Quotes About Consciousness

What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it.

Coração das trevas talvez seja o maior exemplo de como o ser humano pode ignorar a realidade brutal que o cerca.

Vivimos igual que soñamos: solos.

But he heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly.

recollect thee now That thou this very day hast drunk of Lethe;

he knew very well we were all mortal

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, a great Dzogchen master of the last century, taught, "There is one thing we always need, and that is the watchman named mindfulness, the guard who is on the lookout for when we get carried away in mindlessness.

If you want to understand your mind, sit down and observe it.

Where is the end of seeing, of hearing, of thinking, of knowing?

Mindfulness, the Root of Happiness

The emphasis in meditation is very much on undistracted awareness: not thinking about things, not analyzing, not getting lost in the story, but just seeing the nature of what is happening in the mind. Careful, accurate observation of the moment's reality is the key to the whole process.

Consciousness is not a thing that exists, but an event that occurs.

Because these moods and mind states are so amorphous and generalized, we often sink into them and become identified with them, and they become the unconscious filter on experience. At these times, we're looking at the world through colored glasses.

In meditation practice, we build the energy of awareness until it grows powerful enough to see entirely different levels of reality.

In the moment that we awaken from being lost in a thought or feeling or reaction, in that very moment we can recognize the empty, clear, skylike nature of awareness itself. In that moment of wakefulness, we get a glimpse of freedom. And instead of judging ourselves for all the times we do get lost, which happen again and again, we can delight in each moment of awakening.

The mind does not belong to you, but you are responsible for it.

The great discovery in our practice is that, on one level, birth and death, existence and nonexistence, self and other are the great defining themes of our lives. And on another level, it's all just a dance of insubstantial appearances, what the Buddha called "the magic show of consciousness.

As we walk the way of awareness, we see that the deepest purpose we all have is to perfect the qualities of our heart and mind. The spiritual path transforms our consciousness, purifying it of greed, hatred, ignorance, fear, envy, jealousy—those forces that create suffering in us and in the world.

To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad thing come forth and experience themselves is awakening.

Awareness of motivation plays a central role in the path of liberation.

Mind is the forerunner of all things. Speak or act with peaceful mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never leaves.4

Mindfulness practice begins to open up everything. We open our mind to memories, to emotions, to different sensations in the body. In meditation this happens in a very organic way, because we are not searching, we are not pulling or probing, we are just sitting and watching.

When the momentum of mindfulness is well developed, it works like a boomerang; even if we want to distract ourselves, the mind naturally rebounds to a state of awareness.

We see that each experience is simply just what it is, and that the "I" and "mine" are extra.