Quotes About Mind

The mind commands the body, and it obeys forthwith; the mind commands itself, and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved, and such readiness is there that the command is scarce to be distinguished from the obedience. Yet the mind is mind, and the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, and yet, though it be itself, it obeyeth not. Whence this monstrous thing? and why is it?

The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind and hand is body. The mind orders the mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it.

When things go wrong in our life and we encounter difficult situations, we tend to regard the situation itself as our problem, but in reality whatever problems we experience come from the side of the mind. If we were to respond to difficult situations with a positive or peaceful mind they would not be problems for us; indeed, we may even come to regard them as challenges or opportunities for growth and development. Problems arise only if we respond to difficulties with a negative state of mind. Therefore, if we want to be free from problems, we must transform our mind.

Your subconscious mind does not argue with you. It accepts what your conscious mind decrees. If you say, "I can't afford it," your subconscious mind works to make it true. Select a better thought. Decree, "I'll buy it. I accept it in my mind."

The greatest adventure that can happen to a human being is the movement from mind to no-mind, the movement from personality to individuality. The no-mind has an individuality: the mind is social.

All political power, all power as such, is stupid. Don't rush after it, don't be ambitious, because all ambition collects dust and only dust. If you are not disillusioned by dust, you will not be able to know what truth is. A man obsessed with ambition is not capable of knowing truth at all. Eyes full of ambition never see what is; they only see what they want to see. The ambitious mind is the wrong mind; the non-ambitious mind is the right mind.

Only through the medium of the public physical world can the mind of one person make a difference to the mind of another. The mind is in its own place and in each of us lies an inner life, the life of a ghostly Robinson Crusoe. People can see, hear, and jolt one another's bodies, but they are irremediably blind and deaf to the workings of one another's minds

Some people will follow their minds without listening to their hearts, and others will follow their hearts without listening to their minds. This is why reason exists, for there to be balance between the heart and mind. We were not meant to follow the mind and ignore the heart. Instead, we were meant to follow the heart over the mind, but without completely abandoning logic. The middle way is the preferred way, and this path simply means to allow your heart to drive you, but do not forget to balance reason with your conscience.

There is no mind to control if you realise the self. The mind having vanished, the self shines forth. In the realised man, the mind may be active or inactive, the self remains for him.

I am no longer cursed by poverty because I took possession of my own mind, and that mind has yielded me every material thing I want, and much more than I need. But this power of mind is a universal one, available to the humblest person as it is to the greatest.

It isn't a hunch but the subconscious mind, which is the creative mind, at work. That is the mind which makes artists do things without their knowing how they came to do them. Perhaps with me it was the cumulative effect of a lot of little things individually insignificant but collectively powerful.

There are no a priori obstacles to the scientific knowledge of the mind, but the scientific knowledge of the mind is not all the knowledge of the mind that there is. This is not an objection to science, it is just a distinction between different kinds of knowledge.

Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time. One or the other must dominate. It is your responsibility to make sure that positive emotions constitute the dominating influence of your mind. Here the law of HABIT will come to your aid. Form the habit of applying and using the positive emotions! Eventually, they will dominate your mind so completely, that the negatives cannot enter it.

Epistemologists should be concerned with knowledge and justification and so on, not our concepts of them; philosophers of mind should be concerned with various features of our mental life and the large-scale structure of the mind, not our concepts of mind, or consciousness, or anything else

All Buddhas and ordinary people are just one mind. This mind is beyond all measurements, names, oppositions: this very being is it; as soon as you stir your mind you turn away from it.

You can go to doctors until the last cow has been placed in its shed. You can journey the earth in search of peace of mind. You can experiment with a dozen theories, hoping for a relief from worries, or the problems which beset you, but unless you learn to relax you will end up disappointed. Tension is a killer! Just relax and note the immediate effect. One of peace and ease of mind. One in which every organ of the body joins. In relaxation there is unity of mind, body and spirit.

Karma is engendered by states of mind. If you are in a happy state of mind, that will engender one kind of karma. If you are in an unhappy state of mind, that will engender another kind of karma.

That daydreaming seemed important at the time, but when I asked my teacher Katagiri Roshi about it, he said, "Oh, it's just laziness. Get to work." But as for discipline, I don't even use that word. I think more about passion or love. What I've really learned is the way the mind moves, and how the mind works. Rather than discipline, I know how to seduce my mind.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is that tunnel is in the back of your mind. And if you don’t go to the back side of your mind you will never see the light at the end of the tunnel. And once you see it, then the task becomes to empower it in yourself and other people. Spread it as a reality. God did not retire to the seventh heaven, God is some kind of lost continent IN the human mind.

It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.

Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow-never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.

Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look out at the stars. This practice should answer the question..... The master settles her mind as the universe settles the stars in the sky. By connecting her mind with the subtle origin, she calms it. Once calmed, it naturally expands, and ultimately her mind becomes as vast and immeasurable as the night sky.

The word 'innocence' means 'incapable of being hurt'. To have a mind that is not capable of being hurt, does not mean that it has built up a lot of resistance - on the contrary, such a mind is dying to everything that it has known in which there has been conflict, pleasure and pain. Only then is the mind innocent; that means it can love. You cannot love with memory, love is not a matter of remembrance, of time.

It is my mind, with its store of images, that gives the world colour and sound; and that supremely real and rational certainty which I call "experience" is, in its most simple form, an exceedingly complicated structure of mental images. Thus there is, in a certain sense, nothing that is directly experienced except the mind itself. Everything is mediated through the mind.

Deeply buried in the mind, there lies a mechanism that accepts what the mind experiences as beautiful and pleasant and rejects those experiences that are perceived as ugly and painful. This mechanism gives rise to those states of mind that we are training ourselves to avoid-- things like greed, lust, hatred, aversion, and jealousy.

This mind is the doubting mind, and in the doubting mind we can never feel the presence of peace. We can feel the presence of peace only in the loving heart.

We might think we can find a buddha or enlightenment somewhere beyond this mind; we might think we can find serenity, clarity, and meaning beyond this mind, but such place does not exist. Everything that appears is this mind, Bodhidharma says.

Bring your mind to noble silence. Unify your mind in noble silence. Concentrate your mind in noble silence... Enter into rapture and pleasure born of silence derived of concentration and awareness that is free from thought and fabrication.

I can fool you because you're a human. You have a wonderful human mind that works no different from my human mind. Usually when we're fooled, the mind hasn't made a mistake. It's come to the wrong conclusion for the right reason.

I have never had a secret hero in my mind but I have kept a lot of mentors in my mind that are heroes. Gandhi, Jesus, Moses, Martin Luther King they were all secret heroes in my mind because they stood for what they wanted, what they believed in.

How not to choose is the whole art of religion, how to drop into a choicelessness. But remember, don`t choose choicelessness! Otherwise, listening to me or to Sosan or Krishnamurti you will become enchanted by the word `choicelessness.` Your mind will say, "This is very good. Then ecstasy is possible and much bliss will happen to you if you become choicelessness. Then the door of the mysteries of life will be opened." The mind feels greedy. The mind says, "Okay, so I will choose choicelessness." The door is closed, only the label is changed, but you have fallen a victim of the old trick.

Without meditation, and without a relationship to your mind, you fail to use the power of the mind. You fail to rely on your self. You complicate your approach. You do not use the beautiful designs given to you by birthright in this body, that link the effectiveness of body, mind, soul and you.

Love is beyond description; but not beyond demonstrating. Love is beyond the mind because it is always new. Any product of the mind is a reaction of the past, a synthesis of what is old. So the mind is a modifier, a reactor; a renovator, but it cannot create the new.

Effort within the mind further limits the mind, because effort implies struggle towards a goal and when you have a goal, a purpose, an end in view, you have placed a limit on the mind.

[I]t is easy to regard the mind and the body as two slaves trained to obey the imperial soul.... [I]n this trinity of soul, mind, and body, it is sometimes hard to tell which of the three is at work; and the personality of each of the three parties interferes a good deal with that of each of the others. But if you who read will remember that you are an infinite child of God, and can partake of his nature, and that you have given to you the management and direction of your mind and your body, you will be saved many failures.

If you know the psychological nature of your own mind, depression is spontaneously dispelled; instead of being enemies and strangers, all living beings become your friends. The narrow mind rejects; wisdom accepts. Check your own mind to see whether or not this is true.

Watch how your mind judges. Judgment comes, in part, out of your own fear. You judge other people because you're not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart. If you close your heart to someone, you are perpetuating your suffering and theirs. Shifting out of judgment means learning to appreciate your predicament and their predicament with an open heart instead of judging. Then you can allow yourself and others to just be, without separation.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.

For me, a garden is peace of mind. It immediately takes my mind off the thing I'm puzzling about in my work and gives me repose.

The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.

The cheerful mind perseveres and the strong mind hews its way through a thousand difficulties.

The mind may wander, but let not the senses wander with it. If the senses wander where the mind takes them, one is done for.

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.

Usually when I draw, I try to be in a contemplative mood. I try to keep my mind as empty, vacant and tranquil as possible. The outer mind is like the surface of the sea. On the surface, the sea is full of waves and surges; it is all restlessness. But when we dive deep below, the same sea is all peace, calmness and quiet, and there we find the source of creativity.

The arc of my mind has an equal swing in all directions. I should say the same of your mind if I thought you would believe it. But we are so saturated with the notion that Time is a dimension accessible from one direction only, that you will at first probably be shocked by my saying that I can see truly as far in front of me as I can see exactly behind me.

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

If you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.

I myself, a professional mathematician, on re-reading my own work find it strains my mental powers to recall to mind from the figures the meanings of the demonstrations, meanings which I myself originally put into the figures and the text from my mind. But when I attempt to remedy the obscurity of the material by putting in extra words, I see myself falling into the opposite fault of becoming chatty in something mathematical.