Quotes about Practice

When we're first learning sitting meditation, it can be useful to count our breaths. Count one for the first in- and out-breath. Count two for the second, and so on. If your mind wanders and you lose count, go back to one and begin again. This exercise helps develop concentration. You may think counting to ten is easy, but counting to ten while breathing mindfully takes a lot of focus.

When we practice in a community, there are more people to support us but also more opportunities for frustration and anger. Loving speech and deep listening are key to community building.

Doing things with mindfulness means you perform each action with clear awareness of what's happening and of what you're doing in the present moment, and you feel happy as you do it. Mindfulness is the capacity to shine the light of awareness onto what's going on here and now. Mindfulness is the heart of meditation practice.

We all worked, but we didn't work all day. There was time for us to study the sutras, practice writing, listen to the teachings given by our teacher, chant, and meditate. Most important was meditation. My teacher taught that meditation was the door to understanding, and the career of monks and nuns.

Perceiving the order of nature to be that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue, I am willing to hope it may have ordained that the fall of the wicked shall be the rise of the good. To J. Correa de Serra, Monticello, Apr. 19, 1814

The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.

For it seems to me that the first responsibility of a man of faith is to make his faith really part of his own life, not by rationalizing it but by living it.

Whatever you do repeatedly," he writes, "has the power to shape you, has the power to make you over into a different person— even if you're not totally engaged' in every minute!

Activity is the only road to knowledge.

I've been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being bored, and in therapy I invent stories to keep from boring the psychologist.

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

We're going to worship in eternity. So what does God want me to do while we're here on earth? Practice. Practice worshipping.