Quotes and Sayings About Meditation
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You should not be carried away by the dictation of the mind, but the mind should be carried by your dictation.
-- A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada -
At its core, meditation is about touching the spiritual essence that exists within us all. Our spiritual essence is not something that we create through meditation it's already there, deep within, behind all the barriers, patiently waiting for us to recognize it.
-- Aaron Hoopes -
To be free from bondage the wise person must practise discrimination between One-Self and the ego-self. By that alone you will become full of joy, recognising Self as Pure Being, Consciousness and Bliss.
-- Adi Shankara -
Even after the Truth has been realised, there remains that strong, obstinate impression that one is still an ego - the agent and experiencer. This has to be carefully removed by living in a state of constant identification with the supreme non-dual Self. Full Awakening is the eventual ceasing of all the mental impressions of being an ego.
-- Adi Shankara -
Curb your senses and your mind and see the Lord within your heart.
-- Adi Shankara -
Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it's about letting go of control.
-- Adyashanti -
All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better or different, and to turn your attention inward to the awake silence that you are.
-- Adyashanti -
True meditation is letting go of manipulating our experience.
-- Adyashanti -
True meditation has no direction or goal. It is pure wordless surrender, pure silent prayer.
-- Adyashanti -
Meditation is not something restricted to times of formal seated meditation; it is most fundamentally an attitude of being-a resting in and as being. Once you get the feel of it, you will be able to tune into it more and more often during your daily life. Eventually, in the state of liberation, meditation will simply become your natural condition.
-- Adyashanti -
If you have time to breathe you have time to meditate. You breathe when you walk. You breathe when you stand. You breathe when you lie down.
-- Ajahn Amaro -
Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.
-- Ajahn Brahm -
When sitting in meditation, say, "That's not my business!" with every thought that comes by.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Proper effort is not the effort to make something particular happen. It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment, the effort to overcome laziness and merit, the effort to make each activity of our day meditation.
-- Ajahn Chah -
When we sit in meditation and hear a sound, we think, 'Oh, that sound's bothering me.' If we see it like this, we suffer. But if we investigate a little deeper, we see that the sound is simply sound. If we understand like this, then there's nothing more to it. We leave it be. The sound is just sound, why should you go and grab it? You see that actually it was you who went out and disturbed the sound.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Of course there are dozens of meditation techniques, but it all comes down to this - just let it all be. Step over here where it is cool, out of the battle. Why not give it a try?
-- Ajahn Chah -
If your mind is happy then you are happy anywhere you go. When wisdom awakens within you, you will see Truth wherever you look. Truth is all there is. It's like when you learned how to read, you can then read anywhere you go.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Regarding this Dhamma, it is not something that we can simply talk about or take another's word for it. We need to develop meditation so that the understanding arises clearly within oneself. It is not the case that merely by listening to another's explanation our defilements will disappear. When we gain some understanding we need to chew on it again so that we see it for ourselves with certainty: paccattam.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Don’t be attached to visions or lights in meditation, don’t rise or fall with them. What’s so great about brightness? My flashlight has it. It can’t help us rid ourselves of our suffering.
-- Ajahn Chah -
You say that you are too busy to meditate. Do you have time to breathe? Meditation is your breath. Why do you have time to breathe but not to meditate? Breathing is something vital to peoples lives. If you see that Dhamma practice is vital to your life, then you will feel that breathing and practising the Dhamma are equally important.
-- Ajahn Chah -
If you haven't cried deeply a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Just go into the room, sit in the centre of the room, open the doors and windows, and see who comes to visit. You will witness all kinds of scenes and actors, all kinds of temptations and stories, everything imaginable. Your only job is to stay in your seat. You will see it all arise and pass, and out of this, wisdom and understanding will come.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Meditation is a skilful letting go: gently but with resolution.
-- Ajahn Sumedho -
You can make any human activity into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just to do it.
-- Alan Watts -
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
-- Alan Watts -
If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate.
-- Alan Watts -
Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.
-- Alan Watts -
I don't go out to parties because I'd look terrible in pictures. My escape is television - it's like meditation to me.
-- Alber Elbaz -
By observing natural scientific discoveries through a perception deepened by meditation, we can develop a new awareness of reality. This awareness could become the bedrock of a spirituality that is not based on the dogmas of a given religion, but on insights into a higher and deeper meaning. I am referring to the ability to recognize, to read, and to understand the firsthand revelations.
-- Albert Hofmann
