Grasping Mind Quotes & Sayings

Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of - and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system ... . The heart must have something to cling to ... — Thomas Chalmers

Once, at a seminar, I heard a Westernized lama say that a meditator's state of mind should be like that of a hotel doorman. A doorman lets the guests in, but he doesn't follow them up to their rooms. He lets them out, but he doesn't walk into the street with them to their next appointment. He greets them all, then lets them go on about their business. Meditation is, in its initial stages, simply accustoming oneself to letting thoughts come and go without grasping at their sleeves or putting up a velvet rope to keep them out. — Marc Ian Barasch

When your amnesia over your identity begins to be cured, you will realize finally that dak dzin, grasping at self, is the root cause of all your suffering. You will understand at last how much harm it has done both to yourself and to others, and you will realize that both the noblest and the wisest thing to do is to cherish others instead of cherishing yourself. This will bring healing to your heart, healing to your mind, and healing to your spirit. It — Sogyal Rinpoche

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Self-grasping creates self-cherishing, which in turn creates an ingrained aversion to harm and suffering. However, harm and suffering have no objective existence, what gives them their existence and their power is only our aversion to them. When you understand this, you understand then that it is our aversion, in fact, that attracts to us every negativity and obstacle that can possibly happen to us, and fills our lives with nervous anxiety, expectation, and fear. Wear down that aversion by wearing down the self-grasping mind and its attachment to a nonexistent self, and you will wear down any hold on you that any obstacle or negativity can have. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Our intellect is like a judge who decides the 'right' course of action. There is no dearth of information or knowledge in the world, and the mind is where all this is stored. A simple computer can beat the mind by storing many times more information than the mind can ever imagine grasping in its lifetime. But both the mind, as well as the computer, are of no use without the intellect, which alone can help them use their stored information. This makes the intellect superior to both. — Awdhesh Singh

Once decided in his mind on a given picture of what some aspect of life was like, he objected to any modification of the design. He possessed an absolutely rigid view of human relationships. Into this, imagination scarcely entered, and whatever was lost in grasping the niceties of character was amply offset by a simplification of practical affairs. Occasionally, it was true. I had known Widmerpool involved in situations which were extraordinary chiefly because they were entirely misunderstood, but on the whole he probably gained more than he lost by these limitations; at least in the spheres that attracted him. — Anthony Powell

Establish your mind as necessary for knowledge and remembrance. Establish a mind free of grasping to anything. — Gautama Buddha

When you are asked, "What am I holding in my hand?" and answer, "a cup," you have just grasped on to "cup-ness." You have identified an object within the context of a conceptual framework - a word, a sign. So the mind that latches on to a sign - here an image commonly designated as a "cup" - does so through grasping. Although you are merely identifying "That's a cup," this is also a form of grasping. It may not be the kind of grasping that will lead to endless misery, but it is a subtle form of grasping. — B. Alan Wallace

I believe in God as I believe in my friends, because I feel the breath of His affections, feel His invisible hand, drawing me, leading me, grasping me; because I possess an inner consciousness of a particular Providence and of a universal mind that marks out for me the course of my own destiny. — Miguel De Unamuno

When you're comfortable and secure, it's not enough. The mind doesn't stop there because it has to continue to focus itself as this body, so it moves to pleasure. And pleasure really is a non-existent thing. When we're experiencing pleasure, we're trying to hold onto it as it leaves, so it really isn't pleasure. Pleasure is pain because we're grasping. — Byron Katie

[I]t is rather the past and the future which are the fleeting illusions, and the present which is eternally real. We discover that the linear succession of time is a convention of our single-track verbal thinking, of a consciousness which interprets the world by grasping little pieces of it, calling them things and events. But every such grasp of the mind excludes the rest of the world, so that this type of consciousness can get an approximate vision of the whole only through a series of grasps, one after the other. — Alan W. Watts

Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate 'me,' and in turn the sense of 'me' strengthens itself this way. — Adyashanti

The choice
the dedication to one's highest potential
is made by accepting the fact that the noblest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four. — John Galt

Desire- grasping, clinging, greed, attachment - is a state of mind that defines what we think we need in order to be happy. We project all of our hopes and dreams of fulfillment onto some object of our attention. This may be a certain activity or outcome, a particular thing or person. Deluded by our temporary enchantment, we view the world with tunnel vision. That object, and that alone, will make us happy. — Sharon Salzberg

We do not realize how deeply our starting assumptions affect the way we go about looking for and interpreting the data we collect. We should recognize that nonhuman organisms need not meet every new definition of human language, tool use, mind, or consciousness in order to have versions of their own that are worthy of serious study. We have set ourselves too much apart, grasping for definitions that will distinguish man from all other life on the planet. We must rejoin the great stream of life from whence we arose and strive to see within it the seeds of all we are and all we may become. — Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

The experience of emptiness is not found outside the world of ordinary appearance, as many people mistakenly assume. In truth, we experience emptiness when the mind is free of grasping at appearance. — Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

By renouncing samsara, we renounce our habitual grasping, unhappy minds. And by renouncing samsara, we embrace our potential for enlightenment. — Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law. — Emma Goldman

Yes, I found happiness. And no, it didn't take years of struggles, hours of meditation or tons of self-help books and yoga lessons. It just happened. Here, it follows me wherever I go. During the day, it joins me, like a willing ally, through the usual cycle of grasping and craving, and, at night, it lets me fall asleep, my mind quiet, no rambling thoughts filling it. — Carol Vorvain

Emily," said the Count, "why will you reduce me to adopt this conduct? How much more willingly would I persuade, than compel you to become my wife! but, by Heaven! I will not leave you to be sold by Montoni. Yet a thought glances across my mind, that brings madness with it. I know not how to name it. It is preposterous - it cannot be. - Yet you tremble - you grow pale! It is! it is so; - you - you - love Montoni!" cried Morano, grasping Emily's wrist, and stamping his foot on the floor. An — Eliza Parsons

Mindful awareness / Mindful (Res):Awareness of present-moment experience, with intention and purpose, without grasping on to judgments. Traits of being mindful are having an open stance toward oneself and others, emotional equanimity, and the ability to describe the inner world of the mind. — Daniel J. Siegel

I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a. subjective side won't get us very far. — Niels Bohr

Aryans?" I asked, thinking I must have heard the word incorrectly.
Christian and Allie nodded.
"Aryans as in white supremacist, those sorts of Aryans?"
"Yes," Christian said.
"Neo-Nazis?" My mind was having a hard time grasping the idea of a power-hungry vampire leading an army of Hitler's Youth. "Skinheads and their ilk?"
"Hasi, what is it you find so unbelievable?" Adrian asked, a smile in his voice.
"Oh, I don't know. I guess I just expected that any army Saer raised would be ... you know ... the evil undead." Everyone just looked at me. "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Neo-Nazis are more or less the evil undead. Right. So we have Saer about to attack at any moment with a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis. Great. Anyone here do a really good Winston Churchill impression? — Katie MacAlister

the grasping mind cannot grasp its ultimate inability to grasp; it can only cultivate its tolerance of that inability. — Evan Thompson

There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion - a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, and (ultimately) nonconceptual. Being mindful is not a matter of thinking more clearly about experience; it is the act of experiencing more clearly, including the arising of thoughts themselves. Mindfulness is a vivid awareness of whatever is appearing in one's mind or body - thoughts, sensations, moods - without grasping at the pleasant or recoiling from the unpleasant. — Sam Harris

The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War's roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life's fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying. — Jack Kornfield

Don't follow after the object of hatred, look at the angry mind. Anger liberated by itself as it arises is mirrorlike wisdom.

Don't chase after the object of pride, look at the grasping mind. Self-importance liberated as it arises is the wisdom of equanimity.

Don't hanker after the object of desire, look at the craving mind. — Dilgo Khyentse

There are other relations besides reality, which the mind is capable of grasping and which also are primary, like chance, illusion, the fantastic, the dream. — Louis Aragon

In practice, some come to see easily, some with difficulty. But whatever the case, never mind. Difficult or easy, the Buddha said not to be heedless. Just that
don't be heedless. Why? Because life is not certain. Wherever we start to think that things are certain, uncertainty is lurking right there. Heedlessness is just holding things as certain. It is grasping at certainty where there is no certainty and looking for truth in things that are not true. Be careful! They are likely to bite you sometime in the future! — Ajahn Chah