c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The path of awakening"All of your past selves are walking behind you,like a shadow, waiting for you to awaken fully.Waiting for you to return home. To the Oneness. To love, wisdom, silence and compassion.The child you once were is still with you.It is waiting to receive the unconditional love and acceptance which it has always wanted which will finally heal it, calm itand enable it to relax and surrender into the vastness of your Being.Into the light of consciousness.And it is not just the child who is walking behind you.All the identities from past incarnations are still with you.The seeker. The pirate. The highwayman. The sage....
— Leonard Jacobsonobson Words from Silence
Attention can be trained very naturally, with affection, just as you train a puppy. When something distracts your attention, you say “Come back” and bring it back again. With a lot of training, you can teach your mind to come running back to you when you call, just like a friendly pup.
— Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning
The keys to health and weight-loss: stress reduction, sleep, deep breathing, clean water, complete nutrition, sunshine, walking, stretching, meditation, love, community, laughter, dreams, perseverance, purpose, humility, action.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Only in stillness does the imperceivable become discernible
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is called maitri, or unconditional friendliness, a simple, direct relationship with the way we are.
— Pema Chödrön, The Pocket Pema Chodron
The calligraphy reads, “Pointing directly at your own heart, you find Buddha.” Listening to talks about the dharma, or the teachings of Buddha, or practicing meditation is nothing other than studying ourselves.
— Pema Chödrön, The Pocket Pema Chodron
But I looked out at the waves far below the bluff. They looked violent, erupting against the cliff. I watched them rising - up, up, higher, higher - then falling, crashing, swirling into chaos, passing away. I breathed deeply. I tried to breathe space between my thoughts, find the space between the anger.
— Jaimal Yogis, Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer's Quest to Find Zen on the Sea
Through TV people turn their family living rooms into meditative dens of death and violence worship.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Words are the fallen ruins of silent majesty.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Many religions have meditations on death to let it penetrate our thick skulls that life doesn’t last forever.
— Pema Chödrön, The Pocket Pema Chodron
In sitting meditation, we train in mindfulness and unconditional friendliness: in being steadfast with our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts.
— Pema Chödrön, The Pocket Pema Chodron
Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better.
— Pema Chödrön, The Pocket Pema Chodron
You will only find the profoundly inexpressible in profound silence.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
We are what we think about and meditate on. Look around people! America is a buffet of violence
—  a total immersion.
We may be focused on looking forward and upward yet looking inward can be the easiest path to take.
— Raphael Zernoff
Meditation leads you to your spiritual information, and takes you on a journey of getting to know yourself and your creations.
— Mary Ellen Flora, Meditation: Key to Spiritual Awakening
Your inner voice and the spiritual guidance...will lead you to your goal.
— Mary Ellen Flora, Chakras: Key to Spiritual Opening
Zen movement is a meditative practice.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Mindfulness is that space where you are in touch with life-experience and you are brightly aware.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges. So relax.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Notice how each particle moves.Notice how everyone has just arrived here from a journey.Notice how each wants a different food.Notice how the stars vanish as the sun comes up, and how all streams stream toward the ocean.Look at the chefs preparing special plates for everyone, according to what they need.Look at this cup that can hold the ocean.Look at those who see the face.Look through Shams’ eyes into the Water that is entirely jewels.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi
Live in the present, or die in your past; it's your choice.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Almost all sadness comes from thinking about the past, and all worry from thinking about the future — present-mindedness is your only safe haven.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Meditation,” said his teacher, “hasn’t got a damn thing to do with anything, ‘cause all it has to do with is nothing. Nothingness. Okay? It doesn’t develop the mind, it dissolves the mind. Self-improvement? Forget it, baby. It erases the self. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass. What good is it? Good for nothing. Excellent for nothing. Yes, Lord, but when you get down to nothing, you get down to ultimate reality. It’s then and exactly then that you’re sensing the true nature of the universe, you’re linked up with the absolute Absolute, son, and unless you’re content with blowing smoke up your butt all your life, that there’s the only place to be.
— Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
Carefully analyze the old stories that you choose to perpetually tell, for these are really life-long meditations.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
If you have never found yourself, the best place to look is in your loneliness, and rock-bottom is even better.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Your total intelligence knows how to accomplish astounding feats. You just need a clear objective. Get clear. You will surprise yourself!
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
When we constantly meditate on another's faults, it is because we are neglecting our own unhealed wounds.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Only inner-mastery can bring outer-mastery.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Often when we hear people speak about meditation, we hear about wisdom, we hear about knowledge. But what, actually, is the effect, what’s the use, of wisdom or knowledge? Understanding. When you understand mind, you’re not at its mercy. When you don’t understand, you’re lost in the midst of it.
— Stephen Levine, A Gradual Awakening
In the light of Buddhist meditation, love is impossible without understanding.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
Only in the present is your mind free to do what it does best — solve problems.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The easiest way to leave the past behind is to remember that love does not live in the past, only memories — love lives in the present.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
If we practice walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
Meditation is for many a foreign concept, somehow distant and foreboding, seemingly impossible to participate in. But another word for meditation is simply awareness. Meditation is awareness.
— Stephen Levine, A Gradual Awakening
No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.
— Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
This is Buddhist meditation-to penetrate, to be one with, in order to really understand.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.
— Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
Life is so humbling, when we slow down and witness the gifts.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.
— Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
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, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
Start deep within yourself and slowly build outward toward your goal.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
In sitting on the meditation cushion and assuming the meditation posture, we connect ourselves with the present moment in this body and on this earth.
— Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
This life is like a roller-coaster; once you are strapped-in and the ride has started, you aren't getting off.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Only the frantic of fear can harm you. Your calm and centered self knows exactly what to do.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain — in time you will move through your pain.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree. It completely changes your brain and therefore changes what you are.
— Matthieu Ricard
It is the garden of peace you seek, but it is not a tangible place that exists in the world — it is within. Go there, within.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
True wisdom is being able to say 'it is what it is' with a smile of celebratory wonder on your face.
— Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Meditate, Ānanda, do not delay, or else you will regret it later. This is our instruction to you.
— Gautama Buddha, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya
When you commune with your ever-present inner calm, you are released from the madness and pain of all outer turmoil.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and nothing is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Let it all go and enjoy the profound gifts found in your quiet places.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Right where you are, the potential of the universe is.
— Alexandra Katehakis
All things are accomplished by the meditative act of releasing illusions and simply becoming.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
At the same time all the houses round about promptly took part in this silence, and so did the darkness above them, reaching as far as the stars. And the footsteps of invisible passers-by, whose course I had no wish to guess at, the wind that kept on driving against the other side of the street, the gramophone singing behind closed windows in some room - they made themselves heard in this silence, as if they had owned it for ever and ever.
— Franz Kafka, Contemplation
When we are quiet and still we contract and settle.
— Bryant McGill
Quit trying so hard and sit quietly with yourself and you will see that there are no demands within you.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The Best Music you can ever hear in your Life is Silence -- silence of yourself, silence of your loved ones 
— Vinay Kumar
Success is a spiritual process, not a worldly one; that is to say it is an internal process, and not external.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.
— Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation
Success comes from finding your center and self.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
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, It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness
Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.
— Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation
Success, just like poverty, is a state of mind.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
You can become instantly successful with a simple thought, but long-lasting and pronounced success comes to those who renew their commitment to a mindset of abundance every minute of every hour of every day.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.
— Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation
Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.
— Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation
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, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation
Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.
— Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation
If we are engaged in actions that cause pain and conflict to ourselves and others, it is impossible for the mind to become settled, collected, and focused in meditation; it is impossible for the heart to open.
— Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation
Look deeply at yourself, and see in yourself the divine architect's incomprehensible art!
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The distant sea, lapping the sandy shore with measured sound; the nearer cries of the donkey-boys; the unusual scenes moving before her like pictures, which she cared not in her laziness to have fully explained before they passed away; the stroll down to the beach to breathe the sea-air, soft and warm on the sandy shore even at the end of November; the great long misty sea-line touching the tender-coloured sky; the white sail of a distant boat turning silver in some pale sunbeam: - it seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or wishing to contemplate the future.
— Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
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, The Snow Leopard
In the book of Job, the Lord demands, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”“I was there!”-surely that is the answer to God’s question. For no matter how the universe came into being, most of the atoms in these fleeting assemblies that we think of as our bodies have been in existence since the beginning. Each breath we take contains hundreds of thousands of the inert, pervasive argon atoms that were actually breathed in his lifetime by the Buddha, and indeed contain parts of all the ‘snorts, sighs, bellows, shrieks” of all creatures that ever existed or will exist. These atoms flow backward and forward in such useful but artificial constructs as time and space, in the same universal rhythms, universal breath as the tides and stars, joining both the living and the dead in that energy which animates the universe.
— Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the silver ice in the black river, the Kang, the Crystal Mountain. Also, I love the common miracles-the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time… gradually my mind has cleared itself, and wind and sun pour through my head, as through a bell. Though we talk little here, I am never lonely; I am returned into myself. In another life-this isn’t what I know, but how I feel- these mountains were my home; there is a rising of forgotten knowledge, like a spring from hidden aquifers under the earth. To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon- the homegoing that needs no home, like that waterfall on the supper Suli Gad that turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again to the sky.
— Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
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, The Snow Leopard
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, The Snow Leopard
We are the reflections for the stars to gaze upon, upon a sea of glass.
— Tom Althouse, The Frowny Face Cow
All other creatures look down toward the earth, but man was given a face so that might turn his eyes toward the stars and his gaze upon the sky.
— Ovid
I sit in meditation…and soon all sounds, and all one sees and feels, take on imminence, an immanence, as if the Universe were coming to attention, a Universe of which one is the center, a Universe that is not the same yet not different from oneself: within man as within mountains there are many parts of hydrogen and oxygen, of calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and other elements. ‘You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars…’(Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditation)The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no ‘meaning,’ they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share.
— Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
The inner emptiness is the door to God.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
Even though there are so many teachings, so many meditations, so many instructions, the basic point of it all is just to learn to be extremely honest and also wholehearted about what exists in your mind - thoughts, emotions bodily sensations, the whole thing that adds up to what we call "me" or "I".
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness
In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them "thinking", and return to the breath.
— Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
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 Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness
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, The Restful Mind
In his talk, Suzuki Roshi says that meditation and the whole process of finding your own true nature is one continuous mistake, and that rather than that being a reason for depression or discouragement, it's actually the motivation.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
It's helpful to always remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing withwhatever arises, without picking and choosing.
— Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
Sitting meditation begins with good posture.
— Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.
— Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
Meditation practice is how we discover basic goodness and learn to cultivate bodhichitta. With this view, practice, and activity, even the most mundane situation becomes a vehicle for awakening.
— Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
Poetry is the way that we transcend language through language. And thus our freedom lies in the poetry of all things
— Ilyas Kassam
Yesterday I talked about cultivating precision, gentleness, and openess, and described how the meditation technique helps us to remember the qualities that we already possess.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving Kindness
If the object of meditation were something concrete, something solid and graspable - an image or a statue or a dot on the floor or a candle - it would be much more of a concentration exercise. But the breath is very elusive; even if you wanted to give it one hundred percent attention, it would be difficult because it is so ephemeral, so light, so airy and spacious. As the object of meditation, it brings a sense of softness and gentleness.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
If we emphasized only precision, our meditation might become quite harsh and militant. (...). One thing that is very helpful is to cultivate an overall sense of relaxation while you are doing the meditation.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
The meditation technique itself cultivate precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go - qualities that are innate within us.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
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, Western Lights – A Collection of Short Essays on Buddhism
One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Smiles and kindness bring so much more than money can buy. Help and acceptance are all that is needed when you see someone cry.Open your eyes, and let everyone be free. Free to be you and free to be me. Take comfort in knowing we are all leaves on the same big, beautiful tree.
— Jennifer Sodini, The Unity Tree: A Whimsical Muse on Cosmic Consciousness
It's very helpful to realize that being here, sitting in meditation, doing simple everyday things like working, walking outside, talking with people, bathing, using the toilet, and eating, is actually all that we need to be fully awake, fully alive, fully human.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Have you seen anybody dancing? He is totally aware of himself and dances his way in a manner as decided by his heart. Meditation is also similar to the dancer. You need not reach anyplace, you have to just delve deep in yourself to find the true self and be a Soul Searcher.
— Maitreya Rudrabhayananda
While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Love exists in itself, not relying on owning or being owned.
— Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
The path of meditation and the path of our lives altogether ha to do with curiosity, inquisitiveness.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Whatever you do, put your inner work first.
— Swami Chetanananda
Set a daily solitude time for reflection and rethinking.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Have a namasté day today. Look into the eyes of everyone you meet and silently honor his or her soul. Say silently, 'I honor the light within you, which is the same as the light within me. And I know, we are one.
— Michelle S. Fondin, The Wheel of Healing: An Easy Guide to an Ayurvedic Lifestyle
We're here to get to know and study ourselves. The path, the way to do that, our main vehicle, is going to be meditation, and some sense of general wakefulness.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition . . .
— Amelia E. Barr
The soul does not condemn us. It is not the God of our fathers. Soul is the essence of existence and it is free and limitless. It gives all things the freedom to be, to grow, and eventually to know. It is not a judge, but a passive observer of all things.The soul is the feeling of life, without the judgment and separation of the mind and ego. It has no commandments for us to follow, other than to live, learn, and grow in awareness of ourselves and life by experience.When we accept ourselves as we are and the events of our life, we are following the soul of existence. We are given opportunities to learn, grow, and know our natural self, without judgment.When we follow the god of the ego, we must judge our actions and our life. The soul is not a judge of life.The soul allows us to fail in following its love and wisdom, without condemnation.
— Robert S. Cosmar
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
We need more explorers in consciousness and less followers of beliefs, isms, and credos.Religions and spiritual leaders influence millions by pushing their beliefs. They believe in the Bible, the Koran, and the Gita, but do not personally ‘know’ the essence within them. Too many believe in beliefs and are not who they profess to be, nor any closer to the truth than the totally unaware.
— Robert S. Cosmar
We only know a person’s intentions through awareness. The mind is easily influenced by the suggestions and emotions of others. We are either manipulated into serving others, or willingly surrendering to assist them. One is our choice, the other is theirs.Fear makes us slaves, while love sets us free to serve and surrender to a greater good.Discernment is needed for us to see which we are: slave, or servant?
— Robert S. Cosmar
If we worship another, then we remain in duality. We have not fully entered the path within.Through awareness, we learn to worship the essence of our nature and the truth of existence within the temple of our own consciousness. Our worship is a realization of truth and oneness. It is rejoicing within our being.True worship is to fill ourselves with the awareness of eternity, to know our godliness as beings of light.Worship no person, or image -- only the awareness of who you are becoming.
— Robert S. Cosmar
Intuition is to develop a trust in yourself, and to the silent whisperings of your heart. If you trust yourself, you can trust others, you can trust existence.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
Every day, whatever you do, you trade a day of your life for it.
— Shaila Catherine, Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana
Life is a feeling, not a thought. Thoughts come after life and feeling. Thoughts are outside life, but necessary for balance within our being.We exist in two worlds at the same time, but we are one presence in eternity. The mind distorts our true identity and our view of reality. Think of it like a dog relentlessly chasing its tail. By running in circles, we will never catch it – it’s right where it should be and always has been. We have only to accept that we have one.Someone told us to chase it, but we did not have to.
— Robert S. Cosmar
When we don’t allow setbacks to defeat us, they become opportunities for learning, acceptance, flexibility, and patience.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace
Each opportunity to interrupt the onslaught of thoughts and return to the object of meditation is, in fact, a moment of enlightenment
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace
Every time we forget to breathe or our minds wander or we’re hijacked by feelings or sensations, we gently bring ourselves back to the breath, again and again.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace
We live in a network of inter connectivity.
— Sharon Salzberg
Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.
— Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
We don't have to be harsh with ourselves when we think, sitting here, that our meditation or our oryoki or the way we are in the world is in the category of worst horse.
— Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World
With every breath, the old moment is lost; a new moment arrives. We exhale and we let go of the old moment. It is lost to us. In doing so, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and breathe in the moment that is becoming. In doing so, we welcome the person we are becoming. We repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal. This is life.
— Lama Surya Das, Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be
Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.
— Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
If you look within your heart, I am here, and you are free.
— Ilchi Lee, Bird of the Soul
After a time, he felt a deeper rhythm, the rhythm of the stone and water, not the rhythm of his words and heartbeat. He breathed into this deeper rhythm, let it teach him a new mantra, a wordless mantra that waxed and waned, ebbed and flowed, moon and stars and clouds, river and sun, the wordless singing of the earth beneath it all like the world's own heartbeat. He laid his palms flat on the stone beneath him and listened in quiet rapture to the mantra of the world's praying.
— Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor
He had forgotten how to soar upon the wings of his soul...
— Ilchi Lee, Bird of the Soul
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
Whenever and wherever you put yourself in touch with GOD, that is the state of meditation.
— Sathya Sai Baba
Today, find a point of stillness: brief, but precious slight, but full small, but luminously real. Find a point stillness in the balance of all things between the breathing out and breathing in.
— Na'ama Yehuda
Nobody ever reaches to God, God comes to you when you are open and receptive, when you are ready.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
The immense distance between God and humanity is the indispensable backdrop to a Christian idea of revelation. To reduce God to the level of human thought and human imagination, so that we can comprehend God, is to lose a sense of the very thing that distinguishes God as God.
— A.J. Conyers
Silence is the highest form of meditation.
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Against The Stream is more than just another book about meditation. It is a manifesto and field guide for the front lines of the revolution. It is the culmination of almost two decades of meditative dissonance from the next generation of Buddhists in the West, It is a call to awakening for the sleeping masses.
— Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries
The deepest realization of meditation is that your being is a non-being. It is a nothing, a vast emptiness without boundaries. It is a no-self. The feeling of self, of "I" is false.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
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
In order to work with difficult outer circumstances, we need to gather our inner strength. If even ten or twenty minutes of meditation a day helps us to do this, let's go for it!
— Pema Chödrön, No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva
Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm.
— Pema Chödrön, No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva
To attain to enlightenment is to attain to all. When you are not, you become the whole.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
When we are, love is not.When we are not, love is.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
The point of the overall meditative path is to have Wakefulness (or Consciousness as Such) transcend and include all state-realms, so it ceases to “black out” or “forget” various changes of state (such as dreaming and deep sleep), and instead recognizes a “constant Consciousness” or ever-present nondual Awareness, the union (and transcendence) of individual finite self and infinite Spirit.
— Ken Wilber, The Fourth Turning: Imagining the Evolution of an Integral Buddhism
Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.
— Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
Some perceive God in the heart by the intellect through meditation; others by the yoga of knowledge; and others by the yoga of work. Some, however, do not understand Brahman, but having heard from others, take to worship. They also transcend death by their firm faith to what they have heard.
— Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita
In an age of bombsguzzling blood, skylarks merge peacewith thought and action.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
There are no mistakes in Zentangle, so there is no need for an eraser. If you do not like the look of a stroke you have made, it then becomes only an opportunity to create a new tangle, or transform it using an old trusty pattern. A Zentangle tile is meant to be a surprise that unfolds before the creator's eyes, one stroke at a time.
— Beckah Krahula, One Zentangle A Day: A 6-Week Course in Creative Drawing for Relaxation, Inspiration, and Fun
Meditation trains the mind the way physical exercise strengthens the body.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace
With mindfulness there is more to unlearn than there is to learn.
— Michael H. Brooks, This. Only This.
Each new day begins with a meditation, and ends with a purifying catharsis.
— Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Can one n/ever not think?...Meditation the Art of Non-Thinking
— ijosephi lowly worm
I'm completely out of control, and I can hear the beginnings of the chant, get/out/, but now that I'm not being touched maybe I can master it and I shut the world out: separating an orange into skinless sections. Peel it, but not with your fingers. Level off the top and bottom. Set it on the board. Remove the peel in strips with a paring knife, pushing down from the top to bottom with slow, curved strokes. Nick off all the white parts. Cup the cool, wet skinless fruit in your hand. Take care. Don't rush. Press the blade into the flesh of the orange, sink it down, a segment at a time, along the left side of the skin and then the right. Left and right. Left and right. As close as you can to the membrane. Press to the center with your knife, level and easy. If you cut right, the segment will fall out onto the board, triangular, gleaming. Left and right. Left and right. If you rush you'll cut yourself. Take care with it. Cut right along the seam, right where the sweet fruit meets the tough membrane. Let and right. Left and right. As close as you can.
— Jael McHenry
Gary Sherman has written a truly insightful and helpful book that will positively change the lives of its readers. Although many books have wise teachings, few have accessible, reliable and transformative practices like this one. I highly recommend this book.
— Russell Delman
Meditation is misunderstood as something you envision in your head, when in fact it is something to be seen with your own eyes. What you begin to see is that the place where you thought your life occurred - the cave of rumination and memory, the cauldron of anxiety and fear - isn't where your life takes place at all. Those mental recesses are where pain occurs, but life occurs elsewhere, in a place we are usually too preoccupied to notice, too distracted to see: right in front of our eyes. The point of meditation is to stop making things up and see things as they are.
— Karen Maezen Miller, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life
Live every day as if it is a festival. Turn your life into a celebration
— Radhe Maa
Think, how hard it is to change yourself. How can it be easy to change others?
— Radhe Maa
When we disrespect a person, we disrespect God
— Radhe Maa
Constant remembrance of the Almighty will bring you everlasting happiness and peace
— Radhe Maa
Spiritual Practice involves being constantly aware
— Radhe Maa
Save now, so you are not dependent on your children when you are old
— Radhe Maa
Consider how blessed you are to have the things you do in life.
— Radhe Maa
Everything is possible through complete devotion to the Lord.
— Radhe Maa
Fear exists because we do not have faith.
— Radhe Maa
Serve your parents if you expect your children to serve you when you are old
— Radhe Maa
Love does not expect anything in return
— Radhe Maa
The closer we are to God, the richer we are
— Radhe Maa
God and devotee are bound for ever in ropes of love
— Radhe Maa
Fools only crib about what they do not have. They do not count their blessings.
— Radhe Maa
God gives us opportunity to serve him by serving humanity.
— Radhe Maa
Be patient and keep faith. It will all fall into place.
— Radhe Maa
Give and take is business not bhakti
— Radhe Maa
The art of tea, whichever way you drink it, or whichever country you are from, has one underlining thread for all of us. It is the cultivation of yourself as you follow the ceremony of preparing your tea, the way in which you make your tea, how and where you drink it, and with whom. Making a cup of tea creates a space for just being.
— Nicola Salter
To live in a peaceful home is to experience paradise on earth
— Radhe Maa
Do not expect too much from the world. We are here to give not to take.
— Radhe Maa
The brighter stars emerge out of the blackest darkness.
— Radhe Maa
The true value of a gift is the sentiment behind the gifting.
— Radhe Maa
Never be proud but show humility towards others, true wisdom lies in being humble.
— Radhe Maa
Know the one who wants nothing to be the wealthiest.
— Radhe Maa
Do not bank on mere mortals. Trust the One who will never fail you
— Radhe Maa
Continue to breathe, peaceful and easy. Light in, light out, love in, loveout. Rest in your feelings of well-being.
— Marcey Shapiro, Freedom From Anxiety: A Holistic Approach to Emotional Well-Being
What can you give God but bhakti bhava? He owns it all anyway.
— Radhe Maa
There are many who wish to be masters over others. Rare indeed is the man who wishes to be master of himself
— Radhe Maa
Water and grace flow to persons and places that are lower.
— Radhe Maa
Worship offered with stale flower and an unclean mind is of no value
— Radhe Maa
It's a rare gift to be appreciated by even one person. In life, the majority may not ever notice you. Know You're still relevant. You're always great. There will always be countless varieties of energies on earth. Not just anyone- Nor will everyone see or hear the other, so its not at all personal. Nor is it even necessary for the majority to see you. Find time to appreciate and see yourself. Inside you will find your strength. It's in there. Stay true, Stay encouraged! If one person can make it then so can you. Oneness is what you are. If one gets there we all do. Say it again and again! Let the words echo throughout your being. Stay true to your dreams.
— Sereda Aleta Dailey, The Art of Manifesting Abundance
Cut the cords of attachment. Expand the circle of love.
— Radhe Maa
Pray with a pure heart and pray from where you are. He will answer your prayers. There is no need to abandon the world or retreat to a jungle
— Radhe Maa
Praise the one who speaks ill of you. Before long he will become a friend
— Radhe Maa
Humility is more powerful than egoistic pride. Water is more powerful than the strongest cliff and Love is more powerful than might.
— Radhe Maa
The least among the sadhus, saints and monks and other people of God is worthier than you. Never speak ill of them
— Radhe Maa
To live without an aim is to wander in a wilderness.
— Radhe Maa
Consistent happiness is an art - An art that involves taking and maintaining control of which thoughts you give attention to and which thoughts you disregard
— Gennaro Moccia, The Road to World Peace: Beginning with Inner Peace
If your aims are lofty, your achievements are bound to be great.
— Radhe Maa
It is the devotee's job to chant God's name. It is God's business to keep count.
— Radhe Maa
Do not gossip about monks and speak ill of spiritual teachers
— Radhe Maa
We are all poor in the face of God's majesty. Not all of us realise it.
— Radhe Maa
Be contented with the things of the world. Develop greed for God.
— Radhe Maa
To master life, control the mind. To control the mind, guard your speech.
— Radhe Maa
Pray as if you possess no will. Work as if everything depends on you.
— Radhe Maa
The key to meditation is to exist one hundred percent in the here and now.
— Ilchi Lee, Human Technology: A Toolkit for Authentic Living
Everything in existence undergoes constant change. The things that surround us, even our selves are temporary manifestations of Ki energy.
— Ilchi Lee, Brain Wave Vibration: Getting Back Into the Rhythm of a Happy, Healthy Life
Our exclusive dependence on rational thought and language has obscured our natural ability to sense the flow of energy.
— Ilchi Lee, Brain Wave Vibration: Getting Back Into the Rhythm of a Happy, Healthy Life
. . . if you close your eyes and begin to feel your breath, it will instantly become deeper and slower, and your mind will become calmer. Then gradually you'll become aware of your body, or more precisely the subtle sense of energy inside and around your body. At that moment, you exist as Energy-Consciousness, not as names, jobs, duties, roles, desires, and so on.
— Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential
I don't believe in greatness that is bestowed as a rare gift to a few lucky ones. Rather, I think all people have greatness inside them. It is just a matter of persistence--sticking to what you have envisioned until it is reality. I have a deep conviction that everyone, including you, has been given exactly the right set of gifts to fulfill some magnificent purpose in life. Greatness must simply be chosen. And if you choose it, it will happen.
— Ilchi Lee, Brain Wave Vibration: Getting Back into the Rhythm of a Happy, Healthy Life
Inner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.
— Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams
In every problem, there's a concealed solution...locking itself underneath...unlock,peruse,find and solve.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
The reason I regard training that involves the ki energy as crucial is because ki energy is the bridge that links our body and mind. . . when you focus deeply inside on the ki energy, your mind becomes calm and serene. There's a feeling of peaceful comfort and safety that's hard to describe. Inside of that, there's no fear that you might lose something, there is no desperate need to control others, nor is there the desire for recognition or acceptance. There is only one self that is infinitely bright and peaceful and seems that for it anything would be possible.
— Ilchi Lee, The Call of Sedona: Journey of the Heart