Quotes about Contemplation

Choiceless awareness - at every moment and in all the circumstances of life - is the only effective meditation.

I looked down by chance, and went on passionately staring by choice, at my own crossed legs," the writer and philosopher recollected. "Those folds in the trousers ? what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! And the texture of the gray flannel ? how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous.

There was a little hill behind the house. You climbed it, and there was the whole sky from horizon to horizon. A hundred and eighty degrees of brute inexplicable mystery. It was a good place for just sitting and saying nothing.

Though the intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is enormously improved, the will suffers a profound change for the worse. The mescalin taker sees no reason for doing aanything in particular and finds most of the causes for which, at ordinary times, he was prepared to act and suffer, profoundly uninteresting. He can't be bothered with them, for the good reason that he has better things to think about.

Meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer.

How does the Word memorized become the Word applied? It happens through meditation.

Why do we forget what we read in the Bible? Is it just a poor memory? No, it's a failure to meditate.

The reason we come away so cold from reading the word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.

What value is there to reading one, three, or more chapters of Scripture only to find that after you've finished, you can't recall a thing you've read? It's better to read a small amount of Scripture and meditate on it than to read an extensive section without meditation.

To read the Bible and not to meditate was seen as an unfruitful exercise: better to read one chapter and meditate afterward than to read several chapters and not to meditate.

To pray the Bible, you simply go through the passage line by line, talking to God about whatever comes to mind as you read the text.

Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again.