The Stormy life can be braved Only by the heart's Sunny meditations.
Modern man is a hard driven nomad without any stability, not (as the Bible has it) a wanderer or a pilgrim, but a refugee-an escapist. Instead of meditation and reflection there is only speed, fear and “distraction.
How does one practice mindfulness? Sit in meditation. Be aware of only your breath.
Once, at a seminar, I heard a Westernized lama say that a meditator's state of mind should be like that of a hotel doorman. A doorman lets the guests in, but he doesn't follow them up to their rooms. He lets them out, but he doesn't walk into the street with them to their next appointment. He greets them all, then lets them go on about their business. Meditation is, in its initial stages, simply accustoming oneself to letting thoughts come and go without grasping at their sleeves or putting up a velvet rope to keep them out.
Remember always that the ultimate value is meditation, so anything you do, do meditatively; and all things can be done in a meditative way.
Meditation puts into question more or less everything you tend to do in your search for happiness. But if you lose sight of this, it can become just another strategy for seeking happiness - a more refined version of the problem you already have.
Hindu is a geographical identity, or at the most a cultural one - not a religion. There is no set of beliefs that everyone has to adhere to.
When the mind is relaxed, no longer making an effort, when it is quiet for just a few seconds, then the problem reveals itself and it is solved. That happens when the mind is still, in the interval between two thoughts, between two responses. In that state of mind, understanding comes.
When we go deep within, into the deepest recesses of our hearts, we commune with God through meditation. It is through meditation that we can know that God is both with form and without form, with attributes and without attributes.
I was a typical teen growing up in the 1960s, when everybody was into gurus and meditation.
If you pursue meditation with a non-competitive attitude, with a hopeful and helpful attitude, without violence, then you will find that you will become a very benign and powerful being, one who is at peace with himself and the universe.
That's the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.
Meditation takes place when you bring all your awareness to this moment.
Wisdom happens through meditation, and bliss also happens through meditation. Both the flowers bloom on the same branch.
To meditate with full effort, produces infinity, freedom.
The logical and extralogical exercises you do in meditation are very similar to advanced systems analysis and programming.
Sleep is really important. You need to rest the physiology to be able to work weel and meditate well. When I don't get enough sleep, my meditations are duller. You may even dip into sleep at the beginning of your meditation, because you're settling down. But if you're well rested, you'll have a clearer deeper experience.
If you just sit and spend time with yourself - you were born as you, just you, and that's how you're gonna die. Why do we spend the time in between trying to not be ourselves? That's what meditation is. You just sit with yourself. Through all of it. It's like John Patrick Shanley said: "Where the terror is, you must go. " Where the terror is, is where you must go.
The only bad meditation is when you don't meditate.
Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.