. And as bad as a dream gets, at least you get to sleep through it.

With such a vast and wonderful library spread out before us, we often skim books or read just the reviews. We might already have encountered the Greatest Idea, the insight that would have transformed us had we savored it, taken it to heart, and worked it into our lives.

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. —EPICTETUS

For Buddha, attachments are like a game of roulette in which someone else spins the wheel and the game is rigged: The more you play, the more you lose. The only way to win is to step away from the table. And the only way to step away, to make yourself not react to the ups and downs of life, is to meditate and tame the mind. Although you give up the pleasures of winning, you also give up the larger pains of losing.

An emotionally intelligent person has a skilled rider who knows how to distract and coax the elephant without having to engage in a direct contest of wills.

Avoiding triggers

the lesson Buddha and Aurelius had taught centuries earlier: "Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.

acts like a kind of reset button: it makes people forget themselves and their petty concerns.

We are not so sensible of the greatest Health as of the least Sickness.

The image that I came up with for myself, as I marveled at my weakness, was that I was a rider on the back of an elephant. I'm holding the reins in my hands, and by pulling one way or the other I can tell the elephant to turn, to stop, or to go. I can direct things, but only when the elephant doesn't have desires of his own. When the elephant really wants to do something, I'm no match for him.

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. —EPICTETUS2

As the eighth-century Chinese Zen master Sen-ts'an wrote: The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose; Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart; If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between "for" and "against" is the mind's worst disease.

You want to be relaxed when you play, and practicing while worried or anxious won't help you achieve that relaxation.

That's the way it is with most people: Details are an intrusion. Then there's the rest of us, lying in bed at three a.m., scrolling through volumes of mental small print.

There is no future, there is no past, I live this moment as my last

Your phone is not your problem. The problem is when we let our phone captivate us so significantly with the unimportant that we ignore the important all around us.

A flapping tongue puts out the light of wisdom."~Polly Shine

A flapping tongue puts out the light of wisdom.

I am trying to be more attentive to the moment and appreciative of where I am at. That's part of wisdom, right?

I'm finding I don't have to fill things up," said Alice, immediately to my left. "You can have empty space around you. You can have free time. I'm finding that the less I do, the better I like it.

Live the life that unfolds before you- love goodness more than you fear evil.