Meditation Cushion Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes, sitting there on the cushion failing to watch your breath, it can feel like you're the only weirdo weird enough to be wasting your time in this way. But you're not! There are generations of weirdos, monasteries full of them, and we have the benefit of their accumulated wisdom. — Jay Michaelson

I've been thinking of doing a sci-fi thriller or a sci-fi noir, if that's possible. — Kim Ji-woon

In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth. — Jack Kornfield

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself. — Johnny Carson

Being alive isn't the same thing as living — Jess Walter

I think a lot of us who grew up in Northern Ireland weren't politicised enough, frankly. — James Nesbitt

In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion. — Jack Kornfield

While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life. The most important thing is to forget all gain
ing ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. Do not think about anything. Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything. Then eventually you will resume your own true nature. That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself. — Shunryu Suzuki

When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness. — Jack Kornfield

I urge you to continue your fraternal cooperation with one another in the spirit of the community of Christ's disciples, united in your love for him and in the Gospel that you proclaim. — Pope Benedict XVI

For excellence, the presence of others is always required. — Hannah Arendt

Since beginners can only remain in contact with the object of observation for short periods, initially one should meditate in brief sessions even eighteen times a day; in due course stability will be achieved of its own accord, at which time the session can be lengthened. It is important not to try at first to meditate for long periods; otherwise, upon sight of the meditation cushion, one will feel nausea and laziness. The session should be left while it is going well, when one still feels that it would go well if continued. — Jeffrey Hopkins

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel. — David Leavitt