Quotes About Mind

Once a man began thinking with his body, intelligent decisions came few and far between.

It's just not always that easy, right? To control what you think about. Who you think about.

Mindfulness is not thinking about what we experience, but a direct, bare attention to the experience itself.

In fact, less than one percent of all the information the mind takes in actually reaches our awareness. Likewise, most of how we react to that information remains outside our awareness;

we are consciously aware of only a tiny portion of our perceptions and actions. To us, that small compartment appears to fill our whole mental cabinet.

A great Tibetan teacher of mind training once remarked that one of the mind's most marvelous qualities is that it can be transformed.

But when emotions enter the picture, our mind's selective attention can be less useful: we can avoid noticing something not because it's irrelevant but because it might disturb us.

That schema builds up the perception of danger by exaggerating any hint of a threat, so that small squalls become major hurricanes in the mind. The island woman had the opposite understanding: real danger may come, so you do everything you can to prepare, but once you've done what you can, just relax.

There goes that schema again!"—we can take steps to change what happens next.

recognize them as mere thoughts, seeing them as well-worn ruts in the mind: "Oh, I'm having those thoughts again." As we recognize them for what they are, we break their tyranny in the mind.

Fortunately, even if we can't control the circumstances that lead to such thoughts, we have the ability to free our minds from their hold.

Thoughts have no power except the power we give them.

Realizing that these thoughts are just projections of the mind helps counter the disturbing emotions they provoke.

Thoughts have no solidity, but merely the appearance of solidity because of the power we give them.

Emotions add the qualities of pleasantness or unpleasantness to what the mind perceives.

In any turmoil or with any problem, as Tulku Thondup says, "The greatest source of help and strength is our minds.

A mental state can last for but a moment, until another state rises to the top of the mind's hierarchy, or it can become a habitual frame of mind.

Each schema has its own emotional hallmark, a distinctive gut-level, wrenching feeling that takes us over when the schema has us in its grip.

To some extent, raw emotions arise from a part of the brain without words.

Our issues are in our tissues.

If we bring a steady attention to the immediate physical experience of an emotion, past sensations and stories linked to it that have been locked in our body and mind are "de-repressed.

when i look back over my own years of spiritual practice, i see that my heart and mind have been most profoundly awakened in the context of deep human relationship — giving birth and raising a child, having my heart broken, helping and being helped, facing my fears of intimacy, struggling with a judgmental mind, trying to love more fully.

while resistance keeps us stuck by hardening our heart and contracting our body and mind, saying, 'i forgive this,' or, 'forgiven,' creates a warmth and softness that allow emotions to unfold and change.

Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant.