Mindfulness, though so highly praised and capable of such great achievements, is not at all a "mystical" state, beyond the ken and reach of the average person. It is, on the contrary, something quite simple and common, and very familiar to us.
You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)
The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.
Life is a collection of moments. Mindfulness is beautification of the moments.
Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.
Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what's the use of seeing?
Awakening is natural,delusion is not
Reading is a gymnasium for the imagination where people can work out, get ready for the shocks of existence. [. . . ] For me, the intimate teachers have not only taught me how to make things, they have represented some qualities of mind and mindfulness that I would like to have.
Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere.
I used to live in Buddhist monasteries and I finally had to leave them because they were just too cluttered for me. They were cluttered up with many thoughts about Buddhism.
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.
I came to the conclusion then that "continual mindfulness". . . must mean, not a sergeantmajor-like drilling of thoughts, but a continual readiness to accept whatever came.
We use mindfulness to observe the way we cling to pleasant experiences & push away unpleasant ones.
Mindfulness is the cure for everything; the essence of being alive.
Your greatness is here and now. Your happiness is here and now.
I am not nearly so interested in what monkey man was derived from as I am in what kind of monkey he is to become.
I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention.
There is only the moment. The now. Only what you are experiencing at this second is real.
The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.
The practice of mindfulness is monitoring your mind all day and all night. It's enjoyable to just remove things that make you unhappy from your mind, to clarify your emotions.