Quotes About Meditation

To praise the contemplative life is not to reject every other form of life, but to seek a solid foundation for every other human striving. Without

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being.

For God has willed to make Himself known to us in the mystery of the Psalms.

Thomas Merton

Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which men can take refuge.

Even the desire of contemplation can be impure, when we forget that true contemplation means the complete destruction of all selfishness—the most pure poverty and cleanness of heart.

Gerçek anlamda derin düÅŸünme; psikolojik bir hile deÄŸil, teolojik bir lütuftur.

Meditation for them consisted in making the words of the Bible their own by memorizing them and repeating them, with deep and simple concentration, "from the heart." Therefore the "heart" comes to play a central role in this primitive form of monastic prayer.

it is much better to desire God without being able to think clearly of Him, than to have marvelous thoughts about Him without desiring to enter into union with His will.

In Silence, God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

The Christian solitary does not seek solitude merely as an atmosphere or as a setting for a special and exalted spirituality. Not doesn't he seek solitude as a favorable means for obtaining something he wants--contemplation. He seeks solitude as an expression of his total gift of himself to God.

What Zen communicates is an awareness that is potentially already there but is not conscious of itself. Zen is then not Kerygma but realization, not revelation but consciousness, not news from the Father who sends His Son into this world, but awareness of the ontological ground of our own being here and now, right in the midst of the world.

live," said Paul

What I eventually found out was that as soon as I started to fast and deny myself pleasures and devote time to prayer and meditation and to the various exercises that belong to the religious life, I quickly got over all my bad health, and became sound and strong and immensely happy.

In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being.

All good meditative prayer is a conversion of our entire self to God.

The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone.

Discipline is most important, and without it no serious meditation will ever be possible. But it should be one's own discipline, not a routine mechanically imposed from the outside.

This implies that all truly serious and spiritual forms of religion aspire at least implicitly to a contemplative awakening both of the individual and of the group.

Thomas Merton

The contemplative way is, in fact, not a way. Christ alone is the way, and he is invisible. The 'desert' of contemplation is simply a metaphor to explain the state of emptiness which we experience when we have left all ways, forgotten ourselves and taken the invisible Christ as our way.

JMJT February 1, 1942. Septuagesima.

Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly, and not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the Father in secret.

The simplest and most effective way to sanctity is to disappear into the background of ordinary everyday routine.