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Mindfulness Quotes

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Mindfulness Quotes

“A snake charmer was travelling in a bus. He asked for 21 tickets from bus conductor. On being asked “why”, he replied, “Whenever I open my basket and bring out the snake, 20 people also come out to see it. So I have 20 people in my basket.” That should be the mindset of a meditator. Enjoy this world as long as you want but when you want to meditate, you should be able to realize that all the people and things around you are all in your head. You should be able to wrap it all up and put it back in the basket.”

“What has always struck me about every Zen master I've met and every Zen book I've read is the sense of humor. Mindfulness in practice is not endlessly silent as much as it is delightfully playful. Presence and connection come with a pinch of sassiness that allows us to return to our inner child in authenticity and lightness.”

“Your life is like a TV serial. You are the watcher, the audience. Producer of this TV serial is Maya (Interplay of Time and Space). You say to the producer, “I am very angry at this and this villain.” The producer’s purpose is to invoke emotions in audience and make money. If you are angry, it’s good for producer. More you get angry at characters, more their screentime will be increased in next episode. When they stop invoking any emotion in you, only then they will be thrown out of the TV serial.”

“Every thought is a concept that divides reality in some way, and therefore is a mental abstraction that distorts the truth of what is. This is not to say that all thoughts are useless, though many of them seem to be, but it is clear that by being so consumed by this continuous stream of thoughts, we become disconnected from the reality of life that exists beyond our thinking minds.”

“If we can understand that all thought is based on memory, that it is conditioned by the past, then we can see that it is of no use in helping us understand the true reality of the present moment, for every thought we have about reality will only distort reality according to our conditioned way of thinking.”

“When I think about something that is happening in the moment, I am introducing my accumulation of the past into the immediate experience of the present. I am evaluating the situation based on my conditioned perspective, and projecting my internal workings onto the unconditioned reality of the present moment.”

“When we are not awake to reality, we are living in the dream of the mind. When we are in the dream state, we do not know what we are doing, and are unaware of what is happening within and around us. We are simply acting out of deep programming, behaving according to conditioned patterns, living as if on auto-pilot.”

“There are many ways that the dream state operates, but it is primarily characterized by a lack of awareness to what is actually happening in the present moment, and the consequent dwelling in the mind and its endless thinking, reacting and behaving from unconscious conditioning and programming.”

“The ego is not who we are, it is who we think we are. When we think of our name, our image, our history, and our life experiences as who we are, we become associated with an idea of ourselves, a mental image that is not at all who we are in reality.”

“We all have an image of who we are, how we think of ourselves, and how we think others perceive us, but obviously this image is not really who we are; it is just a projection of the mind. When we mistake this illusory entity of thought to be who we actually are we do all kinds of strange and unnecessary things to maintain it and improve it. We feel the need to always state our point of view, push our beliefs onto others, tell them about our experiences, tell them who we are, what we like, what we dislike, and so on…always focused on “me.”

“Language is an attempt to define life in linear words and symbols, but in reality, everything everywhere is happening all together at once, and to explain the totality of this with language is impossible. Thus, to awaken to the truth of reality, the truth of who we are, we must go beyond our language and intellectual way of understanding life.”

“We do not need an ashram or church, some secret initiation, a guru’s blessing, or an intentional community. As helpful or supportive as those may be at times, ultimately, what we need is the willingness to look at ourselves honestly, to feel what emotions lie within us, to acknowledge our thoughts and actions, to choose to be aware of what we ignore or suppress, and to let go of what limits and distracts us so we can open ourselves fully to the truth of life in this moment.”

“Our perception of reality is not reality itself, but it is the lens through which we view reality. It is like looking outside through a stained-glass window—if we look through red glass, the outside world will appear to be red; if we look through blue glass, the outside world will appear to be blue. The outside world isn’t changing, we are just observing it through different colors of glass, which make it appear to have the same color as whatever color glass that we look through.”

“All human beings throughout the world are conditioned. It is an obvious and undeniable fact. Yet, many of us are unaware of this fact of our conditioning. We are unaware of the ways in which our culture influences our minds and shapes our perception of reality. We do not realize that most of our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs are not really our own, but were simply inherited by our family and the society that we were raised in.”

“We all have only one true emotional need as human beings, and that is the need to feel loved. The majority of our actions aim towards this goal in one way or another. We seek relationships, we seek fame or success, we act (or don’t act) in certain ways simply because we feel the need to be accepted, the need to be recognized, the need to feel loved. This is a very powerful thing to realize.”

“The psychological suffering of human beings on such a mass scale manifests as the physical suffering we see and experience in the world today. It is ignorant to objectify this suffering as if it were something outside of us, belonging only to the world and to those unfortunate beings who experience it. It is within each one of us, and to acknowledge our suffering is the only way to start to heal it, and by healing the suffering within ourselves, we help to heal the suffering of the world.”

“So, we have a paradox where washing the dishes one time is seemingly unimportant. But washing them 10,000 times (consistently, every day) is important because that repetition ensures that we always have plates and silverware at our disposal. But we can’t wash the dishes 10,000 times unless we start by washing them once. A single action done correctly and repeatedly makes all the difference in our lives.”

“Every time the mind wanders away from the awareness of the breath, notice that it has wandered and bring your awareness back to the breath. This can be likened to a rep in the gym—every time you bring your mind back, you are building your "muscle" of attention.”

“By choosing to become aware, you choose to take back control of your attention and perspective, which can transform even mundane tasks, such as washing dishes or making coffee, into something joyful and beautiful.”

“Achieving the advanced state of no-thought is not about stopping the thinking process, but rather, it’s about cultivating an expansive sensitivity to a level above the thinking mind.”