Week 2021-27: Meditation is ...

"Do you think that you can clear your mind by sitting constantly in silent meditation? This makes your mind narrow, not clear. Integral awareness is fluid and adaptable, present in all places and at all times. That is true meditation. [...] The Tao is clear and simple, and it doesn't avoid the world." (Lao Tzu)

"In fact, the view is to look at one's own mind. Meditation is not to stray from that. Action is not to be separated from that. The fruit is to actualize that. When looking there is nothing to be looked at appearances are mind itself. When meditating there is nothing to meditate on-awareness is self-luminous. When acting there is nothing to act out-action is spontaneous. There is no fruit to accomplish - one's own mind is the buddha." (Rangjung Dorje)

"It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing." (Pema Chodron)

"Meditation does not imply only the development of single-pointed concentration, sitting in some corner doing nothing. Meditation is an alert state of mind, the opposite of sluggishness; meditation is wisdom. You should remain aware every moment of your daily life, fully conscious of what you are doing and how you are doing it." (Lama Yeshe)

"Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us." (Thich N Hanh)

"Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure and brutality, they will not touch that mind." (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

"Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help." (Thich Nhat Hahn)

"Meditation is nothing but an effort to look at reality without the thinking mind - because that is the only way to see reality. If thinking is there it distorts, it corrupts. Drop the thinking mind and see reality - direct, immediate, face to face. And then there is no problem." (Osho)

"Meditation is not about finding the self - quite the contrary: it is about finding one's way beyond the self. Meditation is also not about 'expanding the mind'. It is instead about clearing away clutter created by the mind." (David M White)

"Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help." (Thich N Hahn)

"Meditation is simply getting to know your mind." (Dzogchen Ponlop)

"Meditation is the awareness that I am not the mind." (Osho)

"Meditation is the way we realize the nature of the mind." (Lama Yeshe)

"The art of meditation is neither mindless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive." (Alan Watts)

"The spirit world is able to get through to you easily when your mind is still and clear. Meditation is often referred to as 'sitting in the silence.' Whenever you want to reach Spirit from this side of life, start by sitting in the silence." (James Van Praagh)

"There are two aspects of mind; the appearances and its essence. Most people are lost in the appearances and projections without ever knowing the true nature of their experiences. Meditation is recognizing and bringing the mind home to its essence of clarity and peace." (Sogyal Rinpoche)

"Thinking is the natural activity of the mind. Meditation is not about stopping your thoughts. Meditation is simply a process of resting the mind in its natural state, which is open to and naturally aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as they occur." (Yongey Rinpoche Mingyur & Eric Swanson)

"When the mind, clear and ungraspable like the sky, does not fall into partiality-this is the view. When the mind, self-aware and self-luminous like a mirror, is free from bright and dim - this is meditation. When the mind, uncontrived and natural like a child, is without negation or assertion-this is action." (Dagpo Rinpoche)

Week 2019-22

"There is no arithmetician like him who hath learned to number his days, and to apply his heart unto wisdom." (George Swinnock, "The Epistle Dedicatory", 1868)

"The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it." (Eric Hoffer, "The Passionate State of Mind", 1955)

"A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts." (James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh", 1903)

"The helps offered to improve the mind consist in certain ways of thinking which facilitate thinking." (Gottfried W Leibniz)

"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.” (Isaac Asimov)

"One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows. Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world of their own minds, as if they were asleep or absent-minded." (Heraclitus)

"If you want truly to understand something, try to change it." (Kurt Lewin)

"Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war." (Sir Winston Churchill)

"This terror then and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of light, but by the aspect and law of nature." (Lucretius)

"One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows. Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world of their own minds, as if they were asleep or absent-minded." (Heraclitus)

Week 2019-21

"The unknown, our own true nature, has the capacity to wake itself up when you start to fall in love with letting go of all the mental structures you hold onto. Contemplate this: there is no such thing as a true belief." (Adyashanti)

"Healing of the physical without the change in the mental and spiritual aspects brings little real help to the individual in the end. How true, because the mind and the body imprint and imitate each other. What we think, we become. What we become, we think. It's an insidious process that can predispose us to illness or it can lead us to health." (Edgar Cayce)

"The whole universe is composed of name and form. Whatever we see is either a compound of name and form, or simply name with form which is a mental image." (Swami Vivekananda)

"Imagination is the first step in creation whether in words or trifles. The mental pattern must always precede the material form." (William W Atkinson)

"Mental activity is like a deadly poisonous cobra. If we don't interfere with a cobra, how poisonous it may be, it simply goes its own away." (Ajahn Chah)

"To think that the world can ever change without changes in our mental models is folly." (Joseph Jaworski)

"Do not place hope in finding a secret technique. Polish the mind through ceaseless training; that is the key to effective techniques." (Kyuzo Mifune)

"Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature." (Daisetsu T Suzuki)

"The mind must always be in the state of 'flowing,' for when it stops anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of the mind. In the case of the swordsman, it means death." (Takuan)

"A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965)

Week 2017-42

"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?" (Henry David Thoreau)

"I’ve learned through a series of trials and errors that the median space is actually what's missing in our daily walk." (Carlos Wallace)

"There is no such thing as a miracle which violates natural law. There are only occurrences which violate our limited knowledge of natural law." (Saint Augustine)

"The world is a projection of your mind. Good mind, good world. Bad mind, bad world. No mind, no world." (Swami Parthasarathy)

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong." (H. L. Mencken)

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality." (Pablo Picasso)

"The future is nothing but a present to organize. You do not have to forecast it, but to allow it." ( Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable." (Mary Oliver)

"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature." (Jacob Bronowski, Universities Quarterly, 1956)

"The hours when we are absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live [...] .These are the only hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance." ( Richard Jefferies )

Week 2017-34

[#understanding, #perception]
"When we want to understand something we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in order to really understand." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

[#education, #growth]
"You have to start where people are, because their growth is going to be from there, not from some abstraction or where you are or someone else is." (Myles Horton)

[#flow, #choice]
"Stop choosing between chaos and order and live at the boundary between them where rest and action move together." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

[#understanding, #pain]
"[...] if we understood ourselves better, we would damage ourselves less." (James Baldwin)

[#detachment, #awareness]
"This is what Zen means by being detached - not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water." (Alan Watts)

[#mind, #meditation]
"The mind has power over the body and speech, and therefore any training of body and speech must begin with the mind." (Dalai Lama, “Stages Of Meditation”)

[#change, #patience]
"To master change, nothing is more important than to know the time; to know the time, nothing is more important than to understand inner design; to understand inner design, nothing is more important than open calm." (Li Daoqun, “The Book of Balance and Harmony”)

[#patience, #acceptance]
"Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind." (David G. Allen)

[#action, #impossible]
"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible." (M. C. Escher)

[#self, #love]
"There is in fact no self which needs to be negated. We merely manifest self in terms of our affection and love for people and our willingness to work. When we manifest this way, the self that needs to be negated is already negated." (Kyozan Joshu Sasaki)

[#truth, #human nature]
"If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practised, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point." (Ezra Pound)

Week 2017-30

"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." (Roald Dahl)

"There is nothing in this world which does not speak. Every thing and every being is continually calling out its nature, its character, its secret; the more the inner sense is open, the more capable it becomes of hearing the voice of all things." (Inayat Khan)

"Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot.
Seek the path that demands your whole being." (Rumi)

"When mind is still, then truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence." (Sri Aurobindo)

"Bringing joy to one heart with love is better than one thousand repetitive prayer recitings." (Sufi saying)

"In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion." (Albert Camus)

"Let your mind wander in the pure and simple.
Be one with the infinite.
Let all things take their course." (Zhuangzi)

"Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them." (Constantin Brâncuși)

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved." (George MacDonald)

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." (Anaïs Nin)

Week 2017-28

"Realizing that our inability to control life is not the same as having no way to navigate it, leads to freedom and liberation. Just because I can't control the sea doesn't mean I can't learn how to swim in it." (Rami Shapiro)

"With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love." (Rumi)

"What worries you, masters you." (John Locke)

"Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." ( Nathaniel Hawthorne )

"A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears." (Michel de Montaigne)

"We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand." (Eric Hoffer)
  
"Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace." ( Karl Kraus)

"If you don't like something, change it.
If you can't change it, change the way you think about it." (Mary Engelbreit)

"Let go of certainty. The opposite isn’t uncertainty. It’s openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow." (Tony Schwartz)

"To be truly happy and contented, you must let go of the idea of what it means to be truly happy or content." (Confucius)

Week 2017-23

[#reality, #illusion]
"The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it." (Chuck Palahniuk)

[#meaning]
"Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human." (Viktor E. Frankl)

[#wisdom, #doubt]
"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth." (Pierre Abélard)

[#knowledge, #wisdom]
"Don't be conceited about your own knowledge. Take advice from the ignorant as well as the wise, since there is no single person who embodies perfection nor any craftsman who has reached the limits of excellence. The perfect word is as rare as an emerald, yet it may be found among the maidservants working at the millstone." (Ptah-hotep)

[#limits, #belief]
"When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw." (Nelson Mandela)

[#knowledge, #mystery]
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge." (Kahlil Gibran)

[#love, #identity]
"The things that we love tell us what we are." (Thomas Aquinas)

[#quest, #learning]
"I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul." (Rumi)

[#beauty, #fragility]
"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed." (Ernest Hemingway)

[#patience, #trust]
"Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn." (Rumi)


[#understanding, #discrimination]
"Those who judge will never understand, and those who understand will never judge." (Wilson Kanadi)

Week 2017-21

"We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." (Ayn Rand)

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." (Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird)

"When you step beyond your own gate, you face a million enemies." (Gichin Funakoshi)

"When you resist the flow of life, what you are actually resisting is your own inner nature, for everything that happens to us is a reflection of who we are. This isn’t a mystical statement; it is part of the apparatus of perception. To perceive is to grasp the meaning of something." (Deepak Chopra)

"Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things." (Dōgen)

"What we perceive and what we understand depends upon what we are." (Aldous Huxley)

"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it." (John Locke)

"In the life cycle of every conflict, there is a point when it’s large enough to be recognized, but small enough to be resolved." (Daniel Dana)

"Love is a natural kind of meditation. And meditation is a supernatural kind of love." (Osho)

"When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about." (Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore)

Week 2017-17

"Using someone else’s ruler to measure your self-worth will always leave you short." (Charles F Glassman)

"Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free.   
Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing.  
This is the ultimate." (Chuang Tzu)

"When meditation is mastered,  
the mind is unwavering,  
like the flame of a lamp in a windless place." (Bhagavad Gita)

"What cannot be known is more revealing than what can." (John D. Barrow, "Impossibility", 1998)

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people." (Carl Jung)

"All great things have their origin in that which is small." (Lao Tzu)

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. (Henry David Thoreau)

"Exploring your imagination is the first step to understanding your heart." (Anon)

"Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do." (Voltaire)

"It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable—he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated." (Leo Tolstoy)

Week 2017-16

"Love is not always fireworks and magic. Often we’ll experience it in the form of patience, acceptance, loyalty, and mutual respect." (Charles F Glassman)

"To make a great dream come true, the first requirement is a great capacity to dream; the second is persistence." (Cesar Chavez)

"Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death." (James F. Byrnes)

"The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give." (Philip K. Dick)

"Men are not moved by things, but the views they take of them." (Epitectus)

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." (Henri Bergson)

"Keep constantly in mind in how many things you yourself have witnessed changes already. The universe is change, life is understanding." (Marcus Aurelius)

"Knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity." (Imam al-Ghazali)

"Thinking will not overcome fear but action will." (W. Clement Stone)

"Nothing hurts a good soul and a kind heart more than to live amongst people who cannot understand it." (Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib)

Week 2016-50

"Many men go fishing all their lives not knowing it is not fish they are after." (Henry David Thoreau)

"The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists." (Japanese saying)

"Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." (George Bernard Shaw)  

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." (Khalil Gibran)

"He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future." (Quevedo)

"We carry within us the wonders we seek without us." (Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich, "Religio Medici")

"The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat." (Napoleon Hill)

"Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we have a clear picture of it." (Benedict Spinoza)

"If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins." (Benjamin Franklin)

"Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us." (Eugène Ionesco)

Week 2016-46

"Every person has only one purpose: to find perfection in goodness. Therefore, only that knowledge is necessary which leads us to this." (Leo Tolstoy)

"More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

"Change happens in the boiler room of our emotions - so find out how to light their fires." (Jeff Dewar)

"Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning." (Bergen Evans)

"If all knowledge were good, then pursuit of every sort of knowledge would be useful. But many false meditations are disguised as good and useful knowledge; therefore, be strict in selecting the knowledge you want to acquire." (Leo Tolstoy)

"Change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: First, a dissatisfaction with self - a felt void or need; second, a decision to change to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change - the willful act of making the change, doing something." (Leo Buscaglia)

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and create a new ending." (Maria Robinson)

"The most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your life." (Seneca the Younger)

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." (David Russell)

"You should study more to understand that you know little." (Michel de Montaigne)

Week 2016-41

"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us." (Pema Chodron)

"You are the universe, expressing itself as a human for a little while." (Eckhart Tolle)

"True mindfulness is the awareness that everything you encounter is a vigorous expression of the same living universe as you." (Brad Warner)

"When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion." (Herbert Spencer)

"Before you assume, learn the facts. Before you judge, understand why. Before you hurt someone, feel. Before you leave, commit to staying." (José Sánchez)

"Grudges are a waste of perfect happiness. Laugh when you can, apologize when you should, and let go of what you can’t change." (José Sánchez)

"The real meditation is how you live your life." (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

"Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning." (C S Lewis)

"It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed." (Thomas Moore)

"Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end." (Scott Adams)