Meditation Quotes

The soul does not condemn us. It is not the God of our fathers. Soul is the essence of existence and it is free and limitless. It gives all things the freedom to be, to grow, and eventually to know. It is not a judge, but a passive observer of all things.The soul is the feeling of life, without the judgment and separation of the mind and ego. It has no commandments for us to follow, other than to live, learn, and grow in awareness of ourselves and life by experience.When we accept ourselves as we are and the events of our life, we are following the soul of existence. We are given opportunities to learn, grow, and know our natural self, without judgment.When we follow the god of the ego, we must judge our actions and our life. The soul is not a judge of life.The soul allows us to fail in following its love and wisdom, without condemnation.

~ Robert S. Cosmar

We know Existence, because we are existence. We know Truth, because we are truth.We know Life, because we are life itself.The mind cannot remember this, because it is an experience far removed from it. The mind is an observer, not a knower. It can remember, but it cannot become what it remembers.The mind is a false witness to truth, life, and existence.

~ Robert S. Cosmar

We need more explorers in consciousness and less followers of beliefs, isms, and credos.Religions and spiritual leaders influence millions by pushing their beliefs. They believe in the Bible, the Koran, and the Gita, but do not personally ‘know’ the essence within them. Too many believe in beliefs and are not who they profess to be, nor any closer to the truth than the totally unaware.

~ Robert S. Cosmar

We only know a person’s intentions through awareness. The mind is easily influenced by the suggestions and emotions of others. We are either manipulated into serving others, or willingly surrendering to assist them. One is our choice, the other is theirs.Fear makes us slaves, while love sets us free to serve and surrender to a greater good.Discernment is needed for us to see which we are: slave, or servant?

~ Robert S. Cosmar

If we worship another, then we remain in duality. We have not fully entered the path within.Through awareness, we learn to worship the essence of our nature and the truth of existence within the temple of our own consciousness. Our worship is a realization of truth and oneness. It is rejoicing within our being.True worship is to fill ourselves with the awareness of eternity, to know our godliness as beings of light.Worship no person, or image -- only the awareness of who you are becoming.

~ Robert S. Cosmar

Intuition is to develop a trust in yourself, and to the silent whisperings of your heart. If you trust yourself, you can trust others, you can trust existence.

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Every day, whatever you do, you trade a day of your life for it.

~ Shaila Catherine

Life is a feeling, not a thought. Thoughts come after life and feeling. Thoughts are outside life, but necessary for balance within our being.We exist in two worlds at the same time, but we are one presence in eternity. The mind distorts our true identity and our view of reality. Think of it like a dog relentlessly chasing its tail. By running in circles, we will never catch it – it’s right where it should be and always has been. We have only to accept that we have one.Someone told us to chase it, but we did not have to.

~ Robert S. Cosmar

When we don’t allow setbacks to defeat us, they become opportunities for learning, acceptance, flexibility, and patience.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Each opportunity to interrupt the onslaught of thoughts and return to the object of meditation is, in fact, a moment of enlightenment

~ Sharon Salzberg

Every time we forget to breathe or our minds wander or we’re hijacked by feelings or sensations, we gently bring ourselves back to the breath, again and again.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Meditation is a process of lightening up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realizing that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have.

~ Pema Chödrön

In Buddhist practice, the outward and inward aspects of taking the one seat meet on our meditation cushion.

~ Jack Kornfield

We don't have to be harsh with ourselves when we think, sitting here, that our meditation or our oryoki or the way we are in the world is in the category of worst horse.

~ Pema Chödrön

With every breath, the old moment is lost; a new moment arrives. We exhale and we let go of the old moment. It is lost to us. In doing so, we let go of the person we used to be. We inhale and breathe in the moment that is becoming. In doing so, we welcome the person we are becoming. We repeat the process. This is meditation. This is renewal. This is life.

~ Lama Surya Das

Zazen is better than a home. Zazen is a home that you can't ever lose.

~ Ruth Ozeki

If you look within your heart, I am here, and you are free.

~ Ilchi Lee

After a time, he felt a deeper rhythm, the rhythm of the stone and water, not the rhythm of his words and heartbeat. He breathed into this deeper rhythm, let it teach him a new mantra, a wordless mantra that waxed and waned, ebbed and flowed, moon and stars and clouds, river and sun, the wordless singing of the earth beneath it all like the world's own heartbeat. He laid his palms flat on the stone beneath him and listened in quiet rapture to the mantra of the world's praying.

~ Katherine Addison

He had forgotten how to soar upon the wings of his soul...

~ Ilchi Lee

It is also important to understand that, even though you have been taught to believe that your mind is in charge of life, it was not designed for this. It is an exquisite tool for maneuvering through your life, but it is not supposed to be in charge of it. Life is in charge of your life, and it does a lot better job than your mind does.

~ Mary O'malley

Today, find a point of stillness: brief, but precious slight, but full small, but luminously real. Find a point stillness in the balance of all things between the breathing out and breathing in.

~ Na'ama Yehuda

Nobody ever reaches to God, God comes to you when you are open and receptive, when you are ready.

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

The immense distance between God and humanity is the indispensable backdrop to a Christian idea of revelation. To reduce God to the level of human thought and human imagination, so that we can comprehend God, is to lose a sense of the very thing that distinguishes God as God.

~ A.j. Conyers

Silence is the highest form of meditation.

~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Against The Stream is more than just another book about meditation. It is a manifesto and field guide for the front lines of the revolution. It is the culmination of almost two decades of meditative dissonance from the next generation of Buddhists in the West, It is a call to awakening for the sleeping masses.

~ Noah Levine

The deepest realization of meditation is that your being is a non-being. It is a nothing, a vast emptiness without boundaries. It is a no-self. The feeling of self, of I is false.

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Only when the seeker is lost, the truth is there. Seek, and you will miss. Seek not, and you will find. The very seeking becomes a barrier to truth, to the ultimate experience.

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

In order to work with difficult outer circumstances, we need to gather our inner strength. If even ten or twenty minutes of meditation a day helps us to do this, let's go for it!

~ Pema Chödrön

Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm.

~ Pema Chödrön

To attain to enlightenment is to attain to all. When you are not, you become the whole.

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

When we are, love is not.When we are not, love is.

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

The point of the overall meditative path is to have Wakefulness (or Consciousness as Such) transcend and include all state-realms, so it ceases to “black out” or “forget” various changes of state (such as dreaming and deep sleep), and instead recognizes a “constant Consciousness” or ever-present nondual Awareness, the union (and transcendence) of individual finite self and infinite Spirit.

~ Ken Wilber

Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.

~ Benjamin Hoff

Some perceive God in the heart by the intellect through meditation; others by the yoga of knowledge; and others by the yoga of work. Some, however, do not understand Brahman, but having heard from others, take to worship. They also transcend death by their firm faith to what they have heard.

~ Anonymous

In an age of bombsguzzling blood, skylarks merge peacewith thought and action.

~ Aberjhani

There are no mistakes in Zentangle, so there is no need for an eraser. If you do not like the look of a stroke you have made, it then becomes only an opportunity to create a new tangle, or transform it using an old trusty pattern. A Zentangle tile is meant to be a surprise that unfolds before the creator's eyes, one stroke at a time.

~ Beckah Krahula

Meditation trains the mind the way physical exercise strengthens the body.

~ Sharon Salzberg

With mindfulness there is more to unlearn than there is to learn.

~ Michael H. Brooks

Each new day begins with a meditation, and ends with a purifying catharsis.

~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

I'm completely out of control, and I can hear the beginnings of the chant, get/out/, but now that I'm not being touched maybe I can master it and I shut the world out: separating an orange into skinless sections. Peel it, but not with your fingers. Level off the top and bottom. Set it on the board. Remove the peel in strips with a paring knife, pushing down from the top to bottom with slow, curved strokes. Nick off all the white parts. Cup the cool, wet skinless fruit in your hand. Take care. Don't rush. Press the blade into the flesh of the orange, sink it down, a segment at a time, along the left side of the skin and then the right. Left and right. Left and right. As close as you can to the membrane. Press to the center with your knife, level and easy. If you cut right, the segment will fall out onto the board, triangular, gleaming. Left and right. Left and right. If you rush you'll cut yourself. Take care with it. Cut right along the seam, right where the sweet fruit meets the tough membrane. Let and right. Left and right. As close as you can.

~ Jael Mchenry