Quotes About Presence

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

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.

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

Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. —NADINE STAIR, EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

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.

Dignified theatricality is an essential element of power.

As I followed Mr. Harrison, I picked up his salty, sweet odor—it pervaded the whole apartment actually—and I liked it. It smelled alive.

Pilot had never seen this particular ghost before. Head resting on paws, he mildly wondered what it was doing here. Dogs see ghosts about as often as people see cats. They're there but they're no big deal.

Can you make her out at all?' Benjamin shrugged. As usual, in Cicely's presence, he was afraid of appearing inarticulate, and as usual, this fear robbed him of his power of speech.

Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence -- the drama of being her -- was registering. In the way of such chicks, she seemed convinced of the originality of her provocation.

Whether anybody was home meant everything to a house. It was more than a major fact: it was the only fact. The family was the house's soul.

Time stops for the duration of a cigarette: when you're smoking, you're acutely present to yourself; you step outside the unconscious rush of life. This is why the condemned are allowed a final cigarette...it's a lot easier to leave the world if you're certain that you have really been in it.

Beneath the one who is busy is one who is not busy.

When I was a boy I used to love pizza, and whenever my father took me to the pizzeria I'd order two slices. And I'd sit and he'd watch me wolfing down the first slice with my eyes on the second. I wasn't even tasting that first slice. And one day my father said to me, Son, you need to learn that while you're eating the first slice of pizza, eat the first slice. Because right now you're eating the second slice before you've finished the first.

So meaning is made, not just discovered. That is what religion for the most part is: the constant making and remaking of meaning, by the stories we tell, the rituals we perform and the prayers we say. The stories are sacred, the rituals divine commands, and prayer a genuine dialogue with the divine. Religion is an authentic response to a real Presence, but it is also a way of making that presence real by constantly living in response to it. It is truth translated into deed.

Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have to invent a thing.

It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.

Why I'm Not Where You Are

In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it.

I saw Herschel and he saw me and we stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love.

Abraham didn't say, "What do you want?" He didn't say, "Yes?" He answered with a statement: "Here I am." Whatever God needs or wants, Abraham is wholly present for Him, without conditions or reservations or need for explanation.