Quotes About Meditation

teach the heart not to give way to proud emotions and arrogant thinking; bring the mind to heart-soothing solutions that make it possible to control oneself gently and wisely.

the desert, more than anything else, opens the human mind to observation, meditation, and initiation into meaning.

details of my afternoon, staying silent until I mentioned the

When I'm working in the barn or house I often think of all the errors I've made in my life. But then I quickly put that behind me and think of water lilies. They will always eradicate unpleasant thoughts. Or goslings are equally comforting in their own way.

The Buddha uses the framework of the four noble truths to formulate this insight: the first truth, the truth of suffering, is the illness. The second truth, the truth of the origin of suffering, refers to the cause of the illness. The third truth, the truth of cessation, is the understanding that a complete cure is possible. And the fourth truth, the truth of the path that leads to cessation, is the cure.

just because mindfulness is simple does not mean that it is easy.

No matter the level of subtlety of view, all Buddhist schools agree that only a previous moment of mind can cause the present moment of mind.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says that if we can maintain a calm and peaceful mind, our external surroundings can only cause us limited disturbance.

A mind cannot exist independently, without an object. By its very nature, mind is the subject, the agent, the doer. Subject and object are interdependent—without one the other cannot exist. This is why if, through deep meditation, we free our minds from interaction with all external and internal objects, the subjective mind will naturally focus on itself as the object.

We are ignorant of the fundamental nature of the way things exist, and we feel anxiety because of this.

The antidote to such self-contempt is to develop a deep understanding of the buddha nature that we all possess, and see that nothing is impossible with perseverance.

Being alone is best. I mean, it's true, isn't it? In the end you'll be absolutely alone; therefore, being alone is natural. If you accept that, nothing bad can happen. That's why I shut myself away in my six-mat one-room apartment.

She's sitting propped up on the

In the private library of my spirit, there is a dictionary of words that aren't.

Get on your knees when you talk to the Lord. Do not call yourself praying by lying in the bed thinking. Thinking and praying are two different things, and for something this important, you need prayer.

Read this letter three times before you tell me what you think. I am also including a prayer card, and it would do you some good to pray on this every night. Get on your knees when you talk to the Lord. Do not call yourself praying by lying in the bed thinking. Thinking and praying are two different things, and for something this important, you need prayer.

When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what's going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.

I've been bathing in the poem of the star-steeped milky flowing sea,

Lord, I place myself in your presence, and ask you to shine your light into my heart as I look back upon this day, so that I may see more clearly your grace in everything that has happened.

our every utterance will reduce the amount of air left for thought and bring us closer to the moment when our thoughts cease altogether. Will it be preferable to remain mute to prolong our ability to think, or to talk until the very end? I don't know.

Control over my body continues to grow. By now I could walk on hot coals or stick needles in my arm, if I were so inclined. However, my interest in Eastern meditation is limited to its application to physical control; no meditative trance I can attain is nearly as desirable to me as my mental state when I assemble gestalts out of elemental data.

It's funny: when you're tranquil,

Lord, perhaps you don't hear my prayers. But I've never prayed with the expectation that it would affect your actions; I prayed with the expectation that it would affect mine. So I pray now, for the first time in two months, because even if you're not listening, I need the clarity of thought that prayer provides.

Brahman Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they are strengthening the building blocks of reality.