Explore Quotes on Meditation

I can be stressed, or tired, and I can go into a meditation and it all just flows off of me. I'll come out of it refreshed and centered and that's how I'll feel and it'll carry through the day.

There's No Such Thing as a Bad Meditation. Any Time you Spend in Silence is Valuable

"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

My mother's a Buddhist. In Buddhism, if you want to achieve enlightenment, you have to do it through meditation and self-improvement through the mind. That's something she's passed on to me: to be able to calm myself down and use my mind as my main asset.

All seasoned players know, or at least have felt, that when you are playing your best, you are much the same as in a state of meditation. You are free of tension and chatter. You are concentrating on one thing. It is the ideal condition for good golf.

Meditation is the single most powerful tool to aid recovery from disease and lead to a life of maximum health

While some people are apprehensive that meditation may conflict with their beliefs, the usual experience is that it leads to a heightened appreciation of their particular religious leanings and a greater level of personal joy

Even though the meditator may leave the meditation, the meditation will not leave the meditator.

The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the sky-like nature of mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness, which underlies the whole of life and death

Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation

I can't say it strongly enough; to integrate meditation in action is the whole ground and point and purpose of meditation

Running and meditation are very personal activities. Therefore they are lonely. This loneliness is one of their best qualities because it strengthens our incentive to motivate ourselves.

What is really happening in meditation is that we are developing the ability to think when we want to, and to not think when we don’t want to.

The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. For you must know that just there (in zazen) the right Dharma is manifesting itself and that, from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside.

Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.

Meditation practice is neither holding on nor avoiding; it is a settling back into the moment, opening to what is there.

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.

Meditation is a vehicle for opening to the truth of this impermanence on deeper and deeper levels.

To understand ourselves and our life is the point of insight meditation: to understand and to be free.

Skill in concentrating and steadying the mind is the basis for all types of meditation.

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.