Quotes About Meditation

He who neglects to pray alone and in private, however assiduously he frequents public meetings, there gives his prayers to the wind.

He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.

We unlearn the art of speaking well when we cease to speak with God.

On the other hand, it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he have previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.

On the other hand, it is well known that a person never comes to the clear knowledge of himself unless he has first contemplated the face of the Lord, and afterward descended to consider himself.

For the one who has learned to regard God in everything he does is at the same time being drawn away from every vain thought.

Consequently, we know the most perfect way of seeking God, and the most suitable order, is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of his essence, which we ought more to adore than meticulously to search out, but for us to contemplate him in his works whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates himself.

providing the element of slight distraction to keep the mind from wandering. Each

Fasting of the body is food for the soul.

Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude And fled to the silence of sweet solitude.

debate in his troubled thoughts, however. Despite this, they

He was just thinking aloud, ruling out possibilities by releasing them into the air, like canaries in the coal mine of his mind.

Life was simpler, too, if one did not think too hard. -The Burning Soul

The Chinese, you know, believe that deep within each of us, no larger than the ball of your thumb, is the garden of the immortals, the great valley where we are all king forever.

she could do things when her body was busy that she could at no other time, things like assemble her worries into ranks, each rank commanded by a hope.

When she [Elizabeth, Princess of Bohemia] went to take the waters at Spa, he [René Descartes] wrote to her that to get any benefit from them she should free her mind from all sorts of sad thoughts and even from serious reflections, because those who look long on the green of the forest, the colors of a flower, the flight of a bird, can beguile themselves into not thinking, or thinking of nothing. 'Which is not wasting time but using it well.

Circumference = nowhere; center point =

A brilliant student, John Wesley pursued his education at Oxford University from 1720 until 1724. He was adept in a number of languages and appreciated classical culture. He became very interested in the writings of the church fathers (especially St. Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, and later Macarius). He meditated on Bishop Taylor's Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Living and Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying

Do not intend to make a buddha.…

The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation.

Zen is a special transmission outside the scriptures, no reliance on words and letters, a direct pointing to the human mind, the realization of Buddhahood.

Thoughts well up in our mind moment by moment. But we refrain from doing anything with our thoughts. We just let everything come up freely and go away freely. We don't grasp anything. We don't try to control anything. We just sit.

transcendence of both unenlightenment

you begin to realize that The Mountains and Rivers Sutra is not a sutra about mountains and rivers, but rather that the mountains and rivers are themselves the sutra.