Quotes About Presence

Meditation begins to open up your life, so that you're not caught in self-concern, just wanting life to go your way.

Being satisfied with what we already have is a magical golden key to being alive in a full, unrestricted, and inspired way.

Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape. During

meditation isn't about getting rid of thoughts—you'll think forever.

Meditation is just gently coming back again and again to what's right here.

THE DHARMA—the Buddha's teaching—is about letting go of the story line and opening to what is: to the people in our life, to the situations we're in, to our thoughts, to our emotions. We have a certain life, and whatever life we're in is a vehicle for waking up.

We can be with what's happening and not dissociate. Awakeness is found in our pleasure and our pain, our confusion and our wisdom, available in each moment of our weird, unfathomable, ordinary everyday lives.

Every time you're willing to acknowledge your thoughts, let them go, and come back to the freshness of the present moment, you're sowing seeds of wakefulness in your unconscious.

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.

We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that's death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn't have any fresh air. There's no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience.

we don't have to obscure the joy and openness that is present in every moment of our existence.

How we regard what arises in meditation is training for how we regard whatever arises in the rest of our lives.

We can connect with that openness at any time. For instance, right now, for three seconds, just stop reading and pause. If

Meditation is an invitation to notice when we reach our limit and to not get carried away by hope and fear.

God is always trying to give blessings to us, but our minds are usually too full to receive them.

Life is too short for anger, resentment, hostility and "should have." It is too short to put off doing what brings you joy. Live each day as if it were your last, because one day it will be.

I followed his argument with the blank uneasiness which one might feel in the presence of a logical lunatic.

You can not have an argument with a fully conscious person.

I have no mockings or arguments; I witness and wait.

Relax and calm your mind. Forget about yourself and follow your opponent's movement.

I try to make images that have the immediate presence we take for granted in objects - a chair, a shoe, a book, a Judd - and compose them like sentences.

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.

To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant

Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.