Quotes About Meditation

The master Wen-yu summed it up when he answered a demand for the First Principle of Ch'an with, "If words could tell you, it would become the Second Principle.

Being natural means to exist spontaneously without having to take any action. . . . By taking no action is not meant folding one's arms and closing one's mouth. If we simply let everything act by itself, it will be contented with its nature and destiny. (12)

Zen would have our perception of the world, indeed our very thoughts, be nonverbal.

Only in formal meditation can there be the real beginning of understanding.

Words can point the way, but the path must be traveled in silence.

revised them to suit Zen purposes.

Quietistic meditation is easier, naturally, but a person who practices it will turn out to be just as insecure and petty as someone not enlightened at all. What is equally important, "leisure-time" meditation that separates our spiritual life from our activities is merely hiding from reality. You cannot come home from the job and suddenly turn on a meditation experience.

According to Ch'an (and Zen), understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and heeding the instincts, the intuition.

The koan describes three monks watching a banner flutter in the breeze. One monk observes, "The banner is moving," but the second insists, "The wind is moving.

Perhaps the most noticeable principle of Zen art is its asymmetry; we search in vain for straight lines, even numbers, round circles. Furthermore, nothing ever seems to be centered. Our first impulse is to go into the work and straighten things up—which is precisely the effect the artist intended.

Zen art makes one aware of the work of art itself.

The trout fisher, like the landscape painter, haunts the loveliest places of the earth, and haunts them alone. Solitude and his own thoughts—he must be on the best terms with all of these; and he who can take kindly the largest allowance of these is likely to be the kindliest and truest with his fellow men.

...rousing himself from a reverie, which had degenerated into an absolute snooze.

All the problems of the world could be settled if people were only willing to think. The trouble is that people very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

If you want to be free, he suggests, if you want to heal your relationship with God, with others and yourself, enter your inner room—the office, where the Divine Therapy takes place. Close the door so you don't run away. Quiet your interior dialogue so that you can listen to what the Spirit is saying to you.

Let Love Alone speak

We share in centering prayer when done in common a reservoir of silence that is enhanced by each one's contribution.

Silence is God's first language; everything else is a poor translation.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote: 'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.' This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.

Don't judge centering prayer on the basis of how many thoughts come or how much peace you enjoy. The only way to judge this prayer is by its long-range fruits: whether in daily life you enjoy greater peace, humility and charity. Having come to deep interior silence, you begin to relate to others beyond the superficial aspects of social status, race, nationality, religion, and personal characteristics. (OM, 114)

Gregory the Great (sixth century), summarizing the Christian contemplative tradition, expressed it as "resting in God." This was the classical meaning of Contemplative Prayer in the Christian tradition for the first sixteen centuries.

Now we are entertaining the suggestion that the real work of prayer is just to get rid of the very assumption that was the foundation of all these other modes of prayer. It is a matter of shifting the location of the sense of identity. We have to accept the idea that the word I does not have a fixed and clear and obvious referent. This is where the transformation that we undergo becomes more and more radical with each breakthrough or illumination.

The less I speak, the more I meditate.