Quotes About Mind

The mind is] simply thus, the fabric of the world itself – the ongoing arising and falling away that are matter, energy, and events.

the sense we generally have that it [self] exists somewhere inside us, if not in our bodies, then at least in our minds.

Liberation of mind is realising that we don't need to buy any story at all. It's realising that before our confused thought, there actually is Reality. We can see it. All we have to do it to fully engage in this moment as it has come to be.

Liberation of mind is realising that we don't need to buy any story at all. It's realising that before our confused thought, there actually is Reality. We can see it. All we have to do is to fully engage in this moment as it has come to be. For this, the eightfold path points the way.

Liberation of mind is realising that we don't need to buy any story at all. It's realising that before our confused thought, there actually is Reality. We can see it. All we have to do is to fully engage in this moment as it has come to be.

We commonly see things 'out there' and go after them. Our mind is thus characterised by division and separation.

If we are the stream, what is it that experiences the flux, the flow, the change? … [T]here is no particular thing … having an experience. There is experience, but no experiencer. … [P]erception, but no perceiver. … [C]onsciousness, but no self that can be located or identified.

Give your mind a lot of space and it quiets down; try to control, quiet, or restrict it, and it goes wild.

You won't get Truth from the Buddha, or from a … Zen master … , or from a priest or monk or nun or teacher or guru. You won't receive Truth … from any other. (…) The only way to see Truth is by noticing if your mind is leaning.

We … habitually overlay our direct experience of Truth with thoughts – with beliefs and opinions and ideas.

We tend not to realise the extent to which we make up … the world, that is, the world of relative truths. We set boundaries, we make definitions. We determine what is good, what is bad, what ought to be, and what ought not to be – all out of inclinations of our mind.

Whenever we conceptualise, we create contradictions that we can't escape.

Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream … [T]his is yet another frozen view. According to this … , everything … changes except the cork. While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe 'I' myself don't change. I'm still me. … an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream. This is precisely what we believe the self to be – something that doesn't change.

Most of us see ourselves as corks floating in a stream … [T]his is yet another frozen view. According to this … , everything … changes except the cork. While we generally admit to changes in our body, our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our understandings, and our beliefs, we still believe 'I myself don't change. I'm still me. … an unchanging cork in an ever-changing stream.' This is precisely what we believe the self to be – something that doesn't change.

When we cease to be bound by our concepts, our paradigms, our grasping, our inclinations of mind, our doubt ceases as well, because our knowledge is no longer dependent on anything beyond immediate, direct experience.

W]e rely on what we think (conception), rather than on what we see (perception), … [T]here's unrest in our mind.

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound.

Computing pioneer Edsger Dijkstra pointed out that computing is the only profession in which a single mind is obliged to span the distance from a bit to a few hundred megabytes, a ratio of 1 to 109, or nine orders of magnitude (Dijkstra 1989).

The problem is that we are not trained to discriminate when the mind is useful and when it is not, and we have not developed the skills to shift out of a fused problem-solving mode of mind into a descriptively engaged mode of mind.

Gedachten zijn als lenzen waardoor we naar onze wereld kijken.

Het is niet eenvoudig contact te krijgen met het leven dat je wenst en te leren hoe je je dromen in het heden kunt verwezenlijken, omdat het menselijke verstand de ene na de andere val laat dichtklappen en de ene na de andere hindernis opwerpt

The Zen master Seng-Ts'an was fond of saying "If you work on your mind with your mind, how can you avoid great confusion?

If there is any enlightenment that I have been awakened to, it is that men's minds are dominated by their little aches and pains. We want to think that we are more than that, that we control our lives with our intellect. But now, without civilization clouding the issue, I wonder to what extent intellect is controlled by instinct and culture is the result of raw gut reactions to life.

If there is any enlightenment that I have been awakened to, it is that men's minds are dominated by their little aches and pains. We want to think that we are more than that, that we control our live with intellect. But now, without civilization clouding the issue, I wonder to what extent intellect is controlled by instinct and culture is the result of raw gut reactions to life.