Quotes about Consciousness
Thus we are sucked away into the future—and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
What will happen to our consciousness after we die? A. What happens to consciousness when we're still alive? If you can answer that question, the other question will be answered as well.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
We have to learn the art of stopping — stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Many Christian mystics talk of God as the absence of burning and discrimination. They do not see God as something external to themselves. They no longer look for God outside of themselves, but recognize God as the freedom and happiness that is available within their own consciousness. When the flames of desire and hatred no longer burn, and the sword of discrimination no longer divides, that is God.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Ignorance is in each cell of our body and our consciousness. It's like a drop of ink diffused in a glass of water. That ignorance stops us from seeing reality; it pushes us to do foolish things that make us suffer even more
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Doing things with mindfulness means you perform each action with clear awareness of what's happening and of what you're doing in the present moment, and you feel happy as you do it. Mindfulness is the capacity to shine the light of awareness onto what's going on here and now. Mindfulness is the heart of meditation practice.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Mindfulness is the opposite of this tendency. We must invite these things up into our mind consciousness every day and tell them, "My dear, I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid of my fear.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Nirvana is the complete silencing of concepts.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Whenever everyone's eyes are fixed on the earth—looking at the trees, plants, hills, mountains, or each other—then we know we are in the historical dimension, the world of birth and death. But when everyone's eyes look into space then we have entered the ultimate dimension, the unborn and undying world.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
What we have to be is what we are.
— Thomas Merton
What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.
— Thomas Merton
The real purpose of meditation is this: to teach a man how to work himself free of created things and temporal concerns, in which he finds only confusion and sorrow, and enter into a conscious and loving contact with God in which he is disposed to receive from God the help he knows he needs so badly, and to pay to God the praise and honor and thanksgiving and love which it has now become his joy to give.
— Thomas Merton