Quotes by Meditation Teachers - Page 4

Our work is not to become a better person, but to become present to the perfection we already are.
Allan Lokos
You fill a bucket drop by drop. You clear your mind thought by thought. You heal yourself moment by moment. Today I make one drop, clear one thought, and get present to one moment. And then I do it again.
Lisa Wimberger
Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else’s success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.
Sharon Salzberg
The heart is a generous muscle.
Sharon Salzberg
We all have limitations. They are worth befriending. They teach us a lot. They can show us what we most need to pay attention to and honor. They become our cutting edge for learning and growing and gentling ourselves into the present moment as it is.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
...but we're not being educated in how to be, only in how to accomplish. So it's all about acquisition, about getting stuff we don't have...As soon as you realize it's a thought pattern, you can write yourself a restraining order.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
We’re in charge of our own forgiveness, and the process takes time, patience, and intention.
Sharon Salzberg
Inner Peace can be seen as the ultimate benefit of practicing patience.
Allan Lokos
No one looks or feels attractive when angry.
Allan Lokos
We all have issues & we have usually come by them honestly.
Allan Lokos
With attachment all that seems to exist is just me & that object I desire.
Sharon Salzberg
From the pool of awakenings which includes creativity, strength, generosity, loving-kindness and transformation, I selected seven awakenings to immerse myself in each day: consciousness, compassion, forgiveness, expansion, abundance, healing, and balance. I believe that if we can live a life toward mastery of any seven principles in the pool of awakenings, then our lives will flourish and those we hold dear in our lives will experience greater fulfillment. Which seven do you choose?
davidji
First, people were not thinking about what they were doing 47 per cent of the time. Second, people were unhappier when their minds were wandering than they were not. And third, what people were thinking was a better predictor of their happiness than what they were doing.
David Michie
Causing harm is never just a one-way street.
Sharon Salzberg
Mindfulness allows us to shift the angle on our story and to remember that we have the capacity to learn and change in ways that are productive, not self-defeating.
Sharon Salzberg
Meditation is a cyclical process that defies analysis, but demands acceptance.
Sharon Salzberg
The virtues of free enterprise can become distorted by greed & delusion.
Allan Lokos
Praise & esteem can feel good, which is fine, but don't look to them for inner peace & lasting happiness.
Allan Lokos
When you can quiet the fluctuations of your mind and drift into stillness & silence, you can finally hear the whispers of your heart… the whispers of god.
davidji
There is so much we just can't see or know right now, including precisely how our actions will ripple out.
Sharon Salzberg
In those moments when we realize how much we cannot control, we can learn to let go.
Sharon Salzberg
Life must be lived forward but only makes sense by looking backward. Only in retrospect do the pieces of the puzzle connect, revealing an intelligently orchestrated evolution. Our journey through life is in a way like walking blindfolded.
Dorit Brauer
So often we operate from ideas of love that don’t fit our reality.
Sharon Salzberg
Letting go of the belief that we’re powerless to help relieve our own suffering enhances our ability not only to heal but also to genuinely love and receive the love of others.
Sharon Salzberg
The simple act of being completely attentive & present to another person is an act of love, and it fosters unshakeable well-being.
Sharon Salzberg
You honor yourself by acting with dignity and composure.
Allan Lokos
To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking. It's akin to letting your palm open to unhand something you have been holding on to.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success.
Sharon Salzberg
The costs of keeping secrets include our growing isolation due to fear of detection and the ways we shut down inside to avoid feeling the effects of our behavior. We can never afford to be truly seen and known—even by ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
Compassion is a fundamental principle of meditation. Meditation is not a narcissistic, self-interested path. It provides the foundation for love, integrity, compassion, respect and sensitivity (Feldman, 1998, p.2).
Christina Feldman
Respecting differences while gaining insight into our essential connected-ness, we can free ourselves from the impulse to rigidly categorize the world in terms of narrow boundaries and labels.
Sharon Salzberg
When we understand the true nature of mind, we start to see these thoughts merely as thoughts instead of engaging with them. They arise, abide, and pass. They have no substance and certainly no power unless we git it to them.
David Michie
Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it.
Sharon Salzberg
The breath is the first tool for opening the space between the story you tell yourself about love.
Sharon Salzberg
These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship the heart may not leap up so easily.
Sharon Salzberg
When we do our best to treat others with kindness, it’s often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
Through meditation we come to know that we are dying & being reborn in every moment.
Sharon Salzberg
Intellectually, we may appreciate that loving ourselves would give us a firm foundation but for most of us this is a leap of logic, not a leap of the heart.
Sharon Salzberg
Setting the intention to practice kindness toward one’s partner or family members or friends does not preclude getting angry or upset.
Sharon Salzberg
The good news is that opportunities for love enter our lives unpredictably, whether or not we’ve perfected self-compassion or befriended our inner critic.
Sharon Salzberg
Learning to treat ourselves lovingly may at first feel like a dangerous experiment.
Sharon Salzberg
You actions are your only true belongings.
Allan Lokos
Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all. What is happening? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?
Jon Kabat-Zinn
While meditating we are simply seeing what the mind has been doing all along.
Allan Lokos
To forgive does not mean to condone.
Allan Lokos
When the momentum of mindfulness is well developed, it works like a boomerang; even if we want to distract ourselves, the mind naturally rebounds to a state of awareness.
Joseph Goldstein
It takes a special courage to challenge the rigid confines of our accustomed story. It’s not easy to radically alter our views about where happiness comes from but it’s eminently possible.
Sharon Salzberg
We yearn for there to be meaning to our lives, balanced with a sense of inner peace & joy.
Allan Lokos
We live in a network of inter connectivity.
Sharon Salzberg
The mind thinks thoughts that we don't plan. It's not as if we say, 'At 9:10 I'm going to be filled with self-hatred.
Sharon Salzberg
Just as the light of a candle has the power to dispel darkness in a room, so also the light developed in one man can help dispel darkness in several others.
Sayagyi U Ba Khin
Real love allows for failure and suffering.
Sharon Salzberg
Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
Our greatest happiness comes from the experience of love & compassion.
Allan Lokos
Taking in another’s criticism, even when it’s offered out of love, requires courage.
Sharon Salzberg
Whatever language we use use to describe healthy relationships, when we’re in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind.
Sharon Salzberg
With our close friends, family members, and lovers, we hope to create a special world, one in which we can expect to be treated fairly, with care, tenderness, and compassion.
Sharon Salzberg
Support the type of thinking that leads you to feeling good, peaceful & happy.
Allan Lokos
In reality, love is fluid; it’s a verb, not a noun.
Sharon Salzberg
We resonate with one another’s sorrows because we are interconnected. Being whole and simultaneously part of a larger whole, we can change the world simply by changing ourselves. If I become a center of love and kindness in this moment, then in a perhaps small but hardly insignificant way, the world now has a nucleus of love and kindness it lacked the moment before. This benefits me and it benefits others.
Jon Kabat-Zinn