Stephen Levine (author) - Mind Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

View all Stephen Levine Quotes
Gratitude is the state of mind of thankfulness. As it is cultivated, we experience an increase in our "sympathetic joy," our happiness at another's happiness. Just as in the cultivation of compassion, we may feel the pain of others, so we may begin to feel their joy as well. And it doesn't stop there.

Stephen Levine
Much thought has at its root a dissatisfaction with what is. Wanting is the urge for the next moment to contain what this moment does not. When there is wanting in the mind, that moment feels incomplete. Wanting is seeing elsewhere. Completeness is being right here.

Stephen Levine
Our life is composed of events and states of mind. How ewe appraise our life from our deathbed will be predicated not only on what came to us in life but how we lived with it. It will not be simply illness or health, riches or poverty, good luck or bad, which ultimately define whether we believe we have had a good life or not, but the quality of our relationship to these situations: the attitudes of our states of mind.

Stephen Levine
In Chinese, the word for heart and mind is the same — Hsin. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear they are of one substance, of one essence.

Stephen Levine
There is a delicate balance that we need to honor as we try to find meaning in any event or state of mind: Many people confuse finding meaning with finding a reason, putting our finger on something or someone for blame.

Stephen Levine
When we turn to our innate wisdom for the harmony of mind and gut, we heal the entrance to the heart as it seeks to beat in rhythm with the world.

Stephen Levine
The demons aren't the noise. They are our aversion to the noise...when you can accept discomfort, doing so allows a balance of mind. That surrender, that letting go of wanting anything to be other than it is right in the moment, is what frees us from hell.

Stephen Levine
Buddha nature, is like the sun which is always shining, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought and longing and fear; the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of I am.

Stephen Levine
Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.

Stephen Levine