Quotes About Meditation

Zen is nothing more than adhering to such simple tasks, with full attention.

I can worry myself into a state of spiritual ennui over questions like What good does it do to pray if God already knows everything? Jesus silences such questions: he prayed, so should we.

Does prayer change God or change me?

My publisher conducted a website poll, and of the 678 respondents only 23 felt satisfied with the time they were spending in prayer. That

On the other hand, if the subject had nothing to do but think about his pain (as is true in many hospitals and nursing homes), he showed much greater sensitivity.

I relish the sense of being alone with nature, knowing that of all people in the world only I am hearing these sounds in this place. The tranquil mood feels vaguely religious, what I should be feeling in church but rarely do. In

The quieter the mind," said Meister Eckhart, "the more powerful, the worthier, the deeper, the more telling and more perfect the prayer is.

I remind myself that prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.

Be still and know that I am God." I read in this familiar verse from Psalm 46 two commands of equal importance. First, I must be still, something that modern life conspires against. Ten years ago I responded to letters within a couple of weeks and kept my correspondents happy. Five years ago I faxed a response in a couple of days and they seemed content. Now they want email responses the same day and berate me for not using instant messaging or a mobile phone.

prayer incorporates the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of God's grace.

In a letter to his brother, C. S. Lewis mentioned that he prayed every night for the people he was most tempted to hate, with Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini heading the list. In another letter he wrote that as he prayed for them, he meditated on how his own cruelty might have blossomed into something like theirs. He remembered that Christ died for them as much as for him, and that he himself was not "so different from these ghastly creatures.

Like all great readers, he could create for himself a wall of stillness.

Learn you to die!" means consider how your death is meaningful, as your life is meaningful.

When you are still and thoughtful you are as lovely as the statues they are carving in Italy.

Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.

A comma . . . catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.

Finding a sanctuary, a place apart from time, is not so different from finding a faith.

In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.

Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn't about turning your back on the world; it's about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply. •

Writers, of course, are obliged by our professions to spend much of our time going nowhere. Our creations come not when we're out in the world, gathering impressions, but when we're sitting still, turning those impressions into sentences. Our job, you could say, is to turn, through stillness, a life of movement into art. Sitting still is our workplace, sometimes our battlefield.

I do not think, I note (Je ne pense pas; je note)

No human thing is of serious importance.

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

Let him alone, he has a way of stopping anywhere and losing himself without any reason. I believe that he will soon appear; do not therefore disturb him.