Meditation Quotes

498 Sourced quotes

Happiness is always possible - the only thing that really holds you back is your mind. You have probably already noticed that the happiest times in your life are when you are not thinking. It's a wonderful thing to stand outside your ego, to surrender to the flow, and to participate fully in a hobby, in nature, in meditation, in prayer, in art, in dance, in sport, and in the moment.

Robert Holden (author)

All of the previously described techniques can be practiced with your eyes open and closed. Most people find that it is easier initially to practice meditation with their eyes closed.

If you set out to meditate, it will not be meditation. If you set out to be good, goodness will never flower.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The man of meditation is the man who wastes no time, scatters no energy, misses no opportunity.

To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea-voyage is full of subjects for meditation; but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes.

Washington Irving

We mustn't reserve communing with God just for morning and evening prayers, or for weekly worship service, or for when we feel burdened. The goal is to realize that every moment of our lives is a meditation. Allow yourself to marvel at the wonder of God's work all around us. Throughout your day, let the sun, a tree, a piece of fruit remind you that everything you could ever want has been provided and can be found right here on earth.

Susan L. Taylor

There is no end to the petals of the inner rose. Continue to unfold set after set of petals until you have completed your meditation session.

Training our mind through meditation does not mean forcibly subjugating it or beating it into shape.

Sharon Salzberg

Seek in reading and thou shalt find in meditation; knock in prayer and it shall be opened in contemplation.

John of the Cross

In each meditation session, we gather knowledge about the mind through observation, questioning, and testing. We do this over and over, until we gradually develop a meaningful understanding of our own mind.

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Meditation is realizing and expanding your inner beauty in every direction.

I am Shiva-this is the great meditation of the yogis in the Himalayas...Hea ven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India in the ninth century B.C. All the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other.

Joseph Campbell

By work alone, men may get to where Buddha got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer. Buddha was a working Jnani, Christ was a Bhakta, but the same goal was reached by both of them. Good motives, sincerity, and infinite love can conquer the world. One single soul possessed of these virtues can destroy the dark designs of millions of hypocrites and brutes.

Swami Vivekananda

Take another look at your life. Give thanks. Accept your circumstances. Give thanks. Count your blessings. Give thanks. Show up for each day's meditation. Be willing to give the basic tools a fair chance. They can help you find your way.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The simplicity of meditation means just experiencing the ape instinct of ego.

Chögyam Trungpa

It is only by mature meditation on the possibilities and probabilities of future events — that we can elude the tortuous troubles of the tomorrows.

Baltasar Gracián

Regular meditation not only restores our inner harmony and vital energy, but provides us with an actual experience of the peace we seek.

In practicing meditation, we're not trying to live up to some kind of ideal -- quite the opposite. We're just being with our experience, whatever it is.

The gospel we preach must not be just something we hear from men or read from books or even conceived through our meditation. Unless it is delivered to us by God, it can serve no spiritual utility.

Any scientific problem must be attacked by research into detail; the natural scientist did not win his victories until he left meditation on the great riddles of the world and began a careful study of special problems; our knowledge — of more general associations and of far-reaching laws — has grown out of the results of such research.

Hans von Euler-Chelpin

In meditation we research the field without time and space and activity, and yet produce a useful effect while conducting the research.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Concentration is the creation of the instrument; meditation is the right use of it; contemplation transcends it.

Christmas Humphreys

Alas! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Immeasurably above all the delights of sense is the serene rapture of meditation, the calm ecstasy of pure thought, sounding the depths of its own consciousness, and ruling all else which is subject to man, in the heaven above and the earth beneath, with the sovereign mastery of mind.