Quotes about mindfulness and meditation
Buddhist meditation, personal insight,
is central to the Buddha’s advice — not ritual or belief.
We cannot be present and run our story-line at the same time.
When your thoughts go wandering,
just sit there and let them go,
but don’t go with them.
Keep sitting.
When covered by seeing, hearing, touching, and thinking,
the brightness of original mind cannot be seen.
The Buddha taught that
greed, anger, and misunderstanding are the causes that give rise to suffering.
If we ourselves are not yet acquainted with
greed, anger, and misunderstanding, then there is no way we can believe this.
When we know ourselves what
greed, anger and delusion are like,
and that whenever they arise in the mind,
they produce suffering like a fire burning us,
then we can believe it on the basis of our own experience.
Playing with words and ideas is like trying to catch rain in buckets.
Just allow your consciousness to receive the rain,
and the seeds buried deep within will have a chance to be watered.
I realize all forms are but illusions.
I thus free myself from the illness of ego-clinging.
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience.
Just remain in the center; watching.
And then forget that you are there.
As rain does not break into a well-thatched house,
so craving does not break into a well-trained mind
If you teach others, do what you teach.
To train others, train yourself.
Self-control is not easy.
Detach, let go.
Whenever there is any feeling of clinging,
we detach from it
because we know that feeling is just as it is.
All delusions begin in the mind.
All delusions are based on various ways we’re talking to ourselves
and then believing what we are saying.
When there is mindfulness and right understanding,
then I can’t find any suffering at all in this moment, now.
There is no way that we can guarantee that anything is definitely like this or like that, so the Buddha said to just leave it be. Leave it be as uncertain. However much you like it or dislike it, you should understand it as uncertain.
Just remain in the center; watching.
And then forget that you are there.
As a bee gathering nectar
does not harm or disturb the color and fragrance of the flower;
so do the wise move through the world.
We stand in our own shadow
and wonder why it is dark.
Rather than being your thoughts and emotions,
be the awareness behind them.
Like a cup, you are full
of your own opinions and speculations.
How can you learn wisdom
unless you first empty your cup?
Leave the front and back door open
allow the thoughts to come and go
just don’t serve them tea.
When it storms outside, feel free to watch.
You don’t need to open the window.
No matter what happens when you practice,
your practice is meditation.
If you watch thoughts,
that is meditation.
If you can’t watch your thoughts,
that is meditation, too.
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
“Right effort” is not the effort to make something particular happen.
It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment.
If we wish to understand the nature of reality,
we have an inner hidden advantage:
we are ourselves little portions of the universe
and so carry the answer within us.
All teachings are mere references.
The true experience is living your own life.
Meditation is sitting quietly
while paying attention to your experience,
allowing everything to be just as it is.
When you don’t have anything else, you have your breath.
Where does buddha dharma sangha live? In your heart.
Whenever you are thinking, or stressing, or in the grip of an emotion — or being anything at all — just stop, and do this:
ana = “breathe in”
pana = “breathe out”
sati = “be in the present”, “pay attention”
Then: Do your work. (“Do your duty”).
And always: Metta first.
With mindfulness, you learn to look at things from an existential point of view — allowing things to exist — rather than trying to even them out or bulldoze the whole landscape. With this view, fighting or resistance isn’t necessary.
While meditating we are simply seeing what the mind has been doing all along.
Meditation. There is nothing to do. It is about undoing.
If you have time to breathe, you have time to meditate. You breathe when you walk. You breathe when you stand. You breathe when you lie down.