Quotes About Awareness

As encountering each moment with awareness becomes more familiar to you, you will find that it is not only possible but even enjoyable to be in the moment, even with ordinary tasks such as washing the dishes. You come to see that you don't have to rush to get through with the dishes so that you can get on to something better or more important because, at the moment that you are doing the dishes, that is your life.

All this can dissolve in a moment, when awareness apprehends what is actually unfolding … like the soap bubble being touched by the finger. Liberation from suffering in that very moment. Liberation from greed, hatred, and delusion. Now for the next moment, which, of course, is this one.

becoming more of a human doing than a human being

Mindfulness reminds us that it is possible to shift from a doing mode to a being mode through the application of attention and awareness.

There really is no place to go in this moment. We are already here. Can we be here fully? There really is nothing do to. Can we let go into non-doing, into pure being? There really is nothing to attain, no special "state" or "feeling," because whatever you are experiencing in this moment is already special, already extraordinary, by virtue of the fact that it is being experienced.

is that if you are aware of what is happening, you are "doing it right," no matter what is happening.

comes up with. This is the flavor of true intentionality and inner discipline. You do it simply

Imagine forty-five years of profound teaching distilled into one sentence: "Nothing is to be clung to as 'I,' 'me,' or 'mine.

We imagine that one or two big things will have a profound effect [on our happiness]. But it looks like happiness is the sum of hundreds of small things….The small stuff matters.

But, meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It's about feeling the way you feel. It's not about making the mind empty or still

The mountain image held in the mind's eye and in the body can freshen our memory of why we are sitting in the first place, and of what it truly means, each time we take our seat, to dwell in the realm of non-doing. Mountains are quintessentially emblematic of abiding presence and stillness.

Above all, meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment.

Thinking seems to constitute our "default setting" rather than awareness.

paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally.

Meditation means cultivating a non-judging attitude toward what comes up in the mind, come what may.

Here is Eliot, again from "Burnt Norton": Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time Ã¢â'¬Â¦

We will need to become more aware of and take precautions against the incredible pull of the Scylla and Charybdis of past and future, and the dreamworld they offer us in place of our lives.

Focusing on the breath does not mean you should think about your breathing!

Instead, we are living inside our own little narrative bubble of the moment, frequently misattributing cause and effect and therefore completely imprisoned in thoughts and emotions that are both inaccurate and misguided.

All professionals who make special use of their breathing as part of their work, such as opera singers, wind instrument players, dancers, actors, and martial artists, know the value of breathing from the belly and of "grounding" or anchoring their awareness in this region.

interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.

Too often our unexamined and deluded story-lines become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can always marshal any evidence we want in support of a particular view, and then believe it even if it is patently not true. This is delusion.

I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.

My ignorance was inexcusable, and it made me ashamed.