Quotes about Mindfulness

the highly respected macroeconomist Jeffrey Sachs has recently made an impassioned and well-argued case in his book The Price of Civilization that mindfulness needs to be at the heart of any attempt to resolve the major problems we face as a country and, by implication, as a world.

attention and the awareness that arises from it are the doorway to true education and learning — life-long gifts that keep deepening with use.

But meditation is not just about sitting, either. It is about stopping and being present, that is all.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. THOREAU, Walden

The challenge of mindfulness is to work with the very circumstances that you find yourself in - no matter how unpleasant, how discouraging, how limited, how unending and stuck they may appear to be - and to make sure that you have done everything in your power to use their energies to transform yourself before you decide to cut your losses and move on.

It means that how we relate to all our moments, all our experiences, is a choice.

No matter what people are doing, they are much less happy when their minds are wandering than when their minds are focused

By grounding yourself in mindfulness early in the morning, you are reminding yourself that things are always changing, that good and bad things come and go, and that it is possible to embody a perspective of constancy, wisdom, and inner peace as you face any conditions that present themselves.

But waking up is ultimately something that each one of us can only do for ourselves. When it comes down to it, wherever you go, there you are

To be patient is simply to be completely open to each moment, accepting it in its fullness, knowing that, like the butterfly, things can only unfold in their own time.

as long as you are breathing there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong.

These qualities are beautifully encapsulated in the famous statement of Victor Frankl, himself a survivor of Auschwitz (and a neurologist and psychologist): "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." MBSR