Quotes About Mind

if Evil exists, it's to be found in our fears?

You have two choices: to control your mind or to let your mind control you. You're already familiar with the latter experience, allowing yourself to be swept along by fears, neuroses, insecurity, for all we have self-destructive tendencies.

Ludvig Chaplinskiy wrote in the Russian magazine Hercules in 1913, "Kettlebell lifting more than any other sport relies on nerve strength; its sensible practice strengthens the nervous system, mindless practice destroys it.

to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe.

I should like to penetrate your mind with my own," he said. "I should like to pierce the mysteries of your soul.

This was his mind, a storehouse, a computer programmed to life, minute by minute, hour by hour, day and night.

The feet bear the burden of the body, the head the burden of the mind, and the heart the burden of the spirit

many a woman would have let her mind lie idle while she worked in the fields, but I have ever seen this difference between you and other women, that your mind cannot be idle, and I say I never know what is coming out of you. And so I never tire of you, old woman.

How can school help you with the land? he asked. An old grandfather leaned out of the shadows to make answer. Learning clears the mind, he said, and books open the spirit of man to heaven and to the earth. Do you know how to read? Il-han asked. The old man touched his wrinkled eyelids. These two eyes can see only the surface of what life is.

We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds. (36)

If your mind is expansive and unfettered, you will find yourself in a more accommodating world, a place that's endlessly interesting and alive. That quality isn't inherent in the place but in your state of mind.

IMPERMANENCE means that the essence of life is fleeting. Some people are so skillful at their mindfulness practice that they can actually see each and every little movement of mind—changing, changing, changing.

We start by working with the monsters in our mind. Then we develop the wisdom and compassion to communicate sanely with the threats and fears of our daily life.

Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material.

Well-being of mind is like a mountain lake without ripples. When the lake has no ripples, everything in the lake can be seen. When the water is all churned up, nothing can be seen. The still lake without ripples is an image of our minds at ease, so full of unlimited friendliness for all the junk at the bottom of the lake that we don't feel the need to churn up the waters just to avoid looking at what's there.

The natural quality of mind is clear, awake, alert, and knowing. Free from fixation. By training in being present, we come to know the nature of our mind. So the more you train in being present - being right here - the more you begin to feel like your mind is sharpening up. The mind that can come back to the present is clearer and more refreshed, and it can better weather all the ambiguities, pains, and paradoxes of life.

As the Zen master Suzuki Roshi put it, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

The mind is always seeking zones of safety, and these zones of safety are continually falling apart. Then we scramble to get another zone of safety back together again. We spend all our energy and waste our lives trying to re-create these zones of safety, which are always falling apart. That's samsara. The

a psychotic person is drowning in the very same things that a mystic swims in.

I was reading a transcript of a talk by Ponlop Rinpoche, and he said, "In the process of uncovering buddha nature, in the process of uncovering our open, unfixated quality of our mind, we have to be willing to get our hands dirty." In other words, he was saying that we need to be willing to work with our disturbing emotions, the ones that feel entirely dark.

How do we work with our minds when we meet our match? Rather than indulge or reject our experience, we can somehow let the energy of the emotion, the quality of what we're feeling, pierce us to the heart. This is easier said than done, but it's a noble way to live. It's definitely the path of compassion—the path of cultivating human bravery and kindheartedness.

Before we can heal others with our speech, we need to get a handle on our own mind and its propensities.

Chögyam Trungpa put it, "Sanity is permanent, neurosis is temporary.

In Tibetan there are several words for mind, but two that are particularly helpful to know are sem and rikpa. Sem is what we experience as discursive thoughts, a stream of chatter that's always reinforcing an image of ourselves. Rikpa literally means "intelligence" or "brightness.