Meditation Quotes

498 Sourced quotes

There are no impediments to meditation. The very thought of such obstacles is the greatest impediment.

Ramana Maharshi

The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.

Give yourself to prayer, to reading and meditation on divine truths: strive to penetrate to the bottom of them and never be content with a superficial knowledge.

When a soul has advanced so far on the spiritual road as to be lost to all the natural methods of communing with God; when it seeks Him no longer by meditation, images, impressions, nor by any other created ways, or representations of sense, but only by rising above them all, in the joyful communion with Him by faith and love, then it may be said to have found God of a truth, because it has truly lost itself as to all that is not God, and also as to its own self.

John of the Cross

Some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.

William Wordsworth

As meditation deepens, compulsions, cravings and fits of emotion begin to lose their power to dictate our behavior. We see clearly that choices are possible; we can say yes or we can say no. It is profoundly liberating.

Eknath Easwaran

In deep meditation the flow of concentration is continuous like the flow of oil.

Om chanting and meditation is all about getting connected with our true nature.

You grow your best thoughts in silence, solitude, and meditation. When you relax and think deeply, you are giving your inmost powers their best opportunity to disclose themselves.

Grenville Kleiser

There is the growth of applied science, the increased interest in the control and reconstruction of nature, accompanied by a decline in the practice of meditation or the vocation of the intellectual life.

Ralph Barton Perry

Perhaps the most important thing one can discover through the practice of meditation is that the "self"—the conventional sense of being a subject, a thinker, an experiencer living inside one's head—is an illusion.

The expectations you bring to meditation practice are often the greatest obstacles you will encounter.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Philosophy resembles poetry in being an art for enforcing meditation, for driving the mind inwards until it sinks into its Object.

Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own inner workings but also of what's happening around us in the here & now.

Sharon Salzberg

Thought ceases in meditation; even the mind's elements are quite quiet. Blood circulation stops. His breath stops, but he is not dead.

Swami Vivekananda

The point of Buddhist meditation is not to stop thinking, for … cultivation of insight clearly requires intelligent use of thought and discrimination. What needs to be stopped is conceptualisation that is compulsive, mechanical and unintelligent, that is, activity that is always fatiguing, usually pointless, and at times seriously harmful.

I never made more effort than I did when practicing under U Pandita. But most of this effort arose from the very illusion of bondage to the self that I was seeking to overcome. The model of this practice is that one must climb the mountain so that freedom can be found at the top. But the self is already an illusion, and that truth can be glimpsed directly, at the mountain's base or anywhere else along the path. One can then return to this insight, again and again, as one's sole method of meditation—thereby arriving at the goal in each moment of actual practice.

The fruit of meditation is not the absence of thoughts, but the fact that thoughts cease to harm us. Once enemies, they become friends.

Bokar Tulku Rinpoche

Use your radio, but know how to distrust it—and do not let a day go by without reading and meditation if you want to save your soul, that soul which is yours and yours alone.

Georges Duhamel

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

Eventually, meditation will make our mind calm, clear, and as concentrated as a laser which we can focus at will. This capacity of one-pointed attention is the essence of genius. When we have this mastery over attention in everything we do, we have a genius for life.

Eknath Easwaran

The execution of any thing considerable implies in the first place previous persevering meditation.

No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread.

M. F. K. Fisher

The artist and the poet have the facility for mistaking pure languor for meditative peace and strength. True meditation "rests" in swiftness.

Vilhelm Ekelund

From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment.