Mindfulness

The worst insult I can inflict on life is that I do not reflect on its meaning.

Generosity is another quality which, like patience, letting go, non-judging, and trust, provides a solid foundation for mindfulness practice. You might experiment with using the cultivation of generosity as a vehicle for deep self-observation and inquiry as well as an exercise in giving. A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation-to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

Every morning is like a new reincarnation into this world. Let us take it then for what it is and live each moment anew.

Take more time, cover less ground.

In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved. And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today?

Everyday, think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself to expand my heart out to others for the benefit of all beings.

Do your little bit of good where you are;it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deeply.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Don't go about here and there. Go inside and remain there.

Be equal to whatever you meet! That is a better way to react to life. It is accomplished simply by meeting everything in understanding, by demanding understanding from within yourself.

The mind is vast in its combinations of time, space and form. It contains every vibration from subtle to gross.

The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and silently watch someone else do it wrong.

Failure is an event, never a person.

There is no promise of love and light or visions of any kind -- no angels, no devils. Nothing happens: it is absolutely boring. Sometimes you feel silly. One often asks the question, "Who is kidding whom? Am I on to something or not?" You are not on to something. Traveling the path means you get off everything, there is no place to perch. Sit and feel your breath, be with it.

The goal of attention, or shamatha, practice is to become aware of awareness. Awareness is the basis, or what you might call the “support,” of the mind. It is steady and unchanging, like the pole to which the flag of ordinary consciousness is attached. When we recognize and become grounded in awareness, the “wind” of emotion may still blow. But instead of being carried away by the wind, we turn our attention inward, watching the shifts and changes with the intention of becoming familiar with that aspect of consciousness that recognizes Oh, this is what I’m feeling, this is what I’m thinking. As we do so, a bit of space opens up within us. With practice, that space—which is the mind’s natural clarity—begins to expand and settle.

The little things? The little moments? They aren't little.

When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.

You educate to some extent by what you say, more by what you do, and still more by who you are, but most of all by the things you love.

Whenever you possibly can, do good to those who need it.

Life's not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.

Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

As soon as mindfulness, samma sati, occurs, we find that the mind acts no more; it stops like a witness to watch the inner state. When this watching becomes a constant habit, second nature, the cycle of reacting mindlessly to the environment is broken. In this moment of breakthrough, “seeing” or “awareness” occurs: crystal-clear perception of things as they are, of people, situations and things properly in perspective, free of discriminations, likes and dislikes. From new insight there follows right thinking, right speech and right action, relative and appropriate to each specific circumstance and instance. Then the question of what is absolutely right or absolutely wrong no longer arises.

The habit of employing self-deception to maintain one’s self esteem has often become so ingrained that the first step to developing accurate self-awareness is honest acknowledgment of the existence of hidden emotions, motives and tendencies in the mind without immediately suppressing them.

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.

Self-knowledge is the first step to maturity. ~Pride and Prejudice~

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

But peace, too, is a living thing and like all life it must wax and wane, accommodate, withstand trials, and undergo changes.

Of heaven and hell I have no opinion, for I have friends in both you see.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.

"For sixty years I have been forgetful every minute, but not for a second has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed."

Meditation isn't really about getting rid of thoughts, it's about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.

To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light? . . . Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?

Live so that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort - the opening, terror. Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing - the opening a wonderfully joyous moment.

Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live.

Let the beauty we love be what we do; there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself.

It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even than death... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Great men are they who see that spiritual thought is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so we are.

For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Life is what happens to you while you're planning on doing something else.

Always be mindful of the kindness and not the faults of others

Awakening is natural,
delusion is not

When things are going well,
    be mindful of adversity
When prosperous,
    be mindful of poverty
When loved,
    be mindful of thoughtfulness
When respected,
    be mindful of humility

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

Do not dwell in the past. 
Do not dream of the future. 
Concentrate the mind on the
present moment. 

All that we are arises with our thoughts. 
With our thoughts we make the world.

We are what we think.

Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

By exhaustively examining one's own mind,
one may understand his nature.
One who understands his own nature understands Heaven.

We are slaves of what we don't know;
of what we know we are masters.
Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover
and understand its cause and workings,
we overcome it by the very knowing.
The primary purpose of meditation is to become more conscious
and familiar with our inner life.
The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life.

Practice meditation sincerely and you will realize His infinite grace.  God wants sincerity, truthfulness and love.  Outward verbal effusions do not touch Him. 

The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation.  In meditation we divest ourselves of all material condition and feel our divine nature. 

Your mind has enormous hidden dimensions. Open yourselves completely to whatever reactions and emotions the world evokes from time to time. Accept them all without any reservation or resentment. By assimilating everything and all, your mind grows deeper, stabler and more enriched.

There is no spiritual peace for the ignorant, because they desire and seek it in the external world.

When the senses are stalled, when the mind is at rest, when the intellect wavers not-- that, say the wise, is the highest state.  This calm of the senses and the mind has been defined as yoga.  One who attains it is freed from delusion. 

Prayer is not asking.  It is a longing of the soul... It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. 

The mind acts like an enemy for those who do not control it.

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.

Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away or become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

Always treat people as ends in themselves, never as means to an end.

We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion.

Love your breath.

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.

Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.

One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.