Quotes about Mindfulness

Don't make a great effort, or struggle, or fight as you sit. Let go of everything. This prevents backache, shoulder-ache, or headache. If you are able to find a cushion that fits your body well, you can sit for a long time without feeling tired.

You don't have to run anywhere to become someone else.

So spend time with your food; every minute of your meal should be happy. Not many people have the time and the opportunity to sit down and enjoy a meal like that. We are very fortunate.

We can embrace all of our feelings, even difficult ones like anger. Anger is a fire burning inside us, filling our whole being with smoke. When we are angry, we need to calm ourselves: "Breathing in, I calm my anger. Breathing out, I take care of my anger." As soon as a mother takes her crying baby into her arms, the baby already feels some relief. When we embrace our anger with Right Mindfulness, we suffer less right away.

Cultivating a strong training in meditation and mindfulness is not an opiate to escape what's going on but a way for us to truly still the mind and look deeply, in order to see ourselves and the world clearly.

When you're in bed and unable to sleep, the best thing to do is to go back to your breathing.

According to our narrow view of a truly existing self, life is just my body, my house, my spouse, my children, and my riches. But if we can extend beyond every limit we have created for ourselves, we will see that our life exists in everything, and that the deterioration of phenomena cannot touch that life, just as the arising and disappearing of the waves cannot influence the being of the water.

Anapana means breath and sati means mindfulness. Tang Hoi translated it as "Guarding the Mind." The Anapanasati Sutra, that is, is the sutra on using one's breath to maintain mindfulness.

If you can recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time. Some say that suffering is only an illusion or that to live wisely we have to "transcend" both suffering and joy. I say the opposite. The way to suffer well and be happy is to stay in touch with what is actually going on; in doing so, you will gain liberating insights into the true nature of suffering and of joy.

We can learn many practices to lessen our sadness and our suffering, but the cream of enlightened wisdom is the insight of no birth, no death.

Once a seed has been burnt, it cannot sprout anymore. If we are able to burn up the seeds of grief, sexual desire, and hatred, they will not sprout again.

Avalokiteshvara means "the one who listens deeply to the sounds of the world.