Quotes About Meditation

Whenever the Christian idea of meditation is taken seriously, there are those who assume it is synonymous with the concept of meditation centered in Eastern religions. In reality, the two ideas stand worlds apart. Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind. The two ideas are quite different.

Meditation is how to drop knowledge. Meditation means how to become ignorant again. Meditation means how to become a child again, a rose bush, a rock. Meditation means how just to be and not to think.

When I use the words 'inner journey', I simply mean that you have looked at one aspect of the journey in your life called 'outer', now try to look at another aspect of the journey called 'inner'. You have been running after money, now run after meditation. You have been running after power, now run after God. Both are running. Once you start running after meditation then one day I will tell you, 'Now drop meditation too. Now stop running.' And when you stop running then real meditation happens.

Meditation means you don't have anything, any object to think about. You are just in a state of absolute aloneness. You don't have anything on which you can focus yourself - not a sutra, not a mantra, not any great value of life, just pure space all around you. Then you are in meditation. Meditation is never about something. Meditation is a state.

The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material conditions and feel our divine nature. We do not depend upon any external help in meditation. The touch of the soul can paint the brightest color even in the dingiest places; it can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing; it can make the wicked divine-and all enmity, all selfishness is effaced.

Meditation is the only way to overcome fear. There is no other way. Why does meditation help us overcome fear? In meditation we identify ourselves with the vast, with the Absolute. When we are afraid of someone or something, it is because we do not feel that particular person or thing is a part of us. When we have established conscious oneness with the Absolute, with the Infinite Vast, the everything there is part of us. And how can we be afraid of ourselves?

We meditate alone but live our lives with other people; a gap is inevitable. If our path is to lead to less suffering, nd much of our suffering is with other people, then perhaps we need to reexamine our sole commitment to these individual practices... As our individual pracitce deepens, it may yiled true ease. But whether we practice meditation in seclusion or independently alongside other meditators at a meditation group or retreat, individual meditation approaches the confusion and pain of our relational lives only indirectly.

Meditation gives us peace of mind without a tranquilizer. And unlike a tranquilizer, the peace of mind that we get from meditation does not fade away. It lasts for good in some corner of the inmost recesses of our aspiring heart.

One man has discovered that by running there is no need to meditate, just by running meditation happens. He must be absolutely body oriented. Nobody has ever thought that by running meditation is possible - but I know, I used to love running myself. It happens. If you go on running, if you run fast, thinking stops, because thinking cannot possibly continue when you are running very fast. For thinking an easy chair is needed, that's why we call thinkers armchair philosophers; they sit and relax in a chair, the body completely relaxed, then the whole energy moves into the mind.

I have been meditating for many years now, but I think for quite a few years my relationship with meditation was very intellectual. I would do meditation for all the usual things that you would think about, to be more calm, be more productive, relieve stress.

Meditation is the short path to happiness. Meditation takes you beyond the desire-aversion operating system that offers very limited happiness and a great deal of frustration.

You are the witness, to whom things happen but who remains a witness. Witnessing is the art of nonidentification, and nonidentification is all. Nonidentification is all there is to meditation. It is the whole meditation.

No meditation, no life. Know meditation, know life.

And meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself; that's what meditation is all about.

The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material condition and feel our divine nature.

One day I was meditating on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Southern California and I was absorbed in a state of high meditation. As I came out of the meditation and became aware of the sense world the world around me I knew that I had a new name. And the name, of course, was Rama.

Meditation is helping me learn to sit still. Twenty minutes of meditation in the morning is a nice way to start my day. If you can actually sit still and really get to that place of silence, you realize what's important and what's not important. Little things don't usually get to me anymore.

Hours of solitude, hours of creation, hours of meditation. Solitude and meditation gave me an awareness, a perspective which I have never lost: that of solidarity with the rest of mankind.

Everyone in advanced meditation practice should be involved with the economic support of the spread of the dharma. We live in a material world, and it's very expensive to teach meditation.

Meditation has to spread all over your life. Whatsoever you do, do meditatively. Walk meditatively, eat meditatively. If you are making love, make love meditatively. Meditation has to become your life twenty-four hours a day; then only the transformation. Then you go beyond sex, you go beyond body, you go beyond mind. And for the first time you become aware of godliness, of ecstasy, of bliss, of truth, of liberation.

The mind always wants to choose. The mind lives through choice. If you don't choose the mind drops. This is the way of Lao Tzu. How to drop the mind? - don't choose! That's why he never prescribes any meditation, because then there is no need for any meditation.

Milton Katselas said, "Who are you to look down your nose at Anna Magnani and Maureen Stapleton? Who do you think you are?" I was doing this kooky meditation at the time called inner-guide meditation, where you go into a cave and you have a guide, and you fly around. So I said to my inner guide, "Take me to the energy that's blocking me from accepting my casting" - because I understood it intellectually, but I didn't want to do it in my heart.

There are qualities which grow as meditation deepens. For example, you start feeling loving for no reason at all. Not the love that you know, in which you have to fall-not falling in love. But just a quality of lovingness, not only to human beings. As your meditation deepens, your lovingness will start spreading beyond humanity to animals, to trees, even to the rocks, to the mountains.

The very actions themselves can be a meditation. For me, walking is certainly a meditation if I walk for awhile. First my mind is busy and I'm thinking about different things and after a while that starts to fall away and I start to become very present in the moment. And that feeling of being present in the moment is being. That's when we know we're connecting with being energy.

Meditation is the life of the soul: Action, the soul of meditation; and honor the reward of action.

Some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment. Taken to extremes, of course, that's true. Most people, however, find that meditation creates more time than it takes.

Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next.

At the beginning of meditation training thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted, like a steep mountain waterfall. Gradually, as you perfect meditation, thoughts become like the water in a deep, narrow gorge, then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea; finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean, ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave.

Meditation has to become your heartbeat; even when you are asleep the meditation continues like an undercurrent

Being the Stream Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally into it.

Meditation is like the breeze that comes in when you leave the window open; but if you deliberately keep it open, deliberately invite it to come, it will never appear.

In silence and in meditation on the eternal truths, I hear the voice of God which excites our hearts to greater love.

Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm.

Profound meditation in solitude and silence frequently exalts the mind above its natural tone, fires the imagination, produces the most refined and sublime conceptions. The soul then tastes the purest and most refined delight, and almost loses the idea of existence in the intellectual pleasure it receives. The mind on every motion darts through space into eternity; and raised, in its free enjoyment of its powers by its own enthusiasm, strengthens itself in the habitude of contemplating the noblest subjects, and of adopting the most heroic pursuits.

A creativity that comes out of meditative innocence, of meditative purity. And a real creator is possible only through meditation.

Meditation is the quickest path to enlightenment.

Every day when everybody would have lunch I would do TM [Transcendental Meditation] and then I would eat while I was working because I had missed lunch but that is how I survived the 9 years [of Seinfeld], it was that 20 minutes in the middle of the day would save me.

Real music will help you move towards meditation, beyond the mind needs, towards spiritual needs. Real poetry will give you a glimpse of the minds of the sages - a glimpse of course. It will open a window so you can see the faraway distant Himalayas. And then an urge arises in you, and you start travelling.

Meditation is not contemplation because it is not thinking at all - consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise - the traffic in the head. So many thoughts - trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

For optimal health, we need body and spirit, exercise (ming) and meditation, awareness of the inner world and the outer. In other words, health requires balance and moderation. The goal of qigong may be summarized as xing ming shuang xiu,spirit and body equally refined and cultivated. Cultivate your whole being, as you would cultivate a garden with attention, care, and even love.

Your technology is the inner practice of meditation, which will stimulate the link between your brain and ignite your innate desire to know your True Self. Trust yourself in a deeper way & reap the rewards!

Meditation is a refocusing on symbols. It's not emptiness. We are using symbols, doorways to step from one world to another, from darkness into light, from death to immortality.

Real winning and losing all takes place at the meditation table. This is where the battles are. Winning is stopping thought. Losing is sitting there and being subjected to all kinds of ridiculous thoughts

Seek in reading and thou shalt find in meditation; knock in prayer and it shall be opened in contemplation.

Meditation is the art of awareness. And once you are aware, out of your awareness your actions will arise - not out of conscience. Conscience is cultivated by others, by the vested interests, by the establishment. Consciousness is yours. It is individual, it is not collective. Conscience is part of the mob psychology. Consciousness gives you dignity because it gives you individuality. It gives you rebellion, it makes you capable of saying yes or no of your own accord. There is no foreign agency manipulating you in the name of religion, morality, etcetera.

You can set your intention to better understand your soul, your spirit, through daily practices like prayer, yoga and meditation, etc.

You can just imagine if everyone on earth did have one day where we just put all our minds together regardless where the force is, as long as it's positive, and just meditate for even a hour that day. And just live nice with them nice meditation. I mean, now, the climate would be nice, the smog would a leave

I've started doing yoga and meditation, but I'm not very good at that kind of thing and turning my brain off.