Quotes about Mindfulness

How I pray is breathe.

The function of a university is to teach a [person] how to drink tea, not because anything is important, but because it is usual to drink tea, or for that matter anything else under the sun. And whatever you do, every act, however small, can teach you everything, provided you see who is acting." ? Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton On Prayer

There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality

There is only now.

Over and over again I have to make small decisions here and there, in regard to one or other. Distractions and obsessions are resolved in this way. What the resolution amounts to, in the end: letting go of the imaginary and the absent and returning to the present, the real, what is in front of my nose.

If you don't want the effect, do something to remove the causes. There is no use loving the cause and fearing the effect and being surprised when the effect inevitably follows the cause.

When solitude was a problem, I had no solitude. When it ceased to be a problem I found I already possessed it, and could have possessed it all along.

In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with his mind and lips, but in a certain sense with his whole being.

Silence is not broken by speech, but by the anxiety to be heard.

Discipline is most important, and without it no serious meditation will ever be possible. But it should be one's own discipline, not a routine mechanically imposed from the outside.

We must slow down to a human tempo and we'll begin to have time to listen.

Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening