Quotes on Mindfulness

To see a world in a grain of sand_x000D_ And a heaven in a wild flower,_x000D_ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,_x000D_ And eternity in an hour.

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.

The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment. But we're continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.

Don't think you have to be solemn to meditate. To meditate, well, you have to smile a lot.

Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.

For many years, at great cost, I traveled through many countries, saw the high mountains, the oceans. The only things I did not see were the sparkling dewdrops in the grass just outside my door.

To be in touch with yourself requires great sensitivity to everything that's going on here and now.

What we get from each moment depends on the attention we give it, and the quality of our experience reflects the quality of our awareness.

There is only the moment. The now. Only what you are experiencing at this second is real.

Every present moment will offer itself as a window onto eternity, a doorway to the infinite.

Now will never leave. It is always here. Like a clear canvas, it awaits our painting.

Accept that living in the present moment, with your present desires, is the best, the highest thing you can do.

Mindfulness is like a microscope; it is neither an offensive nor defensive weapon in relation to the germs we observe through it. The function of the microscope is just to clearly present what is there.

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.

In my walks, I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.

We can stop struggling with what occurs and see its true face without calling it the enemy. It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything - not about winning or losing - but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is. That is what we are doing when we sit down to meditate. That attitude spreads into the rest of our lives.

We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.

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

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

I do not think of God theistically, that is, as a being, supernatural in power, who dwells beyond the limits of my world. I rather experience God as the source of life willing me to live fully, the source of love calling me to love wastefully and to borrow a phrase from the theologian, Paul Tillich, as the Ground of being, calling me to be all that I can be.