Quotes by Meditation Teachers - Page 8

Forgiveness is a process, an admittedly difficult one that often can feel like a rigorous spiritual practice.
Sharon Salzberg
Keeping secrets is a consequential act for all involved.
Sharon Salzberg
To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love.
Sharon Salzberg
We often get caught up in our own reactions and forget the vulnerability of the person in front of us.
Sharon Salzberg
Love is a living capacity within us that is always present, even when we don’t sense it.
Sharon Salzberg
You don't have to love yourself unconditionally before you can give or receive real love.
Sharon Salzberg
I believe that there is only one kind of love—real love—trying to come alive in us despite our limiting assumptions, the distortions of our culture, and the habits of fear, self-condemnation, and isolation that we tend to acquire just by living a life.
Sharon Salzberg
The venerable teachers, philosophers & spiritual practitioners throughout history have concluded that the greatest happiness we can experience comes from the development of an open, loving heart.
Allan Lokos
Let the breath lead the way.
Sharon Salzberg
To sense which gifts to accept & which to leave behind is our path to discovering freedom.
Sharon Salzberg
One of the best ways to support the development of patience is to cultivate happiness with yourself.
Allan Lokos
Seeking happiness is not the problem. The problem is that we often do not know where and how to find genuine happiness and so make the mistakes that cause suffering for ourselves & others.
Sharon Salzberg
It's our version of "me" that causes us the most stress and heartache. Which is why it comes as a relief to discover that this version is as transient as a cloud in the sky. Focus on the cloud and the result is uncertain. Focus on the sky and we discover clarity.
David Michie
One who is patient glows with an inner radiance.
Allan Lokos
Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Being a senior doesn't automatically make one wise but the wise & foolish alike have things to teach us.
Allan Lokos
Doing the next "right thing" will always bring more genuine happiness than simply doing the next fun thing.
John Bruna
Meditation is a way of being, not a technique. Meditation is not about trying to get anywhere else. It is about allowing yourself to be exactly where you are and as you are, and the world to be exactly as it is in this moment, as well.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Sometimes people in abusive situations think they’re responsible for the other person’s happiness or that they’re going to fix them and make them feel better. The practice of equanimity teaches that it’s not all up to you to make someone else happy.
Sharon Salzberg
A modern definition of equanimity: cool. This refers to one whose mind remains stable & calm in all situations.
Allan Lokos
The more we practice mindfulness, the more alert we become to the cost of keeping secrets.
Sharon Salzberg
The tremendous danger is that this belief - that genuine happiness comes only from pleasant feelings - becomes a strong motivation to stay closed to anything unpleasant. But by staying closed to all unpleasantness, we also stay closed to our own wellspring of compassion.
Joseph Goldstein
It's tough to have an authentic relationship with awe in the age of awesome, a word that has become so overused as to be drained of its meaning.
Sharon Salzberg
Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us—and our beloveds—healthier.
Sharon Salzberg
There is no illness that is not exacerbated by stress.
Allan Lokos
YOU HAVE TO BE STRONG ENOUGH TO BE WEAKAllow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness, riding the waves of “up” and “down,” “good” and “bad,” “weak” and “strong,” until you see that they are all inadequate to fully describe your experience. Be with the experience itself. Trust in your deepest strength of all: to be present, to be wakeful.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Feelings of apathy as they relate to our relationships often stem from insufficiently paying attention to those around us.
Sharon Salzberg
You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
When we're being mindful, we're paying attention to the present moment, deliberately and non-judgementally. When we're meditating, we're being mindful of a specific object, such as the sensation of the breath at the tip of our nostrils, for a sustained period of time.
David Michie
Forgiveness that is insincere, forced or premature can be more psychologically damaging than authentic bitterness & rage.
Sharon Salzberg
Without equanimity, we might give love to others only in an effort to bridge the inevitable and healthy space that always exists between two people.
Sharon Salzberg
Laughing at your pettiness probably works better than scolding yourself for it.
Sharon Salzberg
There are an incalculable—even infinite—number of situations in which we can practice forgiveness. Expecting it to be a singular action—motivated by the sheer imperative to move on and forget—can be more damaging than the original feelings of anger. Accepting forgiveness as pluralistic and as an ongoing, individualized process opens us up to realize the role that our own needs play in conflict resolution.
Sharon Salzberg
As human beings, we’re capable of greatness of spirit, an ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a vast sense of connection to all of life.
Sharon Salzberg
When we contemplate the miracle of embodied life, we begin to partner with our bodies in a kinder way.
Sharon Salzberg
Because the development of inner calm & energy happens completely within & isn’t dependent on another person or a particular situation, we begin to feel a resourcefulness and independence that is quite beautiful—and a huge relief.
Sharon Salzberg
We can discover the capacity of the mind to be aware, to love, to begin again
Sharon Salzberg
Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
After all, if you really aren't trying to get anywhere else in this moment, patience takes care of itself.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
We have to know ourselves to know where we end and another person begins, and we have to develop the skills to navigate the space between us. Or else we will seek wholeness through false means that honor neither us nor those we love.
Sharon Salzberg
We’re capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world.
Sharon Salzberg
As much as possible, it is useful to think of all other beings as being just like me. Every living being strives for happiness. Every being wants to avoid all forms of suffering. They are not just objects or things to be used for our benefit. You know, Mahatma Gandhi once said: 'The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
David Michie
,,, let go of the real source of our unhappiness: our own self-obsession. Stress, loneliness, pessimism, financial worries, and unhappy relationships all have one thing in common: they're all about "me".
David Michie
To imagine the way we think is the singular causative agent of all we go through is to practice cruelty toward ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
If we harm someone else, we’re inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being—someone who wants to be happy, just as we do.
Sharon Salzberg
Patience from a Buddhist perspective is not a "wait and see" attitude, but rather one of "just be there"... Patience can also be based on not expecting anything.Think of patience as an act of being open to whatever comes your way. When you begin to solidify expectations, you get frustrated because they are not met in the way you had hoped... With no set idea of how something is supposed to be, it is hard to get stuck on things not happening in the time frame you desired. Instead, you are just being there, open to the possibilities of your life.
Lodro Rinzler
Smiling at someone can have significant health consequences.
Sharon Salzberg
Like depression, loneliness arises from unhappiness creating thoughts feeding into the insula, deepening the negative spiral of thoughts and feelings.
David Michie
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection
Sharon Salzberg
So what is a good meditator? A good meditator meditates.
Allan Lokos
When we approach the journey acknowledging what we do not know and what we can’t control, we maintain our energy for the quest.
Sharon Salzberg
One foundation of loving relationships is curiosity, keeping open to the idea that we have much to learn even about those we have been close to for decades.
Sharon Salzberg
Loving-kindness challenges those states that tend to arise when we think of ourselves as isolated from everyone else—fear, a sense of deficiency, alienation, loneliness.
Sharon Salzberg
Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes use of thinking, honoring its value and its power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our thinking, helping us to see and know our thoughts as thoughts rather than getting caught up in them in reality.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
If we look at the force of anger, we can, in fact, discover many positive aspects in it. Anger is not a passive, complacent state. It has incredible energy. Anger can impel us to let go of ways we may be inappropriately defined by the needs of others; it can teach us to say no. In this way it also serves our integrity, because anger can motivate us to turn from the demands of the outer world to the nascent voice of our inner world. It is a way to set boundaries and to challenge injustice at every level. Anger will not take things for granted or simply accept them mindlessly.Anger also has the ability to cut through surface appearances; it does not just stay on a superficial level. It is very critical; it is very demanding. Anger has the power to pierce through the obvious to things that are more hidden. This is why anger may be transmuted to wisdom. By nature, anger has characteristics in common with wisdom.Nevertheless, the unskillful aspects of anger are immense, and they far outweigh the positive aspects.
Sharon Salzberg
When we bring deep awareness to whatever's bothering us, the same things might be happening, but we are able to relate to them differently.
Sharon Salzberg
As we explore new ways of thinking, we need to be willing to investigate, experiment, take some risks with our attention, and stretch.
Sharon Salzberg
So often, fear keeps us from being able to say yes to love—perhaps our greatest challenge as human beings.
Sharon Salzberg
We can free ourselves from the old stories that have reduced us & allow real love for ourselves to blossom.
Sharon Salzberg
When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring.
Sharon Salzberg