Quotes on Mindfulness

[Daniel E.]

"When we carry out the ordinary action and berate it as not enough, we become poorer and poorer. Every action is leached of its poetry...Nothing is seen for its real value, its absolute value."

~ Gertrud Mueller Nelson

 

[Daniel E.]

"As it is absorbed, consumer culture imposes numerous influences that weaken personality structures, undermine coping and lay the groundwork for eventual demoralization. Its driving features – individualism, materialism, hyper-competition, greed, over-complication, overwork, hurriedness and debt – all correlate negatively with psychological health and/or social wellbeing...The thin and fragile consumer self is easily fragmented and dispirited."

-- John F. Schumaker, "The Demoralized Mind" (2016)

 

[Daniel E.]

"It is our lives and how we lead them that really needs to change if we are to improve our mental well-being...This is what the Buddhist version of mindfulness teaches – a moral and ethical world view - as opposed to this new corporatised McMindfulness – which in the long term will do as much as a McDonald’s Happy Meal to sate a person’s gnawing hunger for a richer life."

~ Emma Barnett, Mindfulness: the saddest trend of 2015 - Telegraph

"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret." ~ Ambrose Bierce

 

[Daniel E.]

"Meditation. It's not what you think."

~ unknown

 

[Daniel E.]

"Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them."
– Jon Kabat-Zinn

"Life is better when we don’t try to do everything. Learn to enjoy the slice of life you experience, and life turns out to be wonderful."
– Leo Babauta

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument."
– Rumi

 

[Daniel E.]

Mindfulness meditation has proven to be an effective component in psychotherapeutic programs aimed at achieving the secular or (to use the Buddhist term) conventional goal of mental health...But mindfulness meditation in its “ultimate” application—as a Buddhist practice aimed toward realization of nibbana—is not concerned with shaping a functional ego. It is, rather, a way to disidentify with both health and illness, happiness and sorrow, pleasure and pain. To disidentify, that is, with the unavoidably painful nature of even the most refined varieties of self-centered experience.

~ C. W. Huntington, Are You Looking to Buddhism When You Should Be Looking to Therapy?

 

[Daniel E.]

“Awareness is not the same as thinking. It is a complementary form of intelligence, a way of knowing that is at least as wonderful and as powerful, if not more so, than thinking.”

“When I was talking to a reporter, she said, “Oh, you mean to live for the moment.” I said, “No, it isn’t that. That has a hedonistic ring to it. I mean to live in the moment.”

“Feeling threatened can easily lead to feelings of anger and hostility and from there to outright aggressive behavior, driven by deep instincts to protect your position and maintain your sense of things being under control. When things do feel “under control,” we might feel content for a moment. But when they go out of control again, or even seem to be getting out of control, our deepest insecurities can erupt. At such times we might even act in ways that are self-destructive and hurtful to others. And we will feel anything but content and at peace within ourselves.”

“Whether we are basically healthy at the moment or have a terminal illness, none of us knows how long we have to live. Life only unfolds in moments. The healing power of mindfulness lies in living each of those moments as fully as we can, accepting it as it is as we open to what comes next—in the next moment of now.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living

 

[Daniel E.]

“Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. —NADINE STAIR, EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS OLD, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY"

(quoted in Full Catastrophe Living)

 

[Daniel E.]

"There is a surefire way to grow into a sense of self without having to get your dream job or relationship, losing fifty pounds, or winning the lottery. That way is to get in touch with your wise mind."

~ Cedar Koons, The Mindfulness Solution for Intense Emotions

 

[Daniel E.]

A fresh attitude starts to happen when we look to see that yesterday was yesterday, and now it is gone; today is today and now it is new. It is like that -- every hour, every minute is changing. If we stop observing change, then we stop seeing everything as new.

--Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

 

[Daniel E.]

"Control is suffering. Control is the bars that lock us in our cage of identification with our suffering as being all we are."

- Stephen & Ondrea Levine

 

[Daniel E.]

"When we enter unknown territory, rather than immediately trying to pin things down, we could try pausing and letting things remain undefined for a moment. Even taking that simple step can begin to loosen our habitual fear of the unknown and undefined."

- Judith Lief

 

[Daniel E.]

Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself. We say, "It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness."

Shunryu Suzuki



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[Daniel E.]

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki


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[Daniel E.]

You have to feel it to heal it!

Leslie Greenberg

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[Daniel E.]

"Ultimately spiritual awareness unfolds when you're flexible, when you're spontaneous, when you're detached, when you're easy on yourself and easy on others."

- Deepak Chopra

 

[Daniel E.]

We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.

Thich Nhat Hanh

 

[Daniel E.]

It's very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing.
Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses
that develop through chronic tension and worrying;
it allows us to clear our minds, focus,
and find creative solutions to problems.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

 

[Daniel E.]

“Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.” ~ Sharon Salzberg

"Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.” ~ Seneca

“The mind in its natural state can be compared to the sky, covered by layers of cloud which hide its true nature.” ~ Kalu Rinpoche

 

[Daniel E.]

"It is sometimes difficult to practice mindfulness and embrace a being mode of mind in a society that values a doing mode of mind. Society values people achieving goals. You see people in the papers who have record amounts of money, or who’ve climbed the highest mountain. How many times has someone made the headlines for living in the moment?!"

Shamash Alidina