Meditation Practice Quotes & Sayings

If you've ever tried meditation and didn't stay with it, I recommend you try it again. Some time has passed. In the interim, you may have developed the discipline of mind or the patience you were short on before. Let these qualities aid your practice. (173) — Victoria Moran

It's very important as a beginner that you understand right from the start that meditation is about befriending your thinking, about holding it gently in awareness, no matter what is on your mind in a particular moment. It is not about shutting off your thoughts or changing them in any way. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

When you meditate, don't think about what is happening. Rather, let your awareness be seated in the tender warmth you feel in your body. If you do this, any meditation practice you do will be fruitful. — Gil Fronsdal

We can use meditation as a way to experiment with new ways of relating to ourselves, even our uncomfortable thoughts. — Sharon Salzberg

The practice of meditation is represented by the three monkeys, who cover their eyes, ears and mouths so as to avoid the phenomenal world. — Wei Wu Wei

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The most important component of the system of Reiki at any level is one's own daily personal practice, meditation and self-healing. This is the foundation from which all healing experiences with the animals will
grow. — Kathleen Prasad

You can go through hundreds of lifetimes in one, and it all starts with daily meditation practice. — Frederick Lenz

In reality, love is fluid; it's a verb, not a noun. — Sharon Salzberg

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

The aim of any practice of concentration and meditation is to free the aspirant from his usual way of thinking, feeling and being, so that he manages to become aware of himself in a manner which is totally different from the way he is normally.
This self-awareness, inaccessible to the seeker in his ordinary state of being, is closely linked with a very special inner presence which is liberating, transforming and therapeutic at the same time. — Edward Salim Michael

Someone who is seriously interested in meditation should not expect any feedback or promises from the practice. Most — Chogyam Trungpa

The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation. — Milarepa

Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements. — Amit Ray

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

After a few years of meditation practice we can even learn how to occasionally ignore ourselves. And what relief that can be! — Wes "Scoop" Nisker

When you're centered, your emotions are not hijacking you. — Ray Dalio

Here are two dichotomies here. In the West it is a very physical practice, and even meditation is a practice to become productive and more at peace. In the East, you think of the deep spiritual practices as a journey of complete dissolution of the self, the ego. — Karan Bajaj

Zen movement is a meditative practice. — Bryant McGill

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

Buddha taught, "Breathing in, I recognize my feeling. Breathing out, I calm my feeling." If you practice this, not only will your feeling be calmed down but the energy of mindfulness will also help you see into the nature and roots of your anger. Mindfulness helps you be concentrated and look deeply. This is true meditation. The insight will come after some time of practice. You will see the truth about yourself and the truth about the person who you thought to be the cause of your suffering. This insight will release you from your anger and transform the roots of anger in you. The transformation in you will also help transform the other person. Mindful speaking can bring real happiness, and unmindful speech can kill. When someone tells us something that makes us happy, that is a wonderful gift. But sometimes someone says something to us that is so cruel and distressing that we feel like committing suicide. We lose our joie de vivre. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Millions of people are joined in the knowledge that writing brings insight and calm in the same way that prayer, meditation, or a long walk in the woods does. They have discovered that writing allows the racing mind to move at the pace of pen and paper or the pace of typing on the waiting screen - that journal writing is a spiritual practice. — Christina Baldwin

Life is both dreadful and wonderful. To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The practice of concentration is like acquiring a lampshade to help us concentrate our mind on something. While doing sitting or walking meditation, cutting the future, cutting the past, dwelling in the present time, we develop our own power of concentration. With that power of concentration, we can look deeply into the problem. This is insight meditation.
First we are aware of the problem, focusing all our attention on the problem, and then we look deeply into it in order to understand its real nature [ ... ]. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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

To observe and watch one's own mind is something really interesting. The untrained mind will run and follow its old habit patterns. Because it has not been trained and taught, it will get lost in all kinds of stories and issues. Therefore we have to train our mind. The meditation practice in Buddhism is all about training one's own mind. — Ajahn Chah

Raja yoga is the mental practice and incorporates meditation, pranayama, and mudra. What are the benefits of having a raja yoga practice? The benefit is spirituality. — Rajashree Choudhury

It is so powerful when we can leave behind our ordinary identities, no longer think of ourselves primarily as a conductor, or writer, or salesclerk, and go to a supportive environment to deeply immerse in meditation practice. — Sharon Salzberg

Everything is happening spontaneously, and the witnessing of it is also happening spontaneously. Everything is already happening in natural balance. — Mooji

Integrated meditation practice is like a healthy diet
which is indispensable for maintaining your vitality and resistance to disease.
Likewise, a balanced meditative practice in the course of a socially engaged way of life
heightens your psychological immune system, so that you are less vulnerable to mental imbalances of all kinds. — B. Alan Wallace

A lot of people do their practice. They meditate on compassion. Then they yell at people afterwards. NThat is not quite working. One of the things I try to emphasize is contemplative meditation - bringing your thought and intention into meditation. — Sakyong Mipham

If you decide to go on a Buddhist path, you have to be careful if you start mixing a lot of different traditions you are not totally familiar with - mixing this kind of meditation with that kind of practice or this kind of visualization with that kind of mantra. Then you really are concocting your own thing, and you have no idea what is going to happen. — Sakyong Mipham

I start my day with a mind, body, soul practice - yoga, Pilates or meditation. — Donna Karan

Meditation can be a refuge, but it is not a practice in which real life is ever excluded. The strength of mindfulness is that it enables us to hold difficult thoughts and feelings in a different way - with awareness, balance, and love — Sharon Salzberg

You need energy and life force to see and feel what you need to do. Otherwise you are in a dark room and you can't tell what's going on. You need to practice meditation. — Frederick Lenz

Spiritual practice is not just sitting and meditation. Practice is looking, thinking, touching, drinking, eating and talking. Every act, every breath, and every step can be practice and can help us to become more ourselves. — Nhat Hanh

I think they paid attention to their lives and became wise. For those of us who don't arrive at wisdom naturally, meditation is one way to get there through practice. — Sylvia Boorstein

Breathing is important in the practice of meditation because it is the faculty in us that is simultaneously voluntary and involuntary. You can feel that you are breathing, and equally you can feel that it is breathing you. So it is a sort of bridge between the voluntary world and the involuntary world - a place where they are one. — Alan Watts

Meditation and spiritual practice are good, but also action. It's very important to be clear about who you are, and also about your relation to the Earth. Develop yourself according to your own tradition and the call of your heart. But remember to respect differences, and strive for unity. — Carlos Barrios

Don't let us take doubts with exaggerated seriousness nor let them grow out of proportion, or become black-and-white or fanatical about them. What we need to learn is how slowly to change our culturally conditioned and passionate involvement with doubt into a free, humorous, and compassionate one. This means giving doubts time, and giving ourselves time to find answers to our questions that are not merely intellectual or "philosophical," but living and real and genuine and workable. Doubts cannot resolve themselves immediately; but if we are patient a space can be created within us, in which doubts can be carefully and objectively examined, unraveled, dissolved, and healed. What we lack, especially in this culture, is the right undistracted and richly spacious environment of the mind, which can only be created through sustained meditation practice, and in which insights can be given the change slowly to mature and ripen. 129-130 — Sogyal Rinpoche

That's why it's called a practice. We have to practice a practice if it is to be of value. — Allan Lokos

This meditation is called nontheistic, which doesn't have anything to do with believing in God or not believing in God, but means that nobody but yourself can tell you what to accept and what to reject.
The practice of meditation helps us to get to know this basic energy really well, with tremendous honesty and warmheartedness, and we begin to figure out for ourselves what is poison and what is medicin, which means something different for each of us. — Pema Chodron

It is as important to monitor your mind constantly as it is to sit down and practice meditation. — Frederick Lenz

Your goal is not to battle with the mind, but to witness the mind. — Swami Muktananda

We underestimate the value of patience. It is possible that people might sometimes interrupt our meditation sessions or Dharma study, but they can never take away our opportunity to train in inner virtues such as patience. It is this mental training, rather than outer virtuous activities, that is the essence of Dharma practice. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

As gold purified in a furnace loses its impurities and achieves its own true nature, the mind gets rid of the impurities of the attributes of delusion, attachment and purity through meditation and attains Reality. — Adi Shankara

When we do our best to treat others with kindness, it's often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves. — Sharon Salzberg

Focusing techniques that enhance attentiveness (such as mindfulness meditation) help to increase appreciation for the simple blessings of life and banish incompatible thoughts from consciousness. For that reason, celebrating the ordinary is a practice that requires paying attention. Embrace the temporary. Live in the moment. Be grateful for all the little things. Let your eyes linger on what's right in front of you. — Karen Speerstra

Routines may include taking a warm bath or a relaxing walk in the evening, or practicing meditation/relaxation exercises. Psychologically, the completion of such a practice tells your mind and body that the day's work is over and you are free to relax and sleep. — Andrew Weil

In the practice of sitting meditation you relate to your daily life all the time. Meditation practice brings our neuroses to the surface rather than hiding them at the bottom of our minds. It enables us to relate to our lives as something workable. — Chogyam Trungpa

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.

In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them "thinking", and return to the breath. — Pema Chodron

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises. — Jack Kornfield

What if religion was each other? If our practice was our life? If prayer was our words? What if the temple was the Earth? If forests were our church? If holy water - the rivers, lakes, and oceans? What if meditation was our relationships? If the Teacher was life? If wisdom was knowledge? If love was the center of our being. — Ganga White

Meditation is as important as lifting weights and being out here on the field for practice, — Russell Okung

As we practice meditation we are bringing forth ease, presence, compassion, wisdom & trust. — Sharon Salzberg

When a caterpillar spins its cocoon, it goes through a transformative process and then emerges as a butterfly. Similarly, when we go through a practice of meditation and prayer, we loosen our egoic grip on a sense of self that is separate from the Whole and become vehicles of the emergent evolutionary paradigm of love, peace , compassion, wisdom, harmony and oneness that seeks expression on the planet. — Michael Beckwith

Through the practice of meditation, when the mind is quieted and the emotions are calmed, the Soul shines forth in all of its glory. — Genevieve Gerard

It is easier to develop the mind through meditation than it is just through athletic practice. If you put the two together, it will be unbelievable. — Frederick Lenz

Basically when I'm walking I'm not consciously writing or intending anything. In the manner I have learned from meditation practice, I let things unfold. — Stephen Vincent Benet

Paying attention to the ethical implications of our choices has never been more pressing - or more complicated - than it is today. — Sharon Salzberg

Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance beween spirit and humility. — Gary Snyder

You are a Buddha, and so is everyone else. I didn't make that up. It was the Buddha himself who said so. He said that all beings had the potential to become awakened. To practice walking meditation is to practice living in mindfulness. Mindfulness and enlightenment are one. Enlightenment leads to mindfulness and mindfulness leads to enlightenment. — Nhat Hanh

Don't read the sutras - practice meditation. Don't take up the broom - practice meditation. Don't plant tea seeds - practice meditation. — Ikkyu

If you read the stories of the great spiritual teachers of the past, we find that they have attained spiritual realization through a great deal of meditation, solitude and practice. They did not take any shortcuts. — Rajiv Mehrotra

[W]hen you practise right meditation, you 'cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self. — Steve Hagen

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

Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Yoga has expanded beyond asana for me. It's how I live my life and currently I'm throwing myself into a meditation practice. — Kathryn Budig

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

Through meditation, difficult thoughts and emotions may well rise up. And through practice, you can meet such emotions with kindness, listen to them, explore them and then really let them go. — Gyalwa Dokhampa

Keep the remembrance of your real nature alive, even while working, and avoid haste which causes you to forget. Be deliberate. Practice meditation to still the mind and cause it to become aware of its true relationship to the Self which supports it. Do not imagine that it is you who are doing the work. Think that is the underlying current which is doing it. Identify yourself with the current. — Ramana Maharshi

The practice of meditation is emptying the mind. When the mind is empty, completely empty, it's perfect meditation. It's really that simple. — Frederick Lenz

Selfless-giving burns away the layers of the onion. Purity and humility keep meditation and selfless-giving clear. Love radiates through the entire practice because we do all of it only for love. — Frederick Lenz

One day we shall domesticate him into a human being & then I shall be able to sketch him. For this is what we have done with ourselves & with God. The little boy will assist his own domestication; he is diligent & cooperative. He cooperates without knowing that the assistance we expect of him is for his own self-sacrifice. Recently, he has had much practice. And so he will go on progressing until little by little
because of essential goodness with which we achieve our salvation
he will pass from actual time to daily time, from meditation to expression, from existence to life. Making the great sacrifice of not being mad. I am not mad out of solidarity with thousands of people who, in order to construct the possible, have also sacrificed the truth which would constitute madness. — Clarice Lispector

By means of meditation, I feel that we have planted dynamite to transcend the world of confusion. So it would be good if you could practice meditation as much as you can, as much as physically and psychologically possible. You could become more clear and sane, and you could also influence the national neurosis in that way. — Chogyam Trungpa

Why shouldn't you strengthen your own vibrations through fellowship with people seeking Self-realization, and by group meditation with them? This practice will fortify your own spiritual convictions you will find that many seemingly insuperable barriers in your life will crumble and dissolve in the waters of meditation. Your devotion and love for God will commingle with the devotion and love of others. Divine bliss will radiate from you, helping all persons you meet. — Paramahansa Yogananda

At the beginning of every winter people are careful to install storm windows. These extra panes of glass protect their houses against the bitter winds. We do something very similar to protect our minds through the practice of meditation. — Eknath Easwaran

Realisation is nothing new to be acquired. It is already there, but obstructed by a screen of thoughts. All our attempts are directed to lifting this screen and then realisation is revealed. — Ramana Maharshi

See who is in the subject. The investigation leads you to pure consciousness beyond the subject. — Ramana Maharshi

Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured. — B.K.S. Iyengar

The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest. — Pema Chodron

Seeking higher ground is not a destination, but an elevation. Wings up, eyes shut open. — T.F. Hodge

My wife and I took a sabbatical and we went from Europe to India, where we lived in an ashram for six months and did meditation and yoga vigorously, like from 5:00 in the morning until 10:00 in the night in very austere circumstances. I think then my practice became less superficial, more like the traditional definition of what meditation was: to truly find oneness. — Karan Bajaj

Peace never hurries. To rush or force is contradictory to the very essence of peace. — Alaric Hutchinson

Imagine the presence of one who deeply loves you and is powerful enough to deal with the things you fear. It turns fear into confidence. But, like all spiritual growth, this change only comes with practice. It comes when you say, "Amen - I believe" when you hear or read the promises of God. It comes through meditation on God's words. It comes when the cross of Jesus Christ assures you that God is faithful. These words to the fearful are so important that Jesus makes them his final words on earth: "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" (Matt. 28:20). The resurrection is God's answer to fear. Jesus is alive. RESPONSE — Edward T. Welch

Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration. — Nhat Hanh

Understand the suffering of worldly existence.
Abandon its causes of ignorance and selfishness.
Practice the path of meditation and compassion.
Awaken from suffering within Great Peace. — Gautama Buddha

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

There are an incalculable - even infinite - number of situations in which we can practice forgiveness.

Expecting it to be a singular action - motivated by the sheer imperative to move on and forget - can be more damaging than the original feelings of anger.

Accepting forgiveness as pluralistic and as an ongoing, individualized process opens us up to realize the role that our own needs play in conflict resolution. — Sharon Salzberg

The true practice to meditation is to sit as if you where drinking water when you are thursty. — Shunryu Suzuki

being attached to any one philosophy or religion
dwelling on moot differences and wanting to fit in
despite the path all are led Home in time
following an alternative pathway is certainly no crime
Krishna, Buddha, Allah or Zohar Kabbalah
devoted nonviolently, one is led to Nirvana
Hindu Sages, Zen Masters or Christian Mystics
many tongues, but identical truth spoken from their lips
mentioning Self or no-self or God is Father or Mother
according to their culture emphasizing one method or another
allness vs. nothingness, meditation vs. prayer
devotion in practice is all you should care
when Truth reveals itself you're beyond all conception
then not a single man-made word will hold any traction — Jarett Sabirsh

Every day seems to reveal a new piece of research about meditation, or new clinical applications of mindfulness or compassion practice, or new corporations or foundations or non-profits bringing mindfulness to work. — Sharon Salzberg

Brent Kessel combines some of the most sophisticated knowledge of financial planning and investment strategies with a sincere and grounded practice in the meditation arts. He has written the deepest and most comprehensive book about money in some time. I applaud him for it. It calls for a serious reading. — George Kinder

Perceptions, our ways of thinking, and our behavior. It is a question of bringing about a complete reversal of mental habits by reducing emotions in a gradual process of study, reflection, and meditation - in other words, familiarization. That is how we refine the mind and purify it through a training that actualizes its potential. We learn to master the stream of our consciousness, to control the emotional obscurations, without letting ourselves be dominated by them. That is the path toward realization of the absolute nature. Our practice integrates all the aspects and all the various levels of the Buddha's teaching. — Dalai Lama XIV

If we harm someone else, we're inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being - someone who wants to be happy, just as we do. — Sharon Salzberg

There are many different ways to practice meditation; it's good to experiment until you find one that seems to suit you. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation applies the brakes to the mind. — Ramana Maharshi

There's no wrong way to meditate. And meditation should never be a difficult practice that leads to self criticism. — Moby