Quotes by Meditation Teachers - Page 5

Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you're doing.
Sharon Salzberg
For men and women alike, this journey is a the trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
There's nothing like a good, long sleep to allow unpleasantness to recede into the past.
David Michie
In Buddhism we also interprete Dharma to mean 'cessation,' as in the end of dissatisfaction, the end of dukkha. This is the purpose of Buddha's teachings.
David Michie
Like depression, loneliness arises from unhappiness creating thoughts feeding into the insula, deepening the negative spiral of thoughts and feelings.
David Michie
The future that we want - this is it. This is the future of all the previous thoughts you've ever had about the future. You're in it. You're already in it. What is the purpose of all this living if it's only to get some place else and then when you're there you're not happy anyway, you want to be some place else. It's always for 'when I retire,' 'when I graduate college,' 'when I make enough money,' 'when I get married,' 'when I get divorced,' 'when the kids move out.' It's like, wait a minute, this is it. This is your life. We only have moments. This moment's as good as any other. It's perfect.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Asking questions is an opportunity for creativity and personal expression, both for the person asking and the person answering.
Sharon Salzberg
Karma is often wrongly confused with the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature... But is is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Loving-kindness challenges those states that tend to arise when we think of ourselves as isolated from everyone else—fear, a sense of deficiency, alienation, loneliness.
Sharon Salzberg
Loving ourselves calls us to give up the illusion that we can control everything and focuses us on building our inner resource of resilience.
Sharon Salzberg
When we learn to respond to disappointments with acceptance, we give ourselves the space to realize that all our experiences—good and bad alike—are opportunities to learn and grow.
Sharon Salzberg
The venerable teachers, philosophers & spiritual practitioners throughout history have concluded that the greatest happiness we can experience comes from the development of an open, loving heart.
Allan Lokos
Kindness is not a fixed trait that we either have or lack, but more like a muscle that can be developed and strengthened.
Sharon Salzberg
The practice of loving-kindness is about cultivating love as a trans-formative strength,
Sharon Salzberg
YOU HAVE TO BE STRONG ENOUGH TO BE WEAKAllow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness, riding the waves of “up” and “down,” “good” and “bad,” “weak” and “strong,” until you see that they are all inadequate to fully describe your experience. Be with the experience itself. Trust in your deepest strength of all: to be present, to be wakeful.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Our practice rather than being about killing the ego is about simply discovering our true nature.
Sharon Salzberg
Rest as the awareness that is aware without using thought.
Loch Kelly
We can learn to return home to our open hearts at any moment.
Loch Kelly
The big realization when we go beyond the ego is simply seeing that we've always been ok.
Loch Kelly
You are already the awakeness that you seek!
Loch Kelly
When emotions are long held and extremely complex, it sometimes takes years for them to enter fully into awareness.
Sharon Salzberg
People in the midst of losing their patience are certainly experiencing as aspect of dukkha.
Allan Lokos
When we practice metta, we open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life.
Sharon Salzberg
We are all in this together. Our happiness inextricably is tied to that of all beings.
Allan Lokos
We can understand the inherent radiance & purity of our minds by understanding metta. Like the mind, metta is not distorted by what it encounters.
Sharon Salzberg
Praise & esteem can feel good, which is fine, but don't look to them for inner peace & lasting happiness.
Allan Lokos
Like water poured from one vessel to another, metta flows freely, taking the shape of each situation without changing its essence.
Sharon Salzberg
Our actions speak for us & they speak loudly.
Allan Lokos
A modern definition of equanimity: cool. This refers to one whose mind remains stable & calm in all situations.
Allan Lokos
There is no illness that is not exacerbated by stress.
Allan Lokos
Without the ability to be present we are missing much of what the adventure has to offer.
Allan Lokos
Patience is both the tool for and the result of, our efforts.
Allan Lokos
An open beginner's mind is a powerful tool for developing patience.
Allan Lokos
Remind yourself that your mental & emotional health are important.
Allan Lokos
Our work is not to become a better person, but to become present to the perfection we already are.
Allan Lokos
We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for.Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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
Sharon Salzberg
Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it.
Sharon Salzberg
When men imagine a female uprising, they imagine a world in which women rule men as men have ruled women.
Sally Kempton
Men define intelligence, men define usefulness, men tell us what is beautiful, men even tell us what is womanly
Sally Kempton
The simple act of being completely attentive & present to another person is an act of love, and it fosters unshakeable well-being.
Sharon Salzberg
The good news is that opportunities for love enter our lives unpredictably, whether or not we’ve perfected self-compassion or befriended our inner critic.
Sharon Salzberg
In reality, love is fluid; it’s a verb, not a noun.
Sharon Salzberg
At times, reality is love’s great challenge. When our old stories and dreams are shattered, our first instinct may be to resist, deny, or cling to the way things were. But if we loosen our grip, often what fills the space is a tender forgiveness and the potential for a new and different kind of love.
Sharon Salzberg
It takes a special courage to challenge the rigid confines of our accustomed story. It’s not easy to radically alter our views about where happiness comes from but it’s eminently possible.
Sharon Salzberg
Taking in another’s criticism, even when it’s offered out of love, requires courage.
Sharon Salzberg
In order to free ourselves from our assumptions about love, we must ask ourselves what long-held, often buried assumptions are and then face them, which takes courage, humility, and kindness.
Sharon Salzberg
When we understand the true nature of mind, we start to see these thoughts merely as thoughts instead of engaging with them. They arise, abide, and pass. They have no substance and certainly no power unless we git it to them.
David Michie
When the momentum of mindfulness is well developed, it works like a boomerang; even if we want to distract ourselves, the mind naturally rebounds to a state of awareness.
Joseph Goldstein
There are always waves on the water. Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are small, and sometimes they are almost imperceptible. The water’s waves are churned up by the winds, which come and go and vary in direction and intensity, just as do the winds of stress and change in our lives, which stir up the waves in our minds.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
You are a person worthy of love. You don’t have to do anything to prove that.
Sharon Salzberg
When we open our hearts to the breadth of our experiences, we learn to tune into our needs, unique perceptions, thoughts & feelings
Sharon Salzberg
On the surface, reality may appear the same each day, but in essence, we are new every moment of our lives. The potential for change and growth is unlimited if we allow ourselves to surrender to the flow.
Dorit Brauer
The light is all around, but to find it, we need to look inside our hearts. We can go through life and search in all the wrong places. But one day we’ll look within and we’ll find the entire universe.
Dorit Brauer
Life must be lived forward but only makes sense by looking backward. Only in retrospect do the pieces of the puzzle connect, revealing an intelligently orchestrated evolution. Our journey through life is in a way like walking blindfolded.
Dorit Brauer
Our fragile, perishable bodies are not who we are. We are the sum of fleeting moments that belong to us for eternity. It is our choice and responsibility to create moments of beauty and grace, instead of despair and suffering.
Dorit Brauer
Without meditation, contemplation and skillful action, the anger lurking in your mind can becomethe (d)anger within your life."Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev)
Leonard Perlmutter
So what is a good meditator? A good meditator meditates.
Allan Lokos
To be mindful entails examining the path we are traveling & making choices that alleviate suffering & bring happiness to ourselves & those around us.
Allan Lokos
The mind thinks thoughts that we don't plan. It's not as if we say, 'At 9:10 I'm going to be filled with self-hatred.
Sharon Salzberg