Gunaratana Mindfulness Quotes & Sayings

Each step along the Buddha's path to happiness requires practising mindfulness until it becomes part of your daily life. — Henepola Gunaratana

Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness is the perfect companion to Mindfulness in Plain English. Written with the thoroughness and the masterful simplicity so characteristic of his teaching, Bhante Gunaratana presents essential guidelines for turning the Buddha's teachings on the Eightfold Path into living wisdom. — Larry Rosenberg

Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don't have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity. — Henepola Gunaratana

A relationship has a momentum, it must change and develop, and will tend to move toward the point of greatest commitment. — Carolyn Heilbrun

Enjoy the sacred moment while it lingers. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Why can't we have racism that's ignorant but nice? You could have stereotypes that are positive about race. You could say, "Those Chinese people, they can fly!" "You know about the Puerto Ricans? They're made of candy!" — Louis C.K.

Let's begin with a quotation from mindfulness expert and teacher Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It beautifully encapsulates what deceptive brain messages are, what they do to you, and how they keep you from following the path of your true self: We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those [thoughts] for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears, endlessly seeking security.16 To phrase it another way: We spend a considerable amount of our time engrossed in following deceptive brain messages until we begin to see them for what they are and value our true emotions and needs. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Love allows us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life enhancing. — Bell Hooks

Mindfulness helps us freeze the frame so that we can become aware of our sensations and experiences as they are, without the distorting coloration of socially conditioned responses or habitual reactions. — Henepola Gunaratana

Rob [Reiner] is a teddy bear. He's hell delicious. He's a really good director. He's a great soul. In the movie business, I would call him a movie mom. The only person I hold in equal esteem is Clint Eastwood. Now I have worked with a lot of terrific directors, and I don't mean to be putting any of them below their own station, but these two, I relish working with them. — Morgan Freeman

Be mindful that the world that you want to live in and that you need to live in needs you to create it; it needs your input. The world needs to hear what you have to say. The last word has not been spoken. — Beah Richards

If you're on the right side of the issue, just keep driving until you hear glass breaking. Don't quit. — T. Boone Pickens