Quotes About Presence

Our lives are simply bigger than thought.

But meditation is not just about sitting, either. It is about stopping and being present, that is all. Mostly we run around doing. Are you able to come to a stop in your life, even for one moment? Could it be this moment? What would happen if you did?

It has to do with examining who we are, with questioning our view of the world and our place in it, and with cultivating some appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive.

New Yorker cartoon: Two Zen monks in robes and shaved heads, one young, one old, sitting side by side cross-legged on the floor. The younger one is looking somewhat quizzically at the older one, who is turned toward him and saying: "Nothing happens next. This is it.

If this is true, maybe you don't need to make one more phone call right now, even if you think you do. Maybe you don't need to read something just now, or run one more errand. By taking a few moments to "die on purpose" to the rush of time while you are still living, you free yourself to have time for the present. By "dying" now in this way, you actually become more alive now. This is what stopping can do.

What happens now is what matters.

Either wherever you go there you are or wherever you go there you aren't.

to stop trying so hard to be "somebody" and instead just experience being, perhaps we would be a lot happier and more relaxed.

By taking a few moments to "die on purpose" to the rush of time while you are still living, you free yourself to have time for the present. By "dying" now in this way, you actually become more alive now.

The best way to capture moments is to pay attention.

The only way you can do anything of value is to have the effort come out of non-doing and to let go of caring whether it will be of use or not.

Mostly we run around doing. Are you able to come to a stop in your life, even for one moment? Could it be this moment? What would happen if you did?

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts…. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

I feel sad for the people who I hear always plan, plan, plan the next day's event to occur. Life only stands still for them.

Worship is an inward reverence, the bowing down of the soul in the presence of God.

When angels carry you they leave no footprints in the sand.

Sometimes I just want to be with my family and watch movie and eat some popcorn. But when I step on the mat I know there is no other place I'd rather be.

Anywhere I can be with my family

There are two things: 1) what things one does in the world, and 2) what family one has. There's the two really tangible things that can stay.

Do not miss your children's childhood. Do not be away 200 nights a year as I was. Do not put strains on your marriage or family.

As a rule, ladies of the Royal Family wear light coloured clothes because such colours are more discernible against a great crowd.

If we're sitting at dinner and there's no conversation going on because everybody's got their head someplace else in their iPhone, that's a family problem that needs to be solved.

He was silent for a moment, staring out the window into the rain; I imagined he was contemplating the fact that his family's presence was turning the locals into giant dogs.

The television set's on while the family's sitting around having dinner or talking. Nobody's watching TV; it's there; they're aware of it, but they're not participating. That's passive.