Quotes About Meditation

What we are doing at the moment is more that just one thing added to the rest; it is a memoir.

I think, therefore I'll think.

At the beginning of each meditation, we ask ourselves: "Am I having thoughts of ill-will? Doubt? Restlessness and worry? Am I feeling lazy and sleepy? Is my mind filled with desires?" If so, we try to drop these obstacles, using the antidotes of loving-kindness and of calming the mind, remembering that there is nothing to gain and everything to get rid of.

When we bring the past to mind, it is then the present. When we bring the future to mind, that also becomes the present. So what we are doing is not only putting boundaries around three separate selves, but we are also putting boundaries around time and splitting it into three parts as well.

Everything that comes to us through our senses comes from the world, but the inner experience that comes to us through meditation is not dependent on worldly matters. Once we are able to experience the joy of full concentration, we will find that this in itself is an automatic antidote to desire.

In another sutta, he speaks about the prerequisites for the practice of meditation. The first is to know our own dukkha, to recognize where it comes from, and how it operates within our own lives. The second is to gain confidence in the teaching, to realize that we can actually take this path. The third is to experience joy at the opportunity we have been given. Only when all three are present will meditation bear fruit.

If we sit down with the idea, "Oh dear, another meditation session, I suppose I must stick it out," we will never be able to do it. There must be a feeling of strength and uplift in the mind. Meditation will enhance both, but we have to bring them with us in the first place.

What we are looking for lies within us, and if we gave our time and energy to an interior search, we would come across it much faster, since that is the only place where it is to be found.

Not unconsciousness, but a ceasing of perception and feeling is experienced.

The path the Buddha taught and is explaining to Po??hap›da in this sutta has to be followed step by step. First comes morality, then guarding the sense-doors, mindfulness and clear comprehension, contentment, letting go of the hindrances, and — only after these — the first meditative absorption.

Each insight should be nurtured and reinforced by bringing it up again and again and anchoring it in the mind. Then we will have access to it and be able to use it at all times.

To be in the present is actually to be in eternity.

on the higher levels of the spiritual path, celibacy is considered a most important aspect of the training.

The goal of the Buddha's teaching is Nibb?na (Sanskrit: Nirv??a). Literally translated, that means "not burning," or in other words, the loss of all passions.

Meditation is a balancing act between attention and relaxation.

A Tibetan aphorism states, "Let your mind be a gracious host in the midst of unruly guests.

It takes no deep insight to see that the source of both our well-being and our maladies lies within our own hearts and minds. To change our experience of life we must inevitably change our hearts and minds, or rather our heart/minds.

Solitary meditation doesn't cause mental imbalances, but uncovers them.

The sequence between shamatha and vipashyana makes perfect sense: first refine your powers of attention, then use them to explore and purify the mind, which can be directly examined only through first-person observation.

According to the general Buddhist view, the whole of sa?s?ra, with its myriad pleasant and miserable realms, is a prison. But from the perspective of pristine awareness, all of sa?s?ra and nirv??a is equally suffused by the primordial purity of the Great Perfection.

Again and again, counteract the agitation and turbulence of the mind by relaxing more deeply, not by contracting the body or mind.

It is best not to silence the mind with a crushing blow of our will.

Let go of any conceptual associations you have regarding visual impressions. Let go of preferences or judgments...Your likes and dislikes...Just be present with the shapes and colors...focusing on them with bare attention.

When attention is impaired, it detracts from everything we do, and when it is well focused, it enhances everything we do.