Quotes About Awareness

When we can settle back into the moment, realizing that past and future are simply thoughts in the present, then we free ourselves from the bondage of "time.

To realize that boredom does not come from the object of our attention but rather from the quality of our attention is truly a transforming insight.

A healthy self and an empty self are not contradictory; it just appears so because we use the same language to describe two different things. The whole path of meditation is about understanding that the self as an unchanging entity is a fiction, an illusory mental construct.

This is not a breathing exercise; it is an exercise in awareness.

That which is impermanent is inherently unreliable and unsatisfying. And that which is unreliable and unsatisfying cannot truly be considered to be I or Mine.

Better than one hundred years lived without seeing the arising and passing of things / Is one day lived seeing their arising and passing."2 What does this say about what we value and work for in our lives, and about the liberating effect of seeing directly, in the moment, the truth of change?

Actions rooted in greed, hatred, or ignorance bring unpleasant results.

meditate upon thoughts is simply to be aware, as thoughts arise, that the mind is thinking, without getting involved in the content: not going off on a train of association, not analyzing the thought and why it came, but merely to be aware that at the particular moment "thinking" is happening

We rarely see that "past" and "future" are happening right now. All that there is, is an unfolding of present moments. We have created these concepts to serve a useful purpose, but by taking the ideas to be the reality, by not understanding that they are merely the product of our own thought processes, we find ourselves burdened by worries and regrets about the past and anxieties of anticipation about what has not yet happened.

In meditation, we free ourselves from attachment to that conceptualization and experience the fundamental unity of the elements which comprise our being.

When you close your eyes there is the breath, sensations, sounds, thoughts—where is "man" or "woman" except as an idea, a concept?

From the beginning this "self" does not exist, yet because we're so firmly attached to the idea of it, we spend much of our lives defending or enlarging or satisfying this imaginary self. Meditation helps us to see its conceptual nature, to see that in reality it does not exist, that it is simply an idea, an extraneous projection onto what's happening in the moment.

When we're not mindful, pleasant feelings habitually condition desire and clinging, unpleasant feelings condition dislike and aversion, and neutral feelings condition delusion — that is, not really knowing what is going on. Yet when we are mindful, these very same feelings become the vehicle of our freedom.

So it is very helpful to begin to recognize this comparing mind, this conceit of "I'm better than" or "I'm worse than" someone else. When we do not see it clearly, it becomes the source of much suffering. It makes us feel separated and apart from others; we reinforce the contraction of self.

Ask yourself how many of the billions of inhabitants of this planet have any idea of how rare it is to have been born as a human being.

Look at all the things we become attached to, whether they are people or possessions or feelings or conditions of the body. Nothing we have, no one in our lives, no state of mind is exempt from change. Nothing at all can prevent the universal process of birth, growth, decay, and death.

Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.

Maybe I am senile already and people are too kind to tell me. People are not kind and would tell me. (Maybe people have told me, and I'm too senile to remember).

Oh, they're there all right, Orr had assured him about the flies in Appleby's eyes after Yossarian's fist fight in the officers' club, although he probably doesn't even know it. That's why he can't see things as they really are. How come he doesn't know it? inquired Yossarian. Because he's got flies in his eyes, Orr explained with exaggerated patience. How can he see he's got flies in his eyes if he's got flies in his eyes?

Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out

You've got flies in your eyes. That's why you can't see them.

I have some decades to spare. Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?

As far as I know, I'm the only Captain Yossarian I know, but that's only as far as I know.

He wondered often how he would ever recognize the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip, loss of balance or lapse of memory that would signal the inevitable beginning of the inevitable end.