Meditation Quotes

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Whatever forms of meditation you practice, the most important point is to apply mindfulness continuously, and make a sustained effort. It is unrealistic to expect results from meditation within a short period of time. What is required is continuous sustained effort.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

An idea is a meteor; at the moment of success, the accumulated meditations which have preceded it open a little, and a spark flashes forth from it....

Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius, if one mark them well, are but Essays—that is dispersed meditations.

I'm sorry for people who make a great to-do about the transitory nature of things and get lost in meditations of earthly nothingness. Surely we are here precisely so as to turn what passes into something that endures; but this is possible only if you can appreciate both.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Truth is the offspring of silence and unbroken meditation.

To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work … coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth.

Swami Vivekananda

In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside. As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind's compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing.

There are four great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ, the exile of Krishna in Brindaban and the colloquy on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindaban created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanized Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity.

I need the spiritual revival that comes from spending quiet time alone with Jesus in prayer and in thoughtful meditation on His Word.

Anne Graham Lotz

Outlaw consciousness is born the moment I drop out, stop the world, cease being an actor identified with the mythic roles I have been playing in society. Change begins when I do nothing except observe. The wisdom of the railroad crossing: Stop. Look. Listen. Meditation is the healthy form of voyeurism.

The inner experience of meditation can be had without any kind of forced discipline. The outer trappings - how one sits, breathes, dresses, and so forth - are irrelevant.

Even the special appurtenances of Christian monasticism—silence, meditation, chanting, distinctive costumes, beads, incense, kneeling, hands raised in prayer—all too likely go back to the Pythagoreans and beyond them to their influences, the Indian Buddhists and their predecessors.

Two qualities are at the root of all meditation development: right effort and right aim—arousing effort to aim the mind toward the object.

Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God.

Our life is an endless journey; it is like a broad highway that extends infinitely into the distance. The practice of meditation provides a vehicle to travel on that road. Our journey consists of constant ups and downs...

Chögyam Trungpa

Meditation does not mean just sitting quietly for five or ten minutes. It requires conscious effort. The mind has to be made calm and quiet; at the same time, it has to be vigilant so as not to allow any distracting thoughts or desires to enter.

In True Meditation, we're in the body as a means to transcend it. It is paradoxical that the greatest doorway to the transcendence of form is through form itself.

Before practicing meditation, we see that mountains are mountains. When we start to practice, we see that mountains are no longer mountains. After practicing a while, we see that mountains are again mountains. Now the mountains are very free. Our mind is still with the mountains, but it is no longer bound to anything.

I feel it is through prayer, meditation, and dedicated service that world peace can take place. Each individual has to try to make others happy, for it is only through happiness that we can have peace.

Mindfulness is Buddha's word for meditation. By mindfulness he means: you should always remain alert, watchful. You should always remain present. Not a single thing should be done in a sort of sleepy state of mind. You should not move like a somnambulist, you should move with a sharp consciousness.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity.

It is not necessary that we should discover new ideas in our meditation. It is sufficient, and far more important, if the Word, as we read and understand it, penetrates and dwells within us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In mindfulness one is not only restful and happy, but alert and awake. Meditation is not evasion; it is a serene encounter with reality.