Quotes About Meditation

If you will read again what is written, you will see how it was.

The Scriptures were written, not to make us astronomers, but to make us saints.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

I wrote large chunks of 'The Impostor' and 'The Good Doctor' on a beach in Goa.

I go out and walk around the yard. Sometimes I'll cut grass.

I sit in my room at my desk, looking out the window to the yard and waiting for a plot to come to me, to rise slowly in my mind.

I used to have to force myself to go, okay, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing and then all of a sudden a thought of some where could come in. Now I can just focus and not think about anything. So, yeah, I guess I do that a lot.

Yeah, I'm a spiritual person.

I was inspired to spend an entire year - my 65th year - reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu's messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

In my own spiritual journey, I became a swami on the Hindu path of Bhakti. In the Hindu tradition, a swami is a monk who forgoes regular family life for the purpose of making the whole world his family and channels his full energy into spiritual practice, devotion to God and service to humanity.

One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.

The meditation traditions I started and have continued practicing have all emphasized inclusivity: anyone can do this who is interested.

I'll take transformational change any way it comes. One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection. To call what happens 'the placebo effect' is just to give a name to something we don't understand.

Meditation is really letting go of all the thought processes or 'mind traffic' that gets in the way of just whatever is between you and space and consciousness.

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

PlayStation 3 is another form of meditation. Come on, when you're on set, all day? That's what I do in my trailer, I just play PlayStation 3.

I have all the time in the world. I am in touch with the timeless. I am surrounded by infinity. When I think like that, it doesn't mean I'm going to miss my train, it just means that I'm not thinking about it right now because I'm speaking to you.

The brain does not manufacture thoughts unless we stimulate it with habitual verbalizing. When we train ourselves by constant practice to stop verbalizing, the brain can experience things as they are.

I'm trying to get on the yoga/pilates train, but I can't seem to sit still. I imagine a lot of reporters would say the same.

I train my muscles, and I do a lot of stretching, and try to kick higher. But for me, practicing kung-fu is a way to relax myself.

Writing is how I find out what I believe and what I care most deeply about. It's how I sort through the mess of daily experience and try to make sense of it - by stepping out of it for a while. Writing is how I train a searchlight into the darker corners of my self and the world, as I'm sure I'd never do otherwise.

I do love archery in my day-to-day life because I find it very therapeutic, and I've trained every season with the bow and arrow.