Quotes About Awareness

In Buddhism there is one word for mind & heart: chitta. Chitta refers not just to thoughts and emotions in the narrow sense of arising from the brain, but also to the whole range of consciousness, vast & unimpeded.

Our senses are often the gateway to our stories.

When we feel conflicted about a particular decision or action, our bodies often hold the answer—if we take the time to stop and tune in.

When we can't let the moment in front of us be what it is (because we're afraid that if it's good, it'll end too soon; if it's bad, it'll go on forever; and if it's neutral, it'll bore us to tears), we're out of balance. Mindfulness restores that balance; we catch our habitual reactions of clinging, condemning, and zoning out, and let them go.

How many pleasures escape our notice because we think we need big, dramatic sensations to feel alive? Mindfulness can allow us to experience fully the moment in front of us - what Thoreau calls 'the bloom of the present ' - and to wake up from neutral so we don't miss the small, rich moments that add up to a dimensional life.

If I am feeling stupid, angry, jealous, or humiliated, I bring total awareness and acknowledgment to those feelings. I admit my failures and own them. Then I usually start laughing as I realize how small and inconsequential I really am and also how ridiculous my problems are!

Compassion is born out of lovingkindness. It is born of knowing our oneness, not just thinking about it or wishing it were so. It is born out of the wisdom of seeing things exactly as they are.

What arises in our experience is much less important than how we relate to what arises in our experience.

great Indian teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj once said, "Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows." "I am nothing" does not mean that there is a bleak wasteland within. It does mean that with awareness we open to a clear, unimpeded space, without center or periphery—nothing separate. If we are nothing, there is nothing at all to serve as a barrier to our boundless expression of love.

Great fullness of being, which we experience as happiness, can also be described as love. To be undivided and unfragmented, to be completely present, is to love. To pay attention is to

It's better to do nothing than to waste your time.

You can access the forces of mindfulness and lovingkindness at any moment, without anyone knowing you're doing it. You don't have to walk excruciatingly slowly down the streets of a major metropolis alarming everyone around you (in fact, please don't);

The breath is the first tool for opening the space between the story you tell yourself about love.

As we explore new ways of thinking, we need to be willing to investigate, experiment, take some risks with our attention, and stretch.

Pain is tough, but it's going to leave us. Pleasure is wonderful, but it's going to leave us. You can't hang on to pleasure; you can't stop pain from coming; you can be aware.

Even as we live with the knowledge that each day might be our last, we don't want to believe it.

Concentration Attention Multitasking Boredom Procrastination

Open Awareness The Angle of Vision Leadership Openness Getting Out of The Way Possibilities MEDITATION:

Great fullness of being, which we experience as happiness, can also be described as love. To be undivided and unfragmented, to be completely present, is to love. To pay attention is to love.

When your attention is diffuse, it's like a broad, weak beam of light that doesn't reveal much. Concentration brings the weak beam down to a single, sharply focused, supremely bright, exponentially more illuminating point.

The simple act of being completely attentive and present to another person is an act of love, and it fosters unshakeable well-being. It is happiness that isn't bound to a particular situation, happiness that can withstand change.

When we open our hearts to the breadth of our experiences, we learn to tune into our needs, unique perceptions, thoughts & feelings

Mindfulness allows us to shift the angle on our story and to remember that we have the capacity to learn and change in ways that are productive, not self-defeating.

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter— If your mind is not clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.