Mindfulness Quotations

Mindfulness has helped me succeed in almost every dimension of my life. By stopping regularly to look inward and become aware of my mental state, I stay connected to the source of my actions and thoughts and can guide them with considerably more intention.

Mindfulness helps us freeze the frame so that we can become aware of our sensations and experiences as they are, without the distorting coloration of socially conditioned responses or habitual reactions.

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.

Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.

Mindfulness is a quality that's always there. It's an illusion that there's a meditation and post-meditation period, which I always find amusing, because you're either mindful or you're not.

To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.

Mindfulness is so powerful that the fact that it comes out of Buddhism is irrelevant.

Mindfulness means being aware of how you're deploying your attention and making decisions about it, and not letting the tweet or the buzzing of your BlackBerry call your attention.

Science and mindfulness complement each other in helping people to eat well and maintain their health and well-being.

If you are doing mindfulness meditation, you are doing it with your ability to attend to the moment.

It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.

Every present moment will offer itself as a window onto eternity, a doorway to the infinite.

Mindfulness creates centered awareness. When you do one thing at a time, you're guaranteed excellent results. If you do too many things simultaneously, it messes up your neural circuits. Focus on one thing at a time.

Accept that living in the present moment, with your present desires, is the best, the highest thing you can do.

In your present-moment awareness, awaken to your innocence, your trust, your love, your eternal being.

One's attention has to penetrate the chaotic activity, pass through all the layers of subtle thought, and at last emerge into silence. This is the basic process of transcending.

To be in touch with yourself requires great sensitivity to everything that's going on here and now.

Welcome to the present moment. Here. Now. The only moment there ever is.

If your relationship to the present moment is not right - nothing can ever be right in the future - because when the future comes - it's the present moment.

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.

We have forgotten what rocks and plants still know - we have forgotten how to be - to be still - to be ourselves - to be where life is here and now

There's no problem so great it can't be solved. If it can't be solved, it's not a problem, it's reality.

When life is at that extremely hard time, all we can control is our attitude.

Mind is the cause; everything else is effect.

Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.

I experience each moment like baklava: rich in this layer, and this layer, and this layer.

The richness of a moment comes when it's both full and empty at the same time. The truth is, we live simultaneously in time and timelessness.

Enough. These few words are enough If not these few words, this breath If not this breath, this sitting here This opening to the life we have refused again and again Until now Until now.

Seek and see all the marvels around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else. - Don Juan

What would it be like to let go of wanting things to be other than they are?

Mindfulness is like a microscope; it is neither an offensive nor defensive weapon in relation to the germs we observe through it. The function of the microscope is just to clearly present what is there.

One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.

Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.

You are whole and also part of larger and larger circles of wholeness you many not even know about. You are never alone. And you already belong. You belong to humanity. You belong to life. You belong to this moment, this breath.

Writing can be an incredible mindfulness practice.

There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness.

The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment. But we're continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.

Buckminster Fuller himself was fond of stating that what seems to be happening at the moment is never the full story of what is really going on. He liked to point out that for the honey bee, it is the honey that is important. But the bee is at the same time nature's vehicle for carrying out cross-pollination of the flowers. Interconnectedness is a fundamental principle of nature. Nothing is isolated. Each event connects with others.

Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere else.

Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.

In any given moment we are either practicing mindfulness, or defacto, we are practicing mindlessness.

Simply put, mindfulness is moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness.

Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.

Each step along the Buddha's path to happiness requires practising mindfulness until it becomes part of your daily life.

Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.

Always make new mistakes.

Milk every moment for all the pleasure you can get from it.

Why not just live in the moment, especially if it has a good beat?

Sometimes a mind is like a mouth: you just got to shut it.

I don't think we are here for anything. We're just products of evolution. You can say, "Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose." But I'm anticipating a good lunch.

Cultivating a generous spirit starts with mindfulness. Mindfulness, simply stated, means paying attention to what is actually happening; it's about what is really going on.

Only the present moment contains life.

Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves.

The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.

There is no enlightenment outside of daily life.

In mindfulness one is not only restful and happy, but alert and awake. Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.

If we practice mindfulness, we always have a place to be when we are afraid.

Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what's the use of seeing?

Don't think you have to be solemn to meditate. To meditate, well, you have to smile a lot.

I came to the conclusion then that "continual mindfulness". . . must mean, not a sergeantmajor-like drilling of thoughts, but a continual readiness to accept whatever came.

This moment is your portal to the future. Use it wisely!

Yoga is mind wave quieting.

Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a single moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?

No change occurs if we just let our habitual tendencies and automatic patterns of thought perpetuate and even reinforce themselves, thought after thought, day after day, year after year. But those tendencies and patterns can be challenged.

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.

I am not nearly so interested in what monkey man was derived from as I am in what kind of monkey he is to become.

If you walk into a forest - you hear all kinds of subtle sounds - but underneath there is an all pervasive silence.

The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.

Don't think the purpose of meditation is to go deep into consciousness, wrap a blanket around yourself, and say, 'How cozy! I'm going to curl up in here by myself; let the world burn.' Not at all. We go deep into meditation so that we can reach out further and further to the world outside.

By removing that which is petty and self-seeking, we bring forth all that is glorious and mindful of the whole.

But peace, too, is a living thing and like all life it must wax and wane, accommodate, withstand trials, and undergo changes.

Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.

The whole idea of mindfulness is all about having a second-level monitoring of your thoughts and being able to recognize them as being negative or harmful before they become a part of your being, before they become some kind of action like writing an angry letter to someone or speaking too strongly to someone.

Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it.

All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others

Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you're doing.

Every day seems to reveal a new piece of research about meditation, or new clinical applications of mindfulness or compassion practice, or new corporations or foundations or non-profits bringing mindfulness to work.

Mindfulness needs to not be judgmental to really be mindfulness, which means it needs a basis of loving kindness.

It is because of that balanced relationship to the moment that mindfulness serves as the platform for insight... if we feel an emotion, for example, and struggle against it right away, there is not going to be a lot of learning going on. In the same way, if we are swamped by that emotion, overcome by it, there won't be enough space for there to be learning or insight.

The quality of mindfulness does not just know something is happening - e.g. there is an emotion, a sensation - but knows without clinging or condemning.

Mindfulness helps us to set boundaries by revealing what makes us unhappy & what brings us peace.

Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere.

We use mindfulness to observe the way we cling to pleasant experiences & push away unpleasant ones.

Retire to the center of your being, which is calmness.

Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.

Mindfulness of the resources we have and respect for where we live, eat, and sleep is a good starting point. Being conscious of your consumption, what goes in and out, will help cut down on wastefulness.

Nature herself does not distinguish between what seed it receives. It grows whatever seed is planted; this is the way life works. Be mindful of the seeds you plant today, as they will become the crop you harvest.

One must be truly able to say I in order to know the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth.

In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility.

Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.

For me mindfulness is like building a house, so the next time the tsunami that is depression comes I'll have a structure in place to resist it.

Living with bipolar, schizophrenia or any other mental condition takes a recognition that one has a chronic condition that needs managing. The management can be through pharmaceutical intervention, talk therapy, mindfulness programmes, diet and exercise changes, all kinds of things.

But what after all, behind appearance, is the seeming mystery? We can see that it is the Consciousness which had lost itself, returning to itself, emerging out of its giant self-forgetfulness, slowly, painfully, as a life that is would-be sentient, to be more than sentient, to be again divinely self-conscious, free, infinite, immortal.

The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to be. Meditation is a way of breaking this spell.

You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)

I never wear a watch, because I always know it's now - and now is when you should do it.

You should enjoy the present moment because this is all you have. Create for tomorrow, but live in and for today.