Quotes About Consciousness

If we lose the present moment, we lose life.

What is happening in the present moment is life.

We can walk in such a way that we arrive with each step—not walking just to get somewhere else.

To be truly present we have to stop our thinking. This is the secret of success.

We are imprisoned in our small selves, thinking only of the comfortable conditions for this small self, while we destroy our large self.

Mindful consumption is the object of this precept. We are what we consume. If we look deeply into the items that we consume every day, we will come to know our own nature very well. We have to eat, drink, consume, but if we do it unmindfully, we may destroy our bodies and our consciousness, showing ingratitude toward our ancestors, our parents, and future generations (66).

Invite your fear into consciousness, and smile through it; every time you smile through your fear, it will lose some of its strength.

We have millions of ways to lose this precious time—we turn on the TV, or pick up the telephone, or start the car and go somewhere. We are not used to being with ourselves, and we act as if we don't like ourselves and are trying to escape from ourselves. Meditation

Even when we're sitting still, with no external stimuli, an endless internal dialogue may be going on in our head. we're constantly consuming our thoughts. Cows, goats, and buffalo chew their food, swallow it, then regurgitate and rechew it multiple times. We may not be cows or buffalo, but we ruminate just the same on our thoughts - unfortunately, primarily negative thoughts. We eat them, and then we bring them up to chew again and again, like a cow chewing its cud.

The most basic precept of all is to be aware of what we do, what we are, each minute . Every other precept will follow from that.

To be in the here and the now—solid and fully alive—is a very positive contribution to our collective situation.

When a feeling or thought arises, your intention should not be to chase it away, even if by continuing to concentrate on the breath the feeling or thought passes naturally from the mind. The intention isn't to chase it away, hate it, worry about it, or be frightened by it. So what exactly should you be doing concerning such thoughts and feelings? Simply acknowledge their presence.

Machine thinking is the opposite of mindfulness. If we're really engaged in mindfulness when walking along the path to the village, then we will consider the act of each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower, enabling us to enter the world of reality.

Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.

Reality is reality. It transcends every concept. There is no concept which can adequately describe it, not even the concept of interdependence.

We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives.

As the Buddha said, "The past no longer is, the future is not yet here; there is only one moment in which life is available, and that is the present moment." To meditate with mindful breathing is to bring body and mind back to the present moment so that you do not miss your appointment with life.

When we take a moment to sit and breathe before we eat, we can get in touch with the real hunger in our body. We can discover if we're eating because we're hungry or if we're eating because it's the time to eat and the food is there.

The only moment to be alive is in the present moment.

We disregard the wonders of the present moment, thinking that heaven and the ultimate are for later, not for now.

When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch the nature of interbeing.

Emptiness means to be full of everything but empty of a separate existence.

Mindfulness is the continuous practice of touching deeply every moment of daily life. To be mindful is to be truly present with your body and your mind, to bring harmony to your intentions and actions, and to be in harmony with those around you.

Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.