Quotes by Meditation Teachers - Page 2

When we open our hearts to the breadth of our experiences, we learn to tune into our needs, unique perceptions, thoughts & feelings
Sharon Salzberg
This is it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Understanding the true nature of things, or seeing things as they really are, is the ground of wisdom.
Allan Lokos
Evolutionary biologists tell us we have a “negativity bias” that makes our brains remember negative events more strongly than positive ones. So when we’re feeling lost or discouraged, it can be very hard to conjure up memories and feelings of happiness and ease.
Sharon Salzberg
Pain & suffering requires time, awareness, and an intentional practice of self-love to disentangle.
Sharon Salzberg
Like water poured from one vessel to another, metta flows freely, taking the shape of each situation without changing its essence.
Sharon Salzberg
Everyone we interact with has the capacity to surprise us in an infinite number of ways. What can first open us up to each of our innate capacities for love is merely to recognize that.
Sharon Salzberg
Every day, whatever you do, you trade a day of your life for it.
Shaila Catherine
Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don't feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future. It is doubtful that we came to feel undeserving on our own. We were helped to feel unworthy. We were taught it in a thousand ways when we were little, and we learned our lessons well.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
When we are aware of our weaknesses or negative tendencies, we open the opportunity to work on them.
Allan Lokos
Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Kindness is not a fixed trait that we either have or lack, but more like a muscle that can be developed and strengthened.
Sharon Salzberg
Loving ourselves calls us to give up the illusion that we can control everything and focuses us on building our inner resource of resilience.
Sharon Salzberg
Fearful of wasting a second, we hoard time as if it were money.
Sharon Salzberg
Mindfulness is so much wiser and more robust than our inner critic.
Sharon Salzberg
There can be no resolution leading to growth until the present situation has been faced completely and you have opened to it with mindfulness, allowing the roughness of the situation itself to sand down your own rough edges. In other words, you must be willing to let itself to become your teacher.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
The essence of the Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha) is about identifying the cause of our suffering & alleviating it.
Allan Lokos
As soon as we ask whether or not a story is true in the present moment, we empower ourselves to re-frame it.
Sharon Salzberg
People turn to meditation because they want to make good decisions, break bad habits & bounce back better from disappointments.
Sharon Salzberg
Meditation is not about what's happening, it is about how we're relating to what's happening.
Sharon Salzberg
Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.
Sharon Salzberg
Your genuine happiness does not come from other people, activities or things, it comes from living a meaningful life - a life that is in alignment with your values and is beneficial.
John Bruna
To celebrate someone else’s life, we need to find a way to look at it straight on, not from above with judgment or from below with envy.
Sharon Salzberg
We can understand the inherent radiance & purity of our minds by understanding metta. Like the mind, metta is not distorted by what it encounters.
Sharon Salzberg
When we don't automatically take them (thoughts) personally or believe the stories about "reality" that we build from them,when we can simply hold them in awareness with a sense of curiosity and wonder at their amazing power given their insubstantiality, their limitations,and inaccuracies,then we have a chance right in that moment,in any moment really,to not get caught in their habitual patterning,to see thoughts for what they are,impersonal events.Then in that moment at least, we are already free,ready to act with greater clarity and kindness within the constantly changing field of events that is nothing other than life unfolding-- not always as we think it should,but definitely as it is.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Forgiveness is the way we break the grip that long-held resentments have on our hearts.
Sharon Salzberg
When we develop our ability to love in one realm, we simultaneously nourish our ability in others, as long as we remain open to the flow of insight and compassion.
Sharon Salzberg
A particularly difficult line to navigate is the one between fear and love, especially for parents, who want more than anything to protect their children from suffering.
Sharon Salzberg
Only when we start to distinguish reality from fantasy that we can humbly, with eyes wide open, forge loving and sustainable connections with others.
Sharon Salzberg
The starting place for radical re-imagining of love is mindfulness.
Sharon Salzberg
The more we genuinely care about others the greater our own happiness & inner peace.
Allan Lokos
Observe & accept what ever arises & know that everything is as it needs to be.
Allan Lokos
The combination of realizing our distinctiveness along with our unity is seeing interdependence.
Sharon Salzberg
At times, reality is love’s great challenge. When our old stories and dreams are shattered, our first instinct may be to resist, deny, or cling to the way things were. But if we loosen our grip, often what fills the space is a tender forgiveness and the potential for a new and different kind of love.
Sharon Salzberg
People in the midst of losing their patience are certainly experiencing as aspect of dukkha.
Allan Lokos
Mindfulness has to do with waking up and living in harmony with oneself and with the world. It is examining who we are, constantly questioning our views of the world and our place in it, while cultivating appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive. It is the direct opposite of taking life for granted. It is empowering as well, because paying attention in this way opens channels to deep reservoirs of creativity, intelligence, imagination, clarity, determination, choice, and wisdom within us.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
The skills available to us through mindfulness make it possible to bring love to our connections with others.
Sharon Salzberg
To be mindful entails examining the path we are traveling & making choices that alleviate suffering & bring happiness to ourselves & those around us.
Allan Lokos
The heart contracts when our bodies are overcome by shame.
Sharon Salzberg
The embodiment of kindness is often made difficult by our long ingrained patternsof fear & jealousy.
Sharon Salzberg
We are the Masters of each moment.
davidji
When we relate to ourselves with loving kindness, perfectionism naturally drops away.
Sharon Salzberg
The key to cultivating confidence in ourselves is understanding our right to make the truth our own.
Sharon Salzberg
The big realization when we go beyond the ego is simply seeing that we've always been ok.
Loch Kelly
There is no inner peace found in taking care of me and mine. It is present in attending to the needs of we and ours.
John Bruna
Even as we live with the knowledge that each day might be our last, we don’t want to believe it.
Sharon Salzberg
Distraction wastes our energy, concentration restores it.
Sharon Salzberg
Although much of the work we do in committed relationships we do with our partners, sometimes it’s necessary to start with ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
The practice of lovingkindness can uplift us & relieve sorrow & unhappiness.
Allan Lokos
It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn't depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn't depend on how long you've held on to the old view. When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn't matter whether its been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades. The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see the things you couldn't see before.Its never too late to take a moment to look.
Sharon Salzberg
Once we are honest about our feelings, we can invite ourselves to consider alternative modes of viewing our pain and can see that releasing our grip on anger and resentment can actually be an act of self-compassion.
Sharon Salzberg
Our senses are often the gateway to our stories.
Sharon Salzberg
The only thing that separates the person you are from the person you want to be are the actions you take.
John Bruna
We train the mind so that we can enjoy greater peace, happiness, wisdom & equanimity.
Allan Lokos
The unconscious mind is a vast repository of experiences and associations that sorts things out much faster than the slow-moving conscious mind.
Sharon Salzberg
The challenge for each of us is to find out who we are and to live our way into our own calling.we do this by paying close attention to all aspects of life as they unfold in the present moment.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Patience is an ever present alternative to the mind's endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly, is anger. It's the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it. This doesn't mean you can't hurry when you have to. It is possible even to hurry patiently, mindfully, moving fast because you have chosen to.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Often in close relationships, the subject being discussed is not the subject at all.
Sharon Salzberg
Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you're doing.
Sharon Salzberg
Patience is an action and a skill to be cultivated. It actually solves more problems that most other actions.
John Bruna