Quotes about Mindfulness

Maybe we are overdeveloped outwardly and underdeveloped inwardly. Perhaps it is we who, for all our wealth, are living in poverty.

Meditation is the process by which we go about deepening our attention and awareness, refining them, and putting them to greater practical use in our lives.

It does provide a greater basket for tenderly holding and intimately knowing our suffering in any and all circumstances, and that, it turns out, is transformative, and can make all the difference between endless imprisonment in pain and suffering and freedom from suffering

This is the case because, as we noted earlier, it is not the breath that is most important here, but the awareness itself. And the awareness can be of any aspect of your experience, not just your breathing—because it is always the same awareness, whatever the chosen object or objects of attention.

L]ive life as if each moment was important, as if each moment counted and could be worked with, even if it was a moment of pain, sadness, despair, or fear. This work involves above all the regular, disciplined practice of moment-to-moment awareness or mindfulness, the complete owning of each moment of your experience, good, bad, or ugly. This is the essence of full catastrophe living.

This has everything to do with holding the present moment in its fullness without imposing anything extra on it, perceiving its purity and the freshness of its potential to give rise to the next moment.

Parenting and family life can be a perfect field for mindfulness practice, but it's not for the weak-hearted, the selfish or lazy, or the hopelessly romantic. Parenting is a mirror that forces you to look at yourself. If you can learn from what you observe, you just may have a chance to keep growing yourself.

It is remarkable how liberating it feels to be able to see that your thoughts are just thoughts and that they are not "you" or "reality." For instance, if you have the thought that you have to get a certain number of things done today and you don't recognize it as a thought but act as if it's "the truth," then you have created a reality in that moment in which you really believe that those things must all be done today.

There is more right with you than wrong with you"—those

health is a dynamical process. It is not a fixed state that you "get" and then hold on to.

Le miracle de la succession des saisons est dans notre souffle; nos parents et nos enfants sont contenus dans notre souffle; notre esprit et notre corps sont notre souffle.

Acceptance of the present moment has nothing to do with resignation in the face of what is happening. It simply means a clear acknowledgment that what is happening is happening. Acceptance doesn't tell you what to do. What happens next, what you choose to do, that has to come out of your understanding of this moment.