Best 1901 quotes in «mindfulness quotes» category

They'll come a time - in fact many times - when all the tools & techniques will fail you or desert you. Then - at last - is the moment to trust, use & follow your heart

Things cannot stay the same because they are influenced by everything else, everything that is not itself.

Things always happen as they should and when they should. Our intuition provides us with guidance on our true purpose. These messages come from the heart. We can only hear them when we're silent not through a cluttered mind.

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

Things sometimes go our way and sometimes they don’t. All we can do is apply ourselves to our profession, giving our very best effort but emotionally letting go of the outcome. Why? Because if we obsess about an outcome, we cannot possibly honour the present moment.

Think of the old cliché about the mind being 'an excellent servant but a terrible master'. This, like many clichés, so lame & banal on the surface, actually expresses a great & terrible truth.

Think of the universe as a single, huge organism. Its vastness is a perceptual, projected reality; even though “out there” you may be seeing a big football stadium filled with thousands of people, the real phenomenon is a small electrical impulse inside your brain that you, the nonlocal being, interpret as a football game. Yoga Vasishta, an ancient Vedic text, says, “The world is like a huge city, reflected in a mirror. So too, the universe is a huge reflection of yourself in your own consciousness.

Think pleasantly; Think of how beautiful you are. Think of the families you are blessed with. Think of the dreams you have to achieve.

This inability to just do nothing is a direct result of our habit of externalisation. As children we are never taught in schools, or in social settings, to look within ourselves for answers. Whether it is that our answers are found in some sort of religion, or another person, or in something else, we start to make this common practice. We are indecisive in life looking to friends, family, counsellors, teachers, and even strangers for advice. We are never taught or, better yet, shown how to look after our number one relationship in life, which is the relationship with one’s self.

This is the only truth in the world that was necessary yesterday, is necessary today, and will continue to be necessary tomorrow: be conscious of now.

[T[his isn’t just “another day, another dollar.” It’s more like “another day, another miracle.” (213)

This is today! What will tomorrow bring? Life arrives and departs on its own schedule, not ours; it's time to travel light, and be ready to go wherever it takes us.

This is what it means to be mindful. To watch the thoughts as they come and go without judgment while completely accepting what arises in the present moment.

This landscape is animate: it moves, transposes, builds, proceeds, shifts, always going on, never coming back, and one can only retain it in vignettes, impressions caught in a flash, flipped through in succession, leaving a richness of images imprinted on a sunburned retina.

This is why, to be happy [...] we need to take some time each day to sit down, look into ourselves, and identify the kind of energy that’s motivating us and where it is pushing us.

This life is a dream—sometimes a dream of beauty— sometimes a terrifying nightmare. We will all wake from this dream eventually. Spiritual practice allows us first to transform the dream from one of terror to one of joy, and then from a dream of joy, to awakening to our true nature as Atman.

This moment is the only certainty.

This love meditation is adapted from the Visuddhimagga by Buddhaghosa, a 5th century C.E. systematization of the Buddha's teaching. We begin by practicing the love meditation on ourselves ("May I"). Until we are able to love and take care of ourselves, we cannot be much help to others. After that, we practice them on others ("May he/she/they") - first on someone we like, then on someone neutral to us, and finally on someone who makes us suffer. May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit. May I be safe and free from injury. May I be free from anger, afflictions, fear and anxiety. May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of of understanding and love. May I be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in myself. May I learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in myself. May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day. May I be able to live fresh, solid, and free. May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not indifferent. Love is not just the intention to love, but the capacity to reduce suffering, and offer peace and happiness. The practice of love increases our forbearance, our capacity to be patient and embrace difficulties and pain. Forbearance does mean that we try to suppress pain.

This sixth sense of thought often comes to the foreground in mindfulness practices like meditation.

This present moment is the moment that matters the most because you are in it, and, as I said, if you value being alive, then you value the moment you are most alive in, which is right now.

Those people who shoot endless time-lapse films of unfurling roses and tulips have the wrong idea. They should train their cameras instead on the melting of pack ice, the green filling of ponds, the tidal swings…They should film the glaciers of Greenland, some of which creak along at such a fast clip that even the dogs bark at them. They should film the invasion of the southernmost Canadian tundra by the northernmost spruce-fir forest, which is happening right now at the rate of a mile every 10 years. When the last ice sheet receded from the North American continent, the earth rebounded 10 feet. Wouldn’t that have been a sight to see?

Those with inner peace do not battle themselves. Nor do they wage war with others

Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success.

Though it may sound paradoxical, identifying our thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns of behavior is the key to freedom & transformation.

Thought doesn't wrap around awareness. Awareness wraps around thought.

Thoughts are the input and output of the mental process. Making thoughts is what the brain is built for—like the heart beats, the mind thinks.

Thought for the day: we have far too many of them. And we prize them too highly; more so than we do the power of silence, mindfulness and pure kindness.

Thoughts provide important information, but they are not fundamentally different from or more important than, say, the taste of a pear or hearing a Mozart symphony.

Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness... focusing the consciousness... aortal dilation... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness... to be conscious by choice... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions... one does not obtain food-safety freedom by instinct alone... animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct... the animal destroys and does not produce... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual... the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid... bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs... all things/cells/beings are impermanent... strive for flow-permanence within...

Though we are emotional beings, we are not our emotions. Remember this the next time you find yourself struggling.

Through practicing mindful awareness, we cultivate discernment by being more sensitive to the bigger picture and how the present moment relates to it.

Through it all, we attempt to bring balance to the present moment, understanding that in patience lies wisdom, knowing that what will come next will be determined in large measure by how we are now.

Through clear instruction and regular practice, meditation will help you experience a deeper connection to your senses, your body, your emotions, and the boundless frontier of your thinking mind.

Through practising body scan awareness meditation, we can greatly reduce the detrimental effects of stress and make our working lives pleasant and enjoyable.

Thus, on a functional level, your meditation triggers the corresponding neurobiological networks that are responsible for eliciting health effects.

Time and time again, technology, along with advances in neuroscience and even genetics, seems to be validating things our ancestors knew all along by revealing exactly what happens physiologically during meditation and how regular practice can improve our bodies and minds.

Time is an illusion created by the ego for the sole purpose of denying the unbreakable bond between cause and effect. Mindfulness joins the mind with the present moment, where the illusion of time dissolves without effort, where cause and effect are correctly seen as unbroken, unbreakable, and inseparable.

To be inspired breathe deeply.

Time is valuable in life. You can show someone how much you appreciate them by giving your time. A good amount of time goes by each day. Spending time with the ones you love shows them how much you care.

Time spent in anger is a double edged sword. Not only is it a phenomenal waste of time, it also damages your health and thus shortens the time you have left.

To a yogi, the breath is the anchor that keeps the mind in the eternal now. Just as an anchored boat still shifts with the wind and moves with the current, so too will the mind continue to be affected by things beyond its control. Like the anchored boat, the mind will never drift too far from its mooring once it is anchored in the breath.

To be mindful entails examining the path we are traveling & making choices that alleviate suffering & bring happiness to ourselves & those around us.

Time passes no matter what you do.

[T]o be forever looking beyond is to remain blind to what is here.

To begin to know ourselves we must have sincere conversations with ourselves as if with a good friend. We must answer without reserve, listen without judgement, and accept without condition. That is self-love.

To be self-compassionate is not to be self-indulgent or self-centred. A major component of self-compassion is to be kind to yourself. Treat yourself with love, care, dignity and make your wellbeing a priority. With self-compassion, we still hold ourselves accountable professionally and personally, but there are no toxic emotions inflicted upon and towards ourselves.

To be mindful of social phenomena is thus to identify more clearly hatred, greed, and delusion as well as the seeds of wisdom and compassion both around us and in us. (p. 52)

To celebrate someone else’s life, we need to find a way to look at it straight on, not from above with judgment or from below with envy.

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.

Together with the patient, a therapist looks at the nature of the pain. Often, the therapist can uncover causes of suffering that stem from the way the patient looks at things, the beliefs he holds about himself, his culture, and the world. The therapist examines these viewpoints and beliefs with the patient, and together they help free him from the kind of prison he has been in. But the patient’s efforts are crucial. A teacher has to give birth to the teacher within his student, and a psychotherapist has to give birth to the psychotherapist within his patient. The patient’s “internal psychotherapist” can then work full-time in a very effective way.