Mindfulness Quotes

Cooking gives you the opportunity to meet the things you eat. You can touch each carrot or olive and get to know its smell and texture.You can feel its weight and notice its color and form. If it is going to become part of you, it seems worthy, at least, of acknowledgment, respect, and thanks. It takes much time and care in order for things to grow, and many labors are needed to bring these ingredients to the kitchen. There is a lot to be grateful for that takes place between the wheat field and the dumpling.

~ Gary Thorp

Write that novel, sail that boat. And if you can't, immerse yourself in the fantasy, be the ultimate dabbler, just enjoy what it is you enjoy. It'll help you get well if you're going to get well, and it'll help you sail that great boat in the sky if that's what's going to happen. Onwards and Upwards. No regrets.

~ Meg Wolfe

When I say ‘practice’ I don’t meanrepeating an act until you get it right. In this use, it means to instill regular discipline to accomplish a specific task, ritual without which we feel incomplete, or that our experience of each day is less.

~ S. Kelley Harrell

The beauty of mindful-life-breath meditation is that you are not restricted to having to sit in the lotus position to be present. Whether you are on a busy train, driving a car or walking down a crowded high-street, you can easily remind yourself to focus on your breathing. Appreciate the subtle sensation of oxygen flowing in and out of your nostrils.

~ Christopher Dines

I used to size people up to see whether they were a good advert for meditation. Then at some point it clicked that there wasn't a type of person they were going to become. They were each just more and more themselves. Jim was very Jim, Isaac was unique in his Isaac-ness and Debbie was increasingly Debbie. That was a great relief - that I could relax into being Tessa.

~ Tessa Watt

Mindfulness does not erase negative memories, it 'transcends' them giving us back our deepest power which resides in our hearts.

~ Christopher Dines

When the heart opens, we forget ourselves and the world pours in: this world, and also the invisible world of meaning that sustains everything that was and ever shall be.

~ Roger Housden

If you love too much, you lose yourself.If you love too little, you never find yourself.

~ Janet Gallagher Nestor

That is what happens when the heart door opens- you become less yourself than part of everything.' Many are the sentinels who guard that door: our fears, our self-importance, our meanness, our greed, our bitterness, and others.

~ Roger Housden

Positive thoughts help us construct a positive life, one thought at a time.

~ Janet Gallagher Nestor

See if you can approach your own practice with a healthy combination of mindfulness, playfulness, precision, and curiosity

~ Cyndi Lee

The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Create inclusion - with simple mindfulness that others might have a different reality from your own.

~ Patti Digh

We live in an incredibly dynamic universe that gives us what we wish for, like a waking dream

~ Cynthia Sue Larson

The teachings of the Buddha could be summarized in four short sentences. ... [The Buddha] said ...The bad things, don't do them.The good things, try to do them.Try to purify, subdue your own mind.That is the teaching of all buddhas.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Our minds of infinite possibilities have been plowed, seeded and cultivated by every word, institution and sacred belief we hold dear, to produce a foul harvest of exclusion, apathy, brute domination and death.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

~ Pema Chödrön

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot.

~ Pema Chödrön

The very first noble truth of the Buddha points out that suffering is inevitable for human beings as long as we believe that things last—that they don’t disintegrate, that they can be counted on to satisfy our hunger for security.

~ Pema Chödrön

The is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.

~ Kelly Mcgonigal

How you refill. Lying there. Something like happiness, just like water, pure and clear pouring in. So good you don’t even welcome it, it runs through you in a bright stream, as if it has been there all along.

~ Peter Heller

...mindfulness - it isn't a trick or a gimmick. It's being present in the moment. When I'm with you, I'm with you. Right now. That's all. No more and no less.

~ Will Schwalbe

Mindfulness is like that—it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I vow to ingest only items that preserve well-being, peace, and joy in my body and my consciousness... Practicing a diet is the essence of this precept. Wars and bombs are the products of our consciousness individually and collectively. Our collective consciousness has so much violence, fear, craving, and hatred in it, it can manifest in wars and bombs. The bombs are the product of our fear... Removing the bombs is not enough. Even if we could transport all the bombs to a distant planet, we would still not be safe, because the roots of the wars and the bombs are still intact in our collective consciousness. Transforming the toxins in our collective consciousness is the true way to uproot war (72-73).

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

You cannot pour more water into a full cup without causing a spillage.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

In mindfulness, acceptance always comes first, change comes after.

~ Shamash Alidina

In any given situation there will always be more dumb people than smart people. We ain't many!

~ Ken Kesey

Mindfulness allows you to face the past with courage, whether it is scarred with pain or caressed with joy, and it gently holds you in the safe haven of the present without allowing you to become overwhelmed with what may or may not be waiting in the future.

~ Deborah A. Beasley

The Third Precept, to refrain from sexual misconduct, reminds us not to act out of sexual desire in such a way as to cause harm to another... The spirit of this precept asks us to look at the motivation behind our actions. To pay attention in this way allows us, as laypeople, to discover how sexuality can be connected to the heart and how it can be an expression of love, caring, and genuine intimacy. We have almost all been fools at some time in our sexual lives, and we have also used sex to try to touch what is beautiful, to touch another person deeply. Conscious sexuality is an essential part of living a mindful life (86).

~ Jack Kornfield

Mindful consumption is the object of this precept. We are what we consume. If we look deeply into the items that we consume every day, we will come to know our own nature very well. We have to eat, drink, consume, but if we do it unmindfully, we may destroy our bodies and our consciousness, showing ingratitude toward our ancestors, our parents, and future generations (66).

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Another thing I've been trying to do on my walks is to know what I'm looking at, when I'm looking at it. I want to be smart. When I walk down the sidewalk I see about a hundred different kinds of bugs and all I do is point at them like a caveman and say 'Ugh, look, a bug,' but I know each one of them must have a different name and a different reason why and how it came to be on the planet, and I don't know any of that stuff.

~ Jack Gantos

The best sex takes place in the mind first

~ Jenna Jameson

Ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? Ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?No, she said quickly. No, I ain't. You can't do that. I can't do that. It's too much - livin' too many lives. Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one.

~ John Steinbeck

I don't like phones. You can't be sure people are paying attention to you when you're talking to them.

~ Tawni O'dell

Work done is of more consequence for the future than the foresight of an angel.

~ George Macdonald

Being grounded in your lifelong culture and your personal perspective, you are comfortable with the way you see things and may believe it is the best and only way.

~ Susan C. Young

Sociologically speaking, as Americans we often lack social, cultural, and mindful awareness. We hear the stories of how our arrogance has been known to offend, confuse, and alienate people from other cultures. Arrogance is the thief of mindfulness and it happens from both directions.

~ Susan C. Young

To gain greater understanding, clarity, and awareness, you must become aware of your values and beliefs. Think of a triangle or an iceberg. Below the waterline, your beliefs and your values build the foundation for your behavior.

~ Susan C. Young

We will judge others based on their behaviors with little to no understanding or regard for their beliefs or values—standards we may not know, nor typically see. When we do this, things can be taken completely out of context because we are assessing their behavior against our expectations, which are produced from our own personal value system.

~ Susan C. Young

Navigating relationships within our own culture can be challenging enough. When diverse cultures are involved, however, a huge potential for misunderstanding, disrespect, miscommunication, and intolerance is present.

~ Susan C. Young