Mindfulness And Meditation Quotes & Sayings

You might have extensive bouts of thinking exceedingly nasty thoughts, but because you are relating to those thoughts with mindfulness and compassion, that's considered good meditation. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Meditate five minutes each morning and see it wake up your entire life. — Waylon H. Lewis

All is in the word "know." To know is to realize. Realization is mindfulness. All the work of meditation is aimed at awakening us in order to know one and only one thing: birth and death can never touch us in any way whatsoever. — Thich Nhat Hanh

When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring. — Sharon Salzberg

We need to maintain an awareness of our awareness, of what we are paying attention to, in order to discriminate between higher and lower forms of love. — Paul O'Brien

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

The innumerable phenomena of life are temporary manifestations of LifeParticles.Once we know that everything comes and goes in a flux of LifeParticles, we can watch ourselves and the world with tranquility. — Ilchi Lee

How can we expect to be happy when we have no peace of mind, when our mind is constantly jumping from the present to the past? When your mind is constantly running and filled with anxiety and fear, where is the freedom? You are stuck in the prison of your mind, stuck in thoughts and feelings from yesterday, from five years ago. There comes a time when everyone has to stop, look deep, breathe and let go. — Evan Sutter

Wholehearted acceptance is a basic element of love, starting with love for ourselves, and a gateway to joy. Through the practices of loving kindness and self-compassion, we can learn to love our flawed and imperfect selves. And in those moments of vulnerability, we open our hearts to connect with each other, as well. We are not perfect, but we are enough. — Sharon Salzberg

Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness. — Nhat Hanh

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

Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks, the ringing monuments of rock that, freed from the talons of ice and snow, thrust an implacable being into the blue. In the early light, the rock shadows on the snow are sharp; in the tension between light and dark is the power of the universe. This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying, all at once ... Snow mountains, more than sea or sky, serve as a mirror to one's own true being, utterly still, utterly clear, a void, an Emptiness without life or sound that carries in Itself all life, all sound. — Peter Matthiessen

There are many good forms of meditation practice. A good meditation practice is any one that develops awareness or mindfulness of our body and our sense, of our mind and heart. — Jack Kornfield

If you meditate in perfect peace and then flash someone an irritable look because they make noise or their child cries, you are entirely missing the point. — Khandro Rinpoche

Mindfulness is a quality that's always there. It's an illusion that there's a meditation and post-meditation period, which I always find amusing, because you're either mindful or you're not. — Richard Gere

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

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

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us ... the present moment. The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment' it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. — Peter Matthiessen

They say practice mindfulness, practice meditation, practice kindness, practice breathing. I found no answers and wanted to practice driving a tank through a department store. — Jon Konrath

Don't think the purpose of meditation is to go deep into consciousness, wrap a blanket around yourself, and say, 'How cozy! I'm going to curl up in here by myself; let the world burn.' Not at all. We go deep into meditation so that we can reach out further and further to the world outside. — Eknath Easwaran

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

Meditation is not difficult in its concept and essence, but it can present challenges for some. One of the most common is in having the discipline required to stick with it and do it every day, no matter what.

"The good news is that discipline is not something you either have or you don't; it is something you develop. It is a choice. You become disciplined by making the decision, every day, to sit down and meditate, even if it's only for a few minutes. — Liberty Forrest

The more a person knows the less they talk. I shall cease speaking and endeavor to instill a large band of silence inside myself in order to forge a deeper and closer relationship with all of nature. Only when I attain absolute quietude shall I understand the supreme virtue of humanity and understand the meaning of both life and death. Only when I achieve absolute stillness shall I come to a perfect realization of the meaning of existence innate in all things. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance. — Amit Ray

Essentially, meditation allows us to live in ways that are less automatic. This necessarily means less time spent worrying, ruminating, and trying to control things we can't control. It means we become less vulnerable to the throes of the fear-driven, older parts of our brains, and freer to use our newer and more sophisticated mental abilities: patience, compassion, acceptance and reason. — David Cain

We're capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world. — Sharon Salzberg

Study yourself; it should be the first subject you learn and the one you revise each and every day — Evan Sutter

We are all trying to find a path back to the present moment. And good enough reason to just be happy here ... Mindfulness meditation is just a trick for doing that. It's a trick for setting aside your to-do list, if only for a few moments, and actually locate a feeling of fulfilment in the present — Sam Harris

Cultivation of positive emotions, including self-love and self-respect, strengthens our inner resources and opens us to a broader range of thoughts and actions. — Sharon Salzberg

Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. We do not need to fear anything. We are whole: our deepest happiness is intrinsic to the nature of our minds, and it is not damaged through uncertainty and change. — Sharon Salzberg

No connection is always easy or free of strife, no matter how many minutes a day we meditate. It's how we relate to conflict, as well as to our differing needs and expectations, that makes our relationships sustainable. — Sharon Salzberg

Your spiritual heart imbibes in the primordial light and, as you dance towards infinity, you begin to see all things are held together by the power of love. — Earthschool Harmony

Mindfulness practice helps create space between our actual experiences and the reflexive stories we tend to tell about them. — Sharon Salzberg

When we feel conflicted about a particular decision or action, our bodies often hold the answer - if we take the time to stop and tune in. — Sharon Salzberg

When we approach the journey acknowledging what we do not know and what we can't control, we maintain our energy for the quest. — Sharon Salzberg

In mindfulness one is not only restful and happy, but alert and awake. Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We do not want to deny existence. Yet we also do not want to limit existence. Thus, we observe and honor without forming opinion, labeling, or adding a story to the object of our observation. — Alaric Hutchinson

Wherever the responsibility lies, shame creates a solid and terrible feeling of unworthiness that resides in our bodies: the storehouse of the memories of our acts, real or imagined, and the secrets we keep about them. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness is so much wiser and more robust than our inner critic. — Sharon Salzberg

The human brain is incredible in its capacity to heal and rewire itself. The human brain can be shaped and trained to be more resilient, calm, compassionate and alert - we can condition ourselves to be successful. Through mindfulness meditation, we can literally re-wire our brains through new experiences, which modify our neural network and our neural chemistry. Mindfulness also enhances gamma synchrony and improves the function of the human brain. — Christopher Dines

I promise from now on to always make time for at least one more. One more chapter before I turn out the light and float off to sleep. One more kiss before I sink into this sea of words and search for meaning to bring back up with me. One more stretch and one more wiggle of my toes before I jump out of bed; and one more moment in meditation before I re-emerge. One more full, deep breath and one more look at the sunset. One more touch, one more smile, one more moment of stillness, of gratitude, of simplicity, of love. From now on, I'll always make room for one more because you never know when one more is all you'll ever have. — Cristen Rodgers

Choiceless awareness - at every moment and in all the circumstances of life - is the only effective meditation. — Aldous Huxley

Yoga is an integral part of my daily routine. That definitely helps me approach all aspects of my life from a place of mindfulness and clarity, through the meditation that usually accompanies this practice. — Christy Turlington

We're in charge of our own forgiveness, and the process takes time, patience, and intention. — Sharon Salzberg

early stress increases the size of the amygdalae. One study found that an eight-week program of mindfulness meditation reduced the volume of the right basolateral amygdala, and these changes were correlated with a subjective decrease in stress. — Sam Harris

Mindfulness is the capacity to shine the light of awareness onto what's going on here and now. Mindfulness is the heart of meditation practice. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The key in letting go is practice. Each time we let go, we disentangle ourselves from our expectations and begin to experience things as they are. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness is an ancient meditation mode in which we let go of our fears, our attachments to control and being right, our expectations and entitlements, and our judgments of others. Instead of these popular strategies, we learn to simply stay present opening in the moment - with nothing in the way - so we can experience life as it occurs. — David Richo

Any time we find ourselves relying on the ideas of an absolute, frozen state of right and wrong - or fairness versus unfairness - that we are used to, we can compare the habit to distraction during meditation. — Sharon Salzberg

You said to your mind, "I want everyone to like me. I don't want anyone to speak badly of me. I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone. I don't want anyone to hurt me. I don't want anything to happen that I don't like. And I want everything to happen that I do like." Then you said, "Now mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night." And of course your mind said, "I'm on the job, I will work on it constantly. — Michael Singer

You can see your thoughts and emotions arise & create space for them even if they are uncomfortable. — Sharon Salzberg

Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves. We can open to everything with the healing force of love. When we feel love, our mind is expansive and open enough to include the entirety of life in full awareness, both its pleasures and its pains, we feel neither betrayed by pain or overcome by it, and thus we can contact that which is undamaged within us regardless of the situation. Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. — Sharon Salzberg

With 70,000 thoughts a day and 95% of our activity controlled by the subconscious mind, no wonder that it feels as though we are asleep most of the time. To awake, we need to train Self-Remembering and Mindfulness. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Whether you've never meditated before or you've been doing it religiously for years, it is always good to evaluate (or re-evaluate) your practice. Although I've been meditating and teaching it for years, I still enjoy reading new information about it, learning new techniques, and checking out new meditation recordings. There is always something to learn because there are as many ways to meditate as there are people who are doing it. — Liberty Forrest

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

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

Mindfulness meditation doesn't change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is. It teaches the heart to be more accommodating, not by beating it into submission, but by making it clear that accommodation is a gratifying choice. — Sylvia Boorstein

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

Not everyone wants to take up meditation, but most people can feel an alignment with values like mutual respect, insightful investigation, listening to one another.
Meditation is a way to help those values become real in day-to-day life, helping people to understand themselves more and more and have a way to not get lost in old patterns. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us. — Nhat Hanh

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

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the father of MBSR, doesn't look like the kind of person to be selling meditation and mindfulness to America's fast-paced, stressed-out masses. When I met him at a mindfulness conference in April, he was dressed in corduroys, a button-down shirt and a blazer, with wire-rimmed glasses and a healthy head of thick gray hair. He looked more like the professor he trained to become than the mindfulness guru he is. — Kate Pickert

Patience is both the tool for and the result of, our efforts. — Allan Lokos

The costs of keeping secrets include our growing isolation due to fear of detection and the ways we shut down inside to avoid feeling the effects of our behavior. We can never afford to be truly seen and known - even by ourselves. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation is to be aware of what is going on: in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Your anger is like a flower. In the beginning you may not understand the nature of your anger, or why it has come up. But if you know how to embrace it with the energy of mindfulness, it will begin to open. You may be sitting, following your breathing, or you may be practicing walking meditation to generate the energy of mindfulness and embrace your anger. After ten or twenty minutes your anger will have to open herself to you, and suddenly, you will see the true nature of your anger. It may have arisen just because of a wrong perception or the lack of skillfulness. — Nhat Hanh

Mindfulness meditation is the embrace of any and all mind states in awareness, without preferring one to another. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

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

Clinging to our ideas of perfection isolates us from life and is a barrier. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Famed basketball coach Phil Jackson, a meditator himself, arranged to have his players - first the Chicago Bulls, and then the L.A. Lakers - learn meditation as a way to improve their focus and teamwork. Jackson finds that mindfulness assists players in paying attention to what's happening on the court moment by moment. Such precise training in attention has paid off during tense playoffs; Jackson has led more teams to championships than any coach in NBA history. Meditation — Sharon Salzberg

I believe that there is only one kind of love - real love - trying to come alive in us despite our limiting assumptions, the distortions of our culture, and the habits of fear, self-condemnation, and isolation that we tend to acquire just by living a life. — Sharon Salzberg

When you reach a calm and quiet meditative state, that is when you can hear the sound of silence. — Stephen Richards

We resonate with one another's sorrows because we are interconnected. Being whole and simultaneously part of a larger whole, we can change the world simply by changing ourselves. If I become a center of love and kindness in this moment, then in a perhaps small but hardly insignificant way, the world now has a nucleus of love and kindness it lacked the moment before. This benefits me and it benefits others. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Ironically, we may discover that death meditation is not a morbid exercise at all. Only when we lose the use of something taken for granted (whether the telephone or an eye) are we jolted into a recognition of its value. When the phone is fixed, the bandage removed from the eye, we briefly rejoice in their restoration but swiftly forget them again. In taking them for granted, we cease to be conscious of them. In taking life for granted, we likewise fail to notice it. (To the extent that we get bored and long for something exciting to happen.) By meditat- ing on death, we paradoxically become conscious of life. — Stephen Batchelor

Meditation is not an escape. It is the courage to look at reality with mindfulness and concentration. Meditation is essential for our survival. — Thich Nhat Hanh

When you have learned, through discipline, to simplify your life, and so practiced the mindfulness of meditation, and through it loosened the hold of aggression, clinging, and negativity on your whole being, the wisdom of insight can slowly dawn. And in the all-revealing clarity of its sunlight, this insight can show you, distinctly and directly, both the subtlest workings of your own mind and the nature of reality. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Body scan meditation is mentally scanning through each part of the body with presence. It helps us be one with the body. Thus, we can feel if we are holding on to any tension or heaviness or any static emotions. And by doing so, we can find relief and internal freedom. — Christopher Dines

It is also important to understand that, even though you have been taught to believe that your mind is in charge of life, it was not designed for this. It is an exquisite tool for maneuvering through your life, but it is not supposed to be in charge of it. Life is in charge of your life, and it does a lot better job than your mind does. — Mary O'Malley

Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help. — Nhat Hanh

Sanskrit has different words to describe love for a brother or sister, love for a teacher, love for a partner, love for one's friends, love of nature, and so on. English has only one word, which leads to never-ending confusion. — Sharon Salzberg

The environment we create can help heal us or fracture us. This is true not just for buildings and landscapes but also for interactions and relationships. — Sharon Salzberg

In sitting meditation, we train in mindfulness and unconditional friendliness: in being steadfast with our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts. — Pema Chodron

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way. — Thich Nhat Hanh

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

The central feature of the practice of meditation and hard work known as Zen is that, as Matthiessen says, it "has no patience with mysticism, far less the occult." Nor does it have any time with moralism, the prescriptions or distortions we would impose on the world, obscuring it from our view. It asks, it insists rather, that we take this moment for what it is, undistracted, and not cloud it with needless worries of what might have been or fantasies of what might come to be. It is, essentially, a training in the real ... "the Universe itself is the scripture of Zen." Pico Iyer from introduction. — Peter Matthiessen

Discussing God is not the best use of our energy. If we touch the Holy Spirit, we touch God not as a concept but as a living reality. In Buddhism, we never talk about nirvana, because nirvana means the extinction of all notions, concepts, and speech. We practice by touching mindfulness in ourselves through sitting meditation, walking meditation, mindful eating, and so on. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You can't control the universe, but if you learn to practice meditation and mindfulness you may be able to control yourself. — Debasish Mridha

When we learn to respond to disappointments with acceptance, we give ourselves the space to realize that all our experiences - good and bad alike - are opportunities to learn and grow. — Sharon Salzberg

Though it may sound paradoxical, identifying our thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns of behavior is the key to freedom & transformation. — Sharon Salzberg

Studies show that our moods plummet toward anxiety and depression the more we spend time online.1 When we're busy tweeting and checking our Facebook feeds, we're constantly comparing ourselves to others rather than listening to and trusting our own inner wisdom. When we zone out to surf the Web, we're not resting in our spacious awareness, and our bully inner selves sneak in and take over. Unless we train our minds to rest in the present moment, through daily periods of kindhearted mindfulness meditation and active communication with our inner selves, we will become more and more disconnected from our highest Selves. — Sara Avant Stover

Loving ourselves calls us to give up the illusion that we can control everything and focuses us on building our inner resource of resilience. — Sharon Salzberg

If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow. — Nhat Hanh

There is no reason good enough for us to ever be out of alignment with Peace, and there is no reason good enough for us to ever be out of alignment with Love. — Alaric Hutchinson

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

There is a wager that we must all make; for the small stake of some rewarding mental training, we can attain lasting contentment and contribute to a positive outcome for our planet. — Neil Hayes

Once I was running and there was someone on the treadmill next to me who stopped running to answer a question I asked and flew of the back of the treadmill. Being fully engaged has many benefits. — Sakyong Mipham

Another way to look at meditation is to view thinking itself as a waterfall, a cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness, we are going beyond or behind our thinking, much the way you might find a vantage point in a cave or depression in the rock behind a waterfall. We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent. — Jon Kabat-Zinn