Meditation Quotes

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Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.

Peace can be reached through meditation on the knowledge which dreams give. Peace can also be reached through concentration upon that which is dearest to the heart.

The mark of the Christian is the willingness to look for the Divine in the flesh of a babe in a crib, the continuing Christ under the appearance of bread on an altar, and a meditation and a prayer on a string of beads

Fulton J. Sheen

One does not practice meditation to become a great meditator. We meditate to wake up and live, to become skilled at the art of living.

Elizabeth Lesser

Meditation means this opening out of the soul to the Divine and letting the Divine shine in without obstruction from the personal self. Therefore it means renunciation. It means throwing away everything that one has, and waiting empty for the light to come in.

Solitude is Wisdom's school. Attend then the lessons of your own soul; become a pupil of the wise God within you, for by his tuitions alone shall you grow into the knowledge and stature of the deities. The seraphs descend from heaven, in the solitudes of meditation, in the stillness of prayer.

Amos Bronson Alcott

The sun, that brave man,
Comes through boughs that lie in wait,
That brave man. Green and gloomy eyes
In dark forms of the grass
Run away. The good stars,
Pale helms and spiky spurs,
Run away. Fears of my bed,
Fears of life and fears of death,
Run away. That brave man comes up
From below and walks without meditation,
That brave man.

Wallace Stevens

What's encouraging about meditation is that, even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance.

Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far, as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven, that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, anywhere, and any one of my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere.

Walk in Christ's light daily through fidelity to personal and liturgical prayer, nourished by meditation on the inspired word of God.. Make the daily celebration of the Eucharist the center of your life.

Pope Benedict XVI

Breathing meditation can quiet the mind, open the body, and develop a great power of concentration.

Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.

At the beginning of every winter people are careful to install storm windows. These extra panes of glass protect their houses against the bitter winds. We do something very similar to protect our minds through the practice of meditation.

Eknath Easwaran

Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries — stand that man upon his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.... Meditation and water are wedded forever.

Herman Melville

The more intense the nature of a man, the more readily will he find meditation, and the more successfully will he practice it.

Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness.

Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius.

Meditation is to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world.

Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.

Samyama, which is the application of concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and superconscious trance (samadhi) in lightning succession, is practiced with the intent to gain specific knowledge of the object of concentration. The object is seen from all sides, in all its aspects, with full depth and breadth. As such, this complete absorption of the mind using the process of samyama brings complete and specific knowledge of the object. This power of knowing is vibhuti.

To develop our real selves, we need time alone for thought and meditation. To be always giving out and never pumping in, the well runs dry.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Why is man man? As long as we have had minds to think with, stars to ponder upon, dreams to disturb us, curiosity to inspire us, hours free for meditation, words to place our thoughts in order, the question like a restless ghost has prowled the cellars of our consciousness.

What Is Meditation? It is not musing, not daydreaming; but as ye find you bodies made up of the physical, mental and spiritual, it is the attuning of the mental body and the physical body to its spiritual source.

With meditation I found a ledge above the waterfall of my thoughts.

It's still possible to savor the remarkable foods that millennia of human ingenuity have teased from milk. A sip of milk itself or a scoop of ice cream can be a Proustian draft of youth's innocence and energy and possibility, while a morsel of fine cheese is a rich meditation on maturity, the fulfillment of possibility, the way of all flesh.