Meditation Quotes

“One evening Milarepa returned to his cave after gathering firewood, only to find it filled with demons. They were cooking his food, reading his books, sleeping in his bed. They had taken over the joint. He knew about nonduality of self and other, but he still didn’t quite know how to get these guys out of his cave. Even though he had the sense that they were just a projection of his own mind—all the unwanted parts of himself—he didn’t know how to get rid of them. So first he taught them the dharma. He sat on this seat that was higher than they were and said things to them about how we are all one. He talked about compassion and shunyata and how poison is medicine. Nothing happened. The demons were still there. Then he lost his patience and got angry and ran at them. They just laughed at him. Finally, he gave up and just sat down on the floor, saying, “I’m not going away and it looks like you’re not either, so let’s just live here together.” At that point, all of them left except one. Milarepa said, “Oh, this one is particularly vicious.” (We all know that one. Sometimes we have lots of them like that. Sometimes we feel that’s all we’ve got.) He didn’t know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of the demon and said, “Just eat me up if you want to.” Then that demon left too.”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

“Kindness and awareness work together. Through awareness we understand the underlying beauty of everything and every being.”
― Amit Ray, Nonviolence: The Transforming Power

“The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality because they confuse the world as it with the world as they think about it and talk about it and describe it. For on the one hand there is the real world and on the other there is a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds. These are very very useful symbols, all civilization depends on them, but like all good things they have their disadvantages, and the principle disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“You get peace of mind not by thinking about it or imagining it, but by quietening and relaxing the restless mind.”
― Remez Sasson

“Every soul innately yearns for stillness, for a space, a garden where we can till, sow, reap, and rest, and by doing so come to a deeper sense of self and our place in the universe. Silence is not an absence but a presence. Not an emptiness but repletion A filling up.”
― Anne LeClaire

“This withdrawal from the day's turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It is a necessity, because it tries to provide the conditions wherein we are able to yield ourselves to intuitive leadings, promptings, warnings, teachings, and counsels and also to the inspiring peace of the soul. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions.”
― Paul Brunton, Healing of the Self, the Negatives: Notebooks

“When you reach a calm and quiet meditative state, that is when you can hear the sound of silence.”
― Stephen Richards, The Ultimate Cosmic Ordering Meditation

“That's why it's called a practice. We have to practice a practice if it is to be of value.”
― Allan Lokos, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living

“Four times during the first six days they were assembled and briefed and then sent back. Once, they took off and were flying in formation when the control tower summoned them down. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining. All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars. All through the day, they looked at the bomb line on the big, wobbling easel map of Italy that blew over in the wind and was dragged in under the awning of the intelligence tent every time the rain began. The bomb line was a scarlet band of narrow satin ribbon that delineated the forward most position of the Allied ground forces in every sector of the Italian mainland.

For hours they stared relentlessly at the scarlet ribbon on the map and hated it because it would not move up high enough to encompass the city.

When night fell, they congregated in the darkness with flashlights, continuing their macabre vigil at the bomb line in brooding entreaty as though hoping to move the ribbon up by the collective weight of their sullen prayers. "I really can't believe it," Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. "It's a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They're confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn't have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left."

In the middle of the night Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“The teaching of the sexual tantras all come down to one point. Although desire, of whatever shape or form, seeks completion, there is another kind of union than the one we imagine. In this union, achieved when the egocentric model of dualistic thinking is no longer dominant, we are not united with it, nor am I united with you, but we all just are. The movement from object to subject, as described in both Eastern meditation and modern psychotherapy, is training for this union, but its perception usually comes as a surprise, even when this shift is well under way. It is a kind of grace. The emphasis on sexual relations in the tantric teachings make it clear that the ecstatic surprise of orgasm is the best approximation of this grace.”
― Mark Epstein, Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life - Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy

“People turn to meditation because they want to make good decisions, break bad habits & bounce back better from disappointments.”
― Sharon Salzberg, The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Programme for Real Happiness

“The practice of lovingkindness can uplift us & relieve sorrow & unhappiness.”
― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living

“You`re only as weak as you let yourself become, and you`re only as strong as you allow yourself to be.”
― Daniel Hansen

“Providence knows best.”
― Michael Beloved

“The mysterious manner in which this growing sense of unity commingles with a sense of utter goodness is worth noting. It arises by no effort of mine; rather does it come to me out of I know not where. Harmony appears gradually and flows through my whole being like music. An infinite tenderness takes possession of me, smoothing away the harsh cynicism which a reiterated experience of human ingratitude and human treachery has driven deeply into my temperament. I feel the fundamental benignity of Nature despite the apparent manifestation of ferocity. Like the sounds of every instrument in an orchestra that is in tune, all things and all people seem to drop into the sweet relationship that subsists within the Great Mother's own heart.”
― Paul Brunton, Hermit in the Himalayas: The Journal of a Lonely Exile

“Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray!”
― Karl Rahner, The Need and the Blessing of Prayer

“Questions have the power to inspire, illuminate, stimulate, create, or destroy. If we want to take on the great mysteries and grow as individuals, witches, and psychics—we must ask questions.”
― Mat Auryn, Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation

“He sat thus, lost in meditation, thinking Om, his soul as the arrow directed at Brahman.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“We all have issues & we have usually come by them honestly.”
― Allan Lokos, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living

“Every single iceberg filled me with feelings of sadness and wonder. Not thoughts of sadness and wonder, mind you, because thoughts require a thinker, and my head was a balloon, incapable of thoughts. I didn't think about Dad, I didn't think about you, and, the big one, I didn't think about myself. The effect was like heroin (I think), and I wanted to stretch it out as long as possible.

Even the simplest human interaction would send me crashing back to earthly thoughts. So I was the first one out in the morning, and the last one back. I only went kayaking, never stepped foot on the White Continent proper. I kept my head down, stayed in my room, and slept, but, mainly, I was. No racing heart, no flying thoughts.”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“Many questing young people and stressed older people nowadays seek relaxation through meditation. They look for it in Hindu, Buddhist and other Eastern religions. They are often surprised to learn that there is such a way within the Christian tradition, a way that is known as contemplation.”
― Ray Simpson, Exploring Celtic Spirituality

“Ree-" Grey barked into the icy silence. "Lax!"
The word spat so unexpectedly into her ear had precisely the effect Grey must have intended. It shocked Nan for a split second into a state of not-thinking, just being-
Suddenly, all in an instant she and Neville were one.”
― Mercedes Lackey, The Wizard of London

“You are a person worthy of love. You don’t have to do anything to prove that.”
― Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

“You can come out of the repetitive thought patterns by witnessing the thinker inside you. Witnessing will give you the state of "no-mind" -the state of deep inner connectedness. Gradually, you move into the state of pure being - the state of pure consciousness.”
― Amit Ray, Enlightenment Step by Step

“The sweet pleasure of your own joy and success is a cultivation of both the heart and mind.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“Only in the present is your mind free to do what it does best — solve problems.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“When we constantly meditate on another's faults, it is because we are neglecting our own unhealed wounds.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“Through TV people turn their family living rooms into meditative dens of death and violence worship.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“Between the desolate earth and the colorless sky appeared an Image of the ungrateful world in which, for the first time, he came to himself at last. On this earth, restored to the despair of innocence, a traveler lost in a primitive world, he regained contact, and with his list pressed to his chest, his face flattened against the glass, he calculated his hunger for himself and for the certainty of the splendors dormant within him. He wanted to crush himself into that mud, to reenter the earth by immersing himself in that clay, to stand on that limitless plain covered with dirt, stretching his arms to the sooty sponge of the sky, as though confronting the superb and despairing symbol of life itself, to affirm his solidarity with the world at its worst, to declare himself life's accomplice even in its thanklessness and its filth. Then the great impulse that had sustained him collapsed for the first time since he left Prague. Mersault pressed his tears and his lips against the cold pane. Again the glass blurred, the landscape disappeared.”
― Albert Camus, A Happy Death