Meditation Quotes

498 Sourced quotes

One grasps incomparably more things in boredom than by labor, effort being the mortal enemy of meditation.

"War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

The you that goes in one side of the meditation experience is not the same you that comes out the other side.

Henepola Gunaratana

"Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on
Nothing but Meditation?

Anne Bradstreet

Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm. It is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spite of its highness or nobility, it could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature's grace.

Clean hearts and healthful food, exercise, early sleep and fresh air, wholesome recreation and meditation combined with optimism that comes from fighting for the right and knowing you'll eventually win for keeps - this is the tonic every true Christian patriot needs and deserves.

Ezra Taft Benson

Live morality before you talk of it. Practise meditation before you preach it. Taste goodness before you recommend it. Gain bliss before you offer it to others.

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Meditation is a half-way house between thinking and contemplating.

Evelyn Underhill

Meditation is a way of developing clarity, which allows us to see the precision of daily life situations as well as our thought process so that we can relate with both of them fully and completely.

Chögyam Trungpa

Meditation is making research into yourself, and into the subtler fields of activity. Day after day we culture our minds with the deep silence of our own Being. This is not the silence of a stone, but creative silence. We have to find it for ourselves. We decrease activity until silence becomes creative, and we sit in creative silence and close the gates of perception for insight into the content of life.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration.

If there is no meditation, then you are like a blind man in a world of great beauty, light and colour.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Every walk we take offers subjects for profound meditation,—every pebble that attracts our notice, matter for serious reflection; and contemplating the incessant dissolution and renovation which are taking place around us in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature, we are struck by the force and beauty of the exclamation of the poet—
"My heart is awed within me, when I think
Of the great miracle which still goes on
In silence round me—the perpetual work
Of Thy Creation, finished, yet renewed
For ever!"

All seasoned players know, or at least have felt, that when you are playing your best, you are much the same as in a state of meditation. You are free of tension and chatter. You are concentrating on one thing. It is the ideal condition for good golf.

Philosophy, being the product of lengthy meditation and an entire life, ought not and cannot be presented to the people who are always at the beginning of life.

Antoine de Rivarol

Metaphysical aspects of star gazing — its potential as a vehicle for therapeutic relaxation, meditation, and spiritual contact with the awesome creative power manifests in all of nature but is pinnacled in the stars.

When one learns a different way of dealing with the situation, one no longer has to have a purpose. One is not on the way to somewhere. Or rather, one is on the way and one is also at the destination at the same time. That is really what meditation is for.

Chögyam Trungpa

The purpose of meditation is to stop thinking for a time, wait for the fog of thought to thin, and glimpse the spirit within.

To see a priest making his meditation before Mass does more for an altar boy's vocation than a thousand pieces of inspirational literature.

Fulton J. Sheen

See here, how fresh is the air, there is the Ganga, and the Sadhus (holy men) are practising meditation, and holding lofty talks! While the moment you will go to Calcutta, you will be thinking of nasty stuff.

Swami Vivekananda

To think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.

The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly... You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is not supposed to be the fabrication or the reinforcement of some particular state, but simply the cultivation of the awareness of whatever is arising in the mind.

Thrangu Rinpoche

A garment that is double dyed, dipped again and again, will retain the color a great while; so a truth which is the subject of meditation.

When I was going into one of my first meditation retreats, I asked my father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, for some advice. He said, "How you act when you're alone affects the rest of your life." Even in solitude, the ruler engages in virtue.