Meditation Experience Quotes & Sayings

Pema calls these activities "the six ways of compassionate living": generosity, patience, discipline, exertion, meditation, and prajna, or wisdom. The basis for all these practices is the cultivation of maitri, an unconditional loving-kindness with ourselves that says, "Start where you are." In Buddhist terms, this path is known as bodhisattva activity. Simply put, a bodhisattva is one who aspires to act from an awakened heart. In terms of the Shambhala teachings, it is the path of warriorship. To join these two streams, Pema likes to use the term warrior-bodhisattva, which implies a fresh and forward-moving energy that is willing to enter into suffering for others' benefit. Such action relates to overcoming the self-deception, self-protection, and other habitual reactions that we use to keep ourselves secure - in a prison of concepts. By gently and precisely cutting through these barriers of ego, we develop a direct experience of bodhichitta. — Pema Chodron

I'm not suggesting that everyone should meditate, far from it. Meditation is for very few individuals. I'm speaking of something that is a powerful experience. — Frederick Lenz

I feel part of the environment, not separate from it, as though I'm at home rather than visiting - as though I'm tapped into some eternal omnipresence beyond the transient physical forms. — Michael Sanders

By accepting and learning to embrace the inevitable sorrows of life, we realize that we can experience a more enduring sense of happiness. — Sharon Salzberg

Our past cannot be changed, and to be preoccupied with it is inefficient in time and effort. Likewise, by fretting over the future, we only exhaust ourselves, making us less able to effectively respond when the future is actually upon us. By worrying about a mishap that may or may not take place, we're forced to undergo the event twice - once when imagining it and once again if and when we actually experience it. — H.E. Davey

Eight weeks of practice in meditation, even with those with no previous experience, was enough reconfigure the brains of participants. The gray matter which fuels worry shrank, and the area associated with healthy thought awareness group. — Andrew Zolli

Transcendental Meditation is a mental technique, so you travel to this field through subtler levels of mind, and then subtler levels of intellect, and then, at the border of intellect, you transcend and experience it. — David Lynch

Defined simply, narcissism means excessive self-preoccupation; pragmatism means excessive focus on work, achievement, and the practical concerns of life; and restlessness means an excessive greed for experience, an overeating, not in terms of food but in terms of trying to drink in too much of life...And constancy of all three together account for the fact that we are so habitually self-absorbed by heartaches, headaches, and greed for experience that we rarely find the time and space to be in touch with the deeper movements inside of and around us. — Ronald Rolheiser

The experience of getting my Kriya, which is the meditation process that I do, was very powerful for me - though, as I explain in the book, I was really suspect of that kind of thing. — Mariel Hemingway

Power comes from doing meditation, leading a controlled life, being conservative, not wasting all your energy on drugs, alcohol and sex and other pastimes. The guideline for all experience is how you feel afterwards. — Frederick Lenz

My path, my life, my career has really been a journey from moving from, in a sense, darkness to light. From pain to joy through the experience of yoga and meditation. It's an ongoing adventure that's unfolding every day. — MC Yogi

Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge, but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it. — Lord Chesterfield

When you touch the celestial in your heart, you will realize that the beauty of your soul is so pure, so vast and so devastating that you have no option but to merge with it. You have no option but to feel the rhythm of the universe in the rhythm of your heart. — Amit Ray

Someone was sitting in front of a sunflower, watching the sunflower, a cup of sun, and so I tried it too. It was wonderful; I felt the whole universe in the sunflower. That was my experience. Sunflower meditation. A wonderful confidence appeared. You can see the whole universe in a flower. — Shunryu Suzuki

When you experience the light, voila, you're happy. The very nature of the light is happiness. You don't have to do anything or be anybody special. — Frederick Lenz

I was deeply moved by Richard Blanco's reading of his inaugural poem-a timely and elegant tribute to the great diversity of American experience. And now comes this fine meditation on his experience of coming to poetry, of making the poem and the months surrounding its making-a testament to the strength and significance of poetry in American culture, something not always seen or easily measured. Today Is For All of Us, One Today is a necessary intervention into the ongoing conversation about the role of poetry in public life. — Natasha Trethewey

Throughout life it is inevitable that we will experience both pain and pleasure. Learning how to handle them leads to harmony and happiness. In meditation, if we are unable to handle pain or boredom, then that pain or boredom becomes our master. Then we spend our entire life trying to avoid being bored or feeling pain. However if we can handle our mind, then we know that we can handle boredom and pain. — Sakyong Mipham

We must experience the Truth in a direct, practical and real way; this is only possible in the stillness and silence of the mind, and this is achieved by means of meditation. — Samael Aun Weor

While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate. — Mark Epstein

Observation and expansion are two elements of meditation. While a teacher may guide you to have the right posture and give instruction on following the breath, no one can teach you about the experience. It comes through practice and patience. — Debra Moffitt

The undiscovered is not far away. It's not something to be found eventually. It is contained within what is right in front of us. The essence of reality is being born right now. It has never existed before. Reality is constant creation and destruction, and in this constant change is something unborn and undying, something that cannot be approached through the known or the past. It isn't seen through striving to become something based on ideals stemming from former experiences. It comes to that which is being, not striving. In this state of being in the moment, without the known, without knowing at all, with neither past nor future, is a space that is not filled with time. And in this space, the undiscovered and ever-changing moment exists - a moment containing all possibilities, the totality of existence, absolute reality. Reality is now, and in the now, we can experience the true nature of the universe and the universal mind. — H.E. Davey

The soul loves to meditate, for in contact with the Spirit lies its greatest joy. If, then you experience mental resistance during meditation, remember that reluctance to meditate comes from the ego; it doesn't belong to the soul. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Samadhi. Immersed in concentration and meditation, all thoughts and distractions far away. Your focus steady, you achieve samadhi. All that exists is the heart of the experience. There is no one meditating, no one concentrating, only awareness. There is no yogi, only the yoga. (3) — Alberto Villoldo

When we sit in meditation, we are closer than usual to the world as it is. By simply bringing body, breath, and mind together in the present moment, we touch Buddha; we touch reality, and we are in the world as it is. Most people's experience in this state is peaceful and rejuvenating. — Andrew Furst

In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness. Sometimes we get up and leave. Sometimes we sit there but our bodies wiggle and squirm and our minds go far away. This can be so uncomfortable that we feel's it's impossible to stay. Yet this feeling can teach us not just about ourselves but what it is to be human ... we really don't want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. These are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down ... so whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to "stay" and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What's for lunch? Stay! I can't stand this another minute! Stay!" — Pema Chodron

He who is persistent will realize God. So try your best to make meditation a regular experience in your life. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The emphasis is on meditation in Tantric Zen. The experience of meditation in formal practice, zazen, where you're sitting down and meditating and concentrating. — Frederick Lenz

The monk's ultimate goal is direct union with the Godhead. But to aim at that goal is to miss it altogether. His task is to rid himself of ego so that consciousness, once its usual discordant mental content is dumped out of it through ritual prayer and meditation, may experience nonself as a living formlessness and emptiness into which God may come, if it please Him to come. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing
our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything
a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self
because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else. — Tara Brach

Higher meditation is not taught through techniques or words. The real meditation experience is taught inwardly. You shift a person through different dimensional planes. — Frederick Lenz

What appear to be depravity, injury, or extinction are merely traces of memory and experience obscuring the soul. These are merely shadows of the soul, never its substance. The soul itself is always pure and whole. — Ilchi Lee

Reality is non-directional, layered, and potential- all things at once and non-real in the sense that real is an unknown, so "real" is undefined and can not be experienced. Only your experience can be experienced, and that does not encompass everything or anything. — Laren Grey Umphlett

We can experience joy in adverse circumstances by holding God's benefits in such esteem that the recognition of them and meditation upon them shall overcome all sorrow. — John Calvin

A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic consciousness when his disciple, by meditation, has strengthened his mind to a degree where the vast vistas would not overwhelm him. Mere intellectual willingness or open-mindedness is not enough. Only adequate enlargement of consciousness by yoga practice and devotional bhakti can prepare one to absorb the liberating shock of omnipresence. — Paramahansa Yogananda

When you come to the ultimate experience in meditation, when you come to your deepest core, you are no one. You are a vast emptiness.
You can become afraid in meditation, because the deeper you go in meditation, the more you realize that you are nobody, a nothingness. It is a death of the ego. That is why people become afraid of meditation. — Swami Dhyan Giten

The you that goes in one side of the meditation experience is not the same you that comes out the other side. — Henepola Gunaratana

In meditation you experience time slowing down because you can notice more things per discreet moment and you're more open ... The word 'meditation' in Sanskrit comes from the word 'familiarization' - as in familiarization with one's own mind. — Richard Davidson

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what's happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation means to know life beyond the sphere of the physical; to know and experience life not just at the surface but at the source. — Jaggi Vasudev

The purpose of meditation is to create focus. It is about focusing your attention on your experience. The reason for focus: it allows you to be here now. Your only reality is This Moment, right here, right now. Peace is found in such awareness. — Neale Donald Walsch

Only when the seeker is lost, the truth is there. Seek, and you will miss. Seek not, and you will find. The very seeking becomes a barrier to truth, to the ultimate experience. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Meditation essentially means having a great time. Some people have applied a sense or a feeling to the meditative experience, such that, meditation has become a quantifiable religious experience, which means it's not any fun! — Frederick Lenz

I sit up and stare with eyes closed, perceiving the infinity of this dimension, so grateful to experience this, comfortable with the idea of this journey either ending shortly or continuing forever. — Michael Sanders

The light is not quantifiable. You experience it in meditation when thought stops. When you go beyond the limitations of the ego, the light is waiting for you. — Frederick Lenz

We know Existence, because we are existence.

We know Truth, because we are truth.

We know Life, because we are life itself.

The mind cannot remember this, because it is an experience far removed from it. The mind is an observer, not a knower. It can remember, but it cannot become what it remembers.

The mind is a false witness to truth, life, and existence. — Robert S. Cosmar

Through Transcendental Meditation, the human brain can
experience that level of intelligence which is an ocean of all
knowledge, energy, intelligence, and bliss. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Meditation is not the construction of something foreign, it is not an effort to attain and then hold on to a particular experience. We may have a secret desire that through meditation we will accumulate a stockpile of magical experiences, or at least a mystical trophy or two, and then we will be able to proudly display them for others to see. — Sharon Salzberg

God dwells in you, as you, and you don't have to 'do' anything to be God-realized or Self-realized,
it is already your true and natural state.
Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward,
and sacrifice your ego mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being.
For this to be your own presently lived experience,
Self-Inquiry Meditation is a direct and immediate way. — Ramana Maharshi

I was manipulating my inner experience rather than being with what was actually happening. — Tara Brach

Long before reaching this kind of stability in meditation, however, one can discover that the sense of self - the sense that there is a thinker behind one's thoughts, an experiencer amid the flow of experience - is an illusion. The feeling that we call "I" is itself the product of thought. Having an ego is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you are thinking. Consider — Sam Harris

To be is to belong to all that is to receive...worth ... White Elk — Rosie Trakostanec

The best gift of meditation, from my perspective, is that I've been introduced to the Spirit of the Universe by experiencing it in the very breath that I breathe. I love that God is available to all equally, that he's all about love, and that some of us experience that source of love by simply practicing the AA principles in all our affairs. Linda I. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Vipassana meditation is an ongoing creative purification process. Observation of the moment-to-moment experience cleanses the mental layers, one after another. — Amit Ray

One of the things I like about performing on the stage is that it is a kind of meditative experience. Time does stand still. You have no concept or feeling of the passing of two or three hours' time. It's all kind of one present moment, which is a kind of a description of meditation. — Michael Emerson

Of all the nouns we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than "myself". It consists of a collage of still images - name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships - which are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are each a relic from one particular experience or another. The defining teaching of the Buddhist tradition, that of non-self, is merely pointing out the limitations of this reflexive view we hold of ourselves. It's not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled together and transient as everything else. [With] the practice of meditation, ... we can begin to see how each artifact of the mind is raised and lowered to view, like so many flashcards. But we can also glimpse, once in a while, the sleight-of-hand shuffling the card and pulling them off the deck. Behind the objects lies a process. Self is a process. Self is a verb. — Andrew Olendzki

The more you condemn yourself for thinking or feeling a certain way, the more you feel stuck within your own body and mind.. What if you went the other way and embraced it so totally that it was as if there was never any alternative experience to be reached for? What happens when the conflict ends? — Adam Oakley

...the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book asie. It is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathise with others lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to 'feel with' others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative. If we allow it to do so, it can change us forever. — Karen Armstrong

Whenever you aren't manipulating your experience, you're meditating. As soon as you meditate because you think you should, you're controlling your experience again, and you've squeezed all the value out of your meditation. — Adyashanti

The inner experience of meditation can be had without any kind of forced discipline. The outer trappings - how one sits, breathes, dresses, and so forth - are irrelevant. — Deepak Chopra

In meditation, when your mind becomes perfectly still and calm, you will experience the golden light of eternity. — Frederick Lenz

LOVE is essentially self-communicative: those who do not have it catch it from those who have it ... No amount of rites, rituals, ceremonies, worship, meditation, penance and remembrance can produce love in themselves. None of these is necessarily a sign of love. On the contrary, those who sigh loudly and weep and wail have yet to experience love. Love sets on fire the one who finds it. At the same time it seals his lips so that no smoke comes out — Meher Baba

I was raised Presbyterian, but I'm not really going to church. I think the experience in meditation is pretty much where it's at for me. — David Lynch

Perception without the perceiver in meditation is to commune with the height and depth of the immense. This perception is entirely different from seeing an object without an observer, because in the perception of meditation there is no object and therefore no experience. can, however, take place when the eyes are open and one is surrounded by objects of every kind. But then these objects have no importance at all. One sees them but there is no process of recognition, which means there is no experiencing. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

If I have observed anything by experience, it is this: a man may take the measure of his growth and decay in grace according to his thoughts and meditations upon the person of Christ, and the glory of Christ's Kingdom, and of His love. — John Owen

Over time, years of meditation gave me glimpses of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life. I experienced that on one level we are alone, separate, apart from everyone and everything; on another level, we are the Self in different disguises, different names and forms, a part of everyone and everything. This experience of interconnectedness is part of spiritual traditions and the perennial wisdom in virtually all religions and cultures. — Dean Ornish

The mysterious manner in which this growing sense of unity commingles with a sense of utter goodness is worth noting. It arises by no effort of mine; rather does it come to me out of I know not where. Harmony appears gradually and flows through my whole being like music. An infinite tenderness takes possession of me, smoothing away the harsh cynicism which a reiterated experience of human ingratitude and human treachery has driven deeply into my temperament. I feel the fundamental benignity of Nature despite the apparent manifestation of ferocity. Like the sounds of every instrument in an orchestra that is in tune, all things and all people seem to drop into the sweet relationship that subsists within the Great Mother's own heart. — Paul Brunton

To live in a peaceful home is to experience paradise on earth — Radhe Maa

There are several different kinds of painful feelings that we might experience, and learning to distinguish and relate to these feelings of discomfort or pain is an important part of meditation practice, because it is one of the very first things that we open to as our practice develops. — Jack Kornfield

In my experience, psychotherapy at its best is like dual meditation - it's like a container in which you can be compassionate and mindful toward yourself. — Jack Kornfield

We live in a sensual world, and at the same time we live beyond it - billions of dimensions that are nonphysical, we experience them when we stop thought. — Frederick Lenz

I see my work as visual meditations on the human experience and my attempts to capture the thin, otherwordly realm I believe exists between what we see and what we cannot. — Kim Hunter

In Globetrotter, David Albahari explores the consciousness of emigres from the former Yugoslavia, Croatia and Serbia, showing that while abroad, many of us are even more intensely preoccupied with our histories than we were while living in Yugoslavia. His narrative structured out of realistic details and perceptions with self-conscious meditation blending history, civilization and its discontents, and personal experience reaches a density and intensity akin to Krasznahorkai's and Thomas Bernhard's. An intensely idiosyncratic narrative, enjoyable and thoughtful. — Josip Novakovich

We live in this thought web; we identify things and put them away and distance ourselves from them. But to be completely present? That is source, that is art, that is spirituality. And meditation is a way to defy fear and experience that source. — Ben Foster

So a sense of humor is not merely a matter of trying to tell jokes or make puns, trying to be funny in a deliberate fashion. It involves seeing the basic irony of the juxtaposition of extremes, so that one is not caught taking them seriously, so that one does not seriously play their game of hope and fear. This is why the experience of the spiritual path is so significant, why the practice of meditation is the most insignificant experience of all. — Chogyam Trungpa

I was 9 years old when I had my first glimpse of wholeness. It was early Christmas morning and I was standing in my pajamas in the living room and looked out of the large windows. Outside the white snow flakes silently singled down toward a snowclad landscape. Suddenly I was filled with a feeling of being one with the slowly dancing snowflakes, one with the silent landscape.
I did not understand then that this was my first taste of meditation, but it created a deep thirst and a longing in my heart to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole. — Swami Dhyan Giten

The advantages of developing absorption concentration are not only that it provides a stable and receptive state of mind for the practice of insight meditation. The experience of absorption is one of intense pleasure and happiness, brought about by purely mental means, which thereby automatically eclipses any pleasure arising in dependence on material objects. Thus absorption functions as a powerful antidote to sensual desires by divesting them of their former attraction. — Analayo

Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it - that is the only way to know it. — Rajneesh

If we constantly apply ourselves to meditation practice during the course of our lives, we may be able, though with some difficulty, to strip away all the supports that maintain the illusion of the ego-self. However, the material fabric of the ego's support-bot the world and the physical body-is destroyed by death and all contact with its "friends" is severed. Now the mind is truly left to its own devices and its experience of reality is much more direct and immediate. The worldly concerns which formerly served as the support of the ego have all been stripped away and the insubstantial nature of its condition has been exposed in all its falsity. It was never really real at all, and the awesome power of this truth may strike the consciousness like a bombshell! — Stephen Hodge

The good news is that you are never alone. If you are a man, you are always with your inner feminine side. If you are a woman, you are ways with your inner masculine side. However, we are often disconnected from those inner feminine or masculine qualities. Meditation helps to establish that much needed dialog and connection with your inner self. The more we get in touch with our inner self, the more we experience peace, harmony and bliss. — Vishwas Chavan

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it's about letting go of control. This is meditation. Anything else is actually a form of concentration. Meditation and concentration are two different things. Concentration is a discipline; concentration is a way in which we are actually directing or guiding or controlling our experience. Meditation is letting go of control, letting go of guiding our experience in any way whatsoever. The foundation of True Meditation is that we are letting go of control. — Adyashanti

When there is no thought in the mind, no thought of thought, when the mind is quiet but fully alert, we experience a little bit of enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz

Whatever you see, hear or experience in the world is ephemeral. Get in touch with the eternal substratum of everything. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Yet the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book aside. — Karen Armstrong

As human beings, we're capable of greatness of spirit, an ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a vast sense of connection to all of life. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation simply means a discipline that makes you capable of being aloof and detached from your mind. So even if the mind is sick, your consciousness is never sick. Even if your mind is going crazy, you are just witnessing it. Mind is only a machine. You are not. Meditation is the experience: "I am not my body, not my mind - I am the witness of it all." This experience, this transcendental experience, immensely transforms the whole situation. Many things which were driving you crazy simply drop away. — Rajneesh

The life is not limited to the external reality but the external life, has been formed for the human's experience. The time you feel you are done with all the experiences of the external life, you have a choice to move inward. — Roshan Sharma

The ultimate expression of meditation comes when we can feel all the pains of the world, experience them with mindfulness and equanimity so they dissolve into energy, and then recolor that energy and radiate it out as unconditional love, moment by moment, through every pore of our being. — Shinzen Young

If something controls you in a way that puzzles you, think of it as a mystery. Mysteries are best approached by closing your eyes and mouth to experience darkness and silence. I find new and healing images in that dark, silent place away from emotions that control me. Do not be afraid to close your eyes and be silent in prayer, meditation, rest or sleep. In those states you may rediscover a new self. Then your life, time and thoughts will become yours again and you can live your unique myth. — Bernie Siegel

If you are willing to experience anything directly and immediately, whether good or bad, joyous or hateful,
you will recognize that what you are running from does not exist,
and what you are running toward is already here. — Gangaji

Biking and love do not make sense without your personal experience — Anatoliy Obraztsov

If you are going to experience the ecstasy of enlightenment, it is not just going to be a phrase. You've got to work during meditation. So back to the navel center! — Frederick Lenz

The contemplation of consciousness - which is the contemplation of no-thing whatsoever - is endlessly fascinating. It's like staring at a candle in a dark night - you find yourself mesmerized by something that is unchanging yet infinitely compelling. You feel drawn into something you don't understand rationally but that your heart or soul grasps completely. You are drawn into it, and as you are drawn into it, the only thing you experience as real is the eternal or timeless nature of Being itself. You find yourself in a state of rapture, because the deepest part of yourself has been released from your ego's endless fears and concerns, and drawn out of the time process altogether. — Andrew Cohen

Mindfulness can play a big role in transforming our experience with pain & other difficulties; it allows us to recognize the authenticity of the distress & yet not be overwhelmed by it. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness is that space where you are in touch with life-experience and you are brightly aware. — Bryant McGill

Meditation is really quite simple. All we have to do is embrace each experience with awareness and open our hearts fully to the present moment. When we are completely at ease with our own being, the ripples of awareness naturally spread out in all directions, touching the lives of everyone we meet. — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Until I began sitting, it had never occurred to me that one could learn, with practice, to distinguish between attention, or awareness, and its objects. But just this is the central and most basic technique of meditation in all the yogic traditions of India, first described some 2,500 years ago in the Upanishads. In those ancient texts, the meditator is instructed to observe literally every element of experience from afar, to simply bear witness to anything and everything that arises and passes away before the mind's eye. That's it. Just sit there, without moving, and watch, allowing the focal point of identity to shift from the — C.W. Huntington Jr.

[Meditation] trains us to be with a painful experience in the moment, without adding imagined distress and difficulty. If we look closely at it, the pain is bound to change, and that's as true of a headache as it is of a heartache: the discomfort oscillates; there are beats of rest between moments of unpleasantness. When we discover firsthand that pain isn't static, that it's a living, changing system, it doesn't seem as solid or insurmountable as it did at first. — Sharon Salzberg

The idea persists that faith is a remnant of an ancient way of life, a way of knowing that asks for unthinking acceptance of a belief system or adherence to specific dogma. This may be the case for some spiritual traditions, but the Buddha insisted that his disciples investigate his teachings with the powers of reason, test them in the inner laboratory of meditation, and build their faith on a firm foundation of knowledge. As a result, faith in the Dharma implies faith in one's ability to recognize truth when it presents itself and to take responsibility for verifying it through analysis and meditative experience. — Dharma Publishing

Real happiness is something most people never know. What we experience in deep meditation, that ecstasy is beyond what human beings call happiness — Frederick Lenz

The secret of meditation is the art of unlearning. Mind is learning; meditation is unlearning: that is - die constantly to your experience; let it not imprison you; experience becomes a dead weight in the living and flowing, riverlike consciousness. — Rajneesh