Quotes on Practice

Practice is absolutely necessary. You may sit down and listen to me by the hour every day, but if you do not practice, you will not get one step further. It all depends on practice.

One ounce of practice is worth a thousand pounds of theory.

It is practice first, and knowledge afterwards.

Move onward and carry into practice.

My children, the secret of religion lies not in theories but in practice.

I am teaching you now about it, but how many of you will practice it?

If you intend to study the mind, you must have systematic training; you must practice to bring the mind under your control.

External practices have value only as helps to develop internal purity.

Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission-in an era when 'development,' 'evolution,' is the scientific word-to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.

Any racial reconciliation we've had in this country has come not out of confrontation but out of a spirit of reconciliation. If we continue to practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we'll eventually end up with a land of people who are blind and toothless.

Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.

Whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. What is soft is strong.

The state we call realization is simply being oneself, not knowing anything or becoming anything.

Pain is physical; suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering. Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.

The first steps in self-acceptance are not at all pleasant, for what one sees is not a happy sight. One needs all the courage to go further.

Meditation is a deliberate attempt to pierce into the higher states of consciousness and finally go beyond it. The art of meditation is the art of shifting the focus of attention to ever subtler levels, without losing one's grip on the levels left behind. (...) Save all your energies and time for breaking the wall your mind had built around you. Believe me, you will not regret.

Whatever you may have to do, watch your mind. Also you must have moments of complete inner peace and quiet, when your mind is absolutely still. If you miss it, you miss the entire thing. If you do not, the silence of the mind will dissolve and absorb all else.

Stop, look, investigate, ask the right questions, come to the right conclusions and have the courage to act on them and see what happens. The first steps may bring the roof down on your head, but soon the commotion will clear and there will be peace and joy.

Having come to realize in the first stage of meditation that we are not our bodies, in the second stage we make an even more astounding discovery; we are not our minds either.

Something is aware of even the energy of confusion inside of you. There is no need to get unconfused. Leave it - it will pass.

As gold purified in a furnace loses its impurities and achieves its own true nature, the mind gets rid of the impurities of the attributes of delusion, attachment and purity through meditation and attains Reality.