The Wow of Now: 550+ Thoughts & Teachings on Being Present
59Introduction_______________________________________
Sometimes I find also that reading just a line of poetry, a very calm saying, just a line, opens you. Inspires you. And then just enjoy that. Or walk in a favorite park and enjoy a sunrise or a sunset. Find something that opens you, connects you with your Self. – Lama Sogyal Rinpoche
“How are you?” someone once asked Yogi Berra. His Zen-like reply: “You mean now?” When then? We may be hopelessly stuck in the past, we may be full of dread and worry about the future – but we DO all of that emotional wheel-spinning as we DO everything else – in the present.
We have a habit of presenting life with a set of conditions – ifs and whens that must be fulfilled before we will say yes to the gift of our lives. Now is the time for each of us to bloom where we are planted, overriding our tendency to hold back. Now is the time to say yes, to be brave and commit fully to ourselves, because until we do no one else will. Now is the time to be vulnerable, unfolding delicately yet fully into the space in which we find ourselves.
To be fully aware in the moment is an awesome spiritual gift. In the Torah, the expression used for this “radical presence” is hineini – “I am fully present . . . all of me is here.” There is nothing half-hearted about hineini – no “I’ll get back to you” or “Let me check my planner.” It is human consciousness clicking on all cylinders, as it were. And when that happens, all those cylinders become part of the Unified Whole, if only for a holy moment.
But hineini consciousness need not be our goal for those “burning bush” moments of special joy. It can ingrain us with a deeper appreciation for our everyday moments – and for the precious blessing of simply being alive.
There is a forsythia bush at the end of my driveway. It is late Novemberas I write this, and its branches are almost completely bare. This morning, I noticed that there were still a few yellow flowers on the bush. Were they late bloomers? Were they there all along, but lost among all the green leaves? I don’t know, and it probably doesn’t matter – but what matters is that I took a moment to see. And to see, we have to slow down, maybe even stop for a moment, and look.
Every moment has its own revelation – concisely expressed in the Hebrew word for “time” – zeman. Zeman has a second meaning as well – “invitation.” What a profound way to conceive of time: as an invitation. Each moment calls to us, invites us in . . . and becomes a bit of our lives. How we encounter it depends largely on us. Is it a portal or an obstacle? Resisted or embraced? A focal point or a ho-hum tick? We can immeasurably enrich our lives simply by taking the time to engage the moment . . . to notice the seemingly endless chatter of our thoughts a bit more dispassionately . . . to slow our minds down some to the “speed of now.” It’s a balm for the soul.
Poets and priests, sages and mystics from long ago to now concur on the basic existential truth that the present moment is all we ever have – and that we resist or remain relatively oblivious of it to our own detriment. In our hectic, multi-tasking, peace-challenged world, we are often too busy chasing what’s next to appreciate – or even notice – what is. And that begins by slowing ourselves down. As Jueli Gastwirth and Avram Davis, Ph.D. note in Everyday Adventures for the Soul, “Making the time – just an extra pause in most cases – to turn the mundaneness of moments into meaning will add soulful distinction to your days. It’s simply a matter of paying attention, taking an extra breath, and reveling in your life’s momentous opportunities.”
We do not have to wait for the weekend, for the yoga class, or for our next retreat to connect to the deep present. We can do so by tying our shoe, riding an escalator, eating an apple, or brushing our teeth. What matters is how much we pay attention. “A simple walk from one point to another can be a moment of regaining an uncomplicated and more spiritually aligned presence,” Daniel Singer and Marcella Bakur Weiner remind us in The Sacred Portable Now. “All we need is to apply our ability to choose to place our attention on sensation when we walk.”
Paying attention is truly transformational. As our consciousness is awakened, we begin to notice details and textures that we never noticed before. Everyday life becomes clearer, sharper, and more meaningful. We not only learn what it is to “go with the flow,” we discover that we are very much a part of it. “Commune with your heart and be still,” Psalm 4:5 teaches us – and indeed, poets, philosophers, sages and spiritual masters from all centuries and faiths all concur on the value of being mindful. As my teacher Rabbi Rami Shapiro explains, “To commune with your heart is to be present to the thoughts and feelings that arise. Notice them, but don’t engage them. That is what it is to ‘be still.’ Don’t move; don’t run after the thought to investigate it or change it. Simply note it, and let it be.
The rewards of being present are considerable. We may not ever be able to fully master our cacophony of thoughts, but we become more able to not be overwhelmed by them. Not every thought is worth engaging – and that’s a notion that can be wonderfully liberating. The regrets for things past and the worries about the future become much more manageable. As we learn to live more in the moment, we become less afflicted by our fears and worries. The result is a more enjoyable life . . . and a more meaningful one.
Learning to be more attentive and receptive to the present moment, helps us appreciate the gift that is our lives and all that we have been given – including this moment. Such gratitude is like water to our spiritual roots.
Given the benefits of being present , how do we get there? The easy answer is somewhat tautological: we learn how become more mindful by practicing mindfulness. Some say that it’s as easy (or difficult) as watching your breathe – and I don’t just mean in the wintertime when your exhaled breath becomes little puffs of vapor. Actually, we can connect to the moment just about any time we want to and regardless of what we’re doing, but many of us too frequently forego the opportunity. We are just too busy or too worried or too worked up to slow down.
A friend of mine once told me that there are only two times one needs to meditate: when one wants to and when one does not. So I am probably not the only one who needs regular reminding about the value of being present. It certainly has been said before – pithily, profoundly, and often – by a veritable who’s who of teachers, artists, and spiritual seekers. For me, such quotes are delicious spiritual “snack food,” easy to digest and important to keep in mind.
The quotes, passages, and short essays in this book are all things I wish I had said – but am quite grateful to have read. I share them with you in the hope that they will inspire and empower you to live more consciously . . . and honor your soul’s affinity to the ever-present now. The playwright Tom Stoppard once said “If an idea is worth having once, it’s worth having twice.” In that spirit, these bright nuggets of wisdom are well worth engaging, again and again . . . like breathing. In the words of Rabbi Jonathan Slater, “We do not become mindful once and for all. We return over and over to our intention, and we wake up again and again.”
It is now three days later, December first, and uncommonly mild for this time of year in the New York City suburbs. As I walk out of my basement office to take out the garbage, I can feel the morning sun and balmy breeze on my face. It is as if I can feel the breath of the morning itself . . .and it is good, a quiet little moment of joy. And wouldn’t you know it? Those lemon-yellow forsythia flowers are still there.
1. Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world. -- Grateful Dead
2. Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
-- Theodore Roethke
3. It would be very good if we would wake up before we die. -- Hindu Saying
4. This is my number two problem: I am never satisfied with what I have. It goes hand in hand with my number one problem: rushing. Maybe they aren’t so much hand in hand as two hands of the same beast. Maybe they are my hands; I am the beast.
-- Miranda July
5. The Chinese language has no past or future tense.Everything is present.
-- Catherine Feste
6. Our breath is the bridge from our body to our soul.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
7. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. -- Marcel Proust
8. The wonder of the world, the beauty and power, the shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades, these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.
-- Gravestone inscription, Cumberland, England
9. The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
-- Henry Miller
10. We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
-- Thornton Wilder
11. Nothing happens next. This is it.
-- Gahan Wilson
12. In high school, almost 40 years ago, I played Emily in Our Town. For graduation, my father gave me a gold compact on which he had engraved part of Emily’s final speech: “Oh Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?” That compact and its message have comforted and guided me over the years, returning me again and again to the precious gift of the present.
-- Suzi Kindervatter
13. It is the task of the soul to waken the self.
-- Rabbi James Ponet
14. Each person was given two ears and one tongue so that one may listen more than speak.
-- Hasdai Ibn Crescas
15. There is nothing better for you than to rejoice in every deed done in harmony with the moment.
-– Ecclesiastes 3:21
16. Why wait any longer for the world to begin? – -- Bob Dylan
17. It is when you are really living in the present…that you are living spiritually.
-- Brenda Ueland
18. Eating a meal, resolving a conflict, scraping the ice off your windshield some morning in January – all these can be spiritual practice. And if you scrape ice off your husband’s windshield too, you might get a glimpse of nirvana. . . . When you’re mindful, even during hectic times, none of this twenty-four-hour gift gets away from you.
-- Victoria Moran
19. Mindfulness means being really present with a hundred simple daily activities. It’s an openness to the experience of taking a walk, really listening to the birds, feeling the gravel underfoot, hearing the wind through the pines.
-- Greg Anderson
20. I did not go to The Maggid (a legendary Hasidic master) in order to
hear Torah from him, but to see how he unlaces his shoes and laces them.
-- Rabbi Leib
21. In heaven, people will have to account for everything that their eyes saw and that they did not take time to appreciate.
-- The Talmud
22. Attention: that's the core of it. I want to be a person who pays attention. I want to mark the exquisite song of the birds -- I think they are wood thrushes -- that sing morning and evening outside our home. I want to notice the wrinkle of skin on a slightly too-ripe peach. I want to take advantage of what's before me, as though ignoring abundance were tantamount to rejecting it. In a way, that's the philosophy behind the practice of saying brachot; every time we bless a taste or a sight or an experience, we remind ourselves to take notice.
-- Rachel Barenblatt
23. Practicing presence . . . punctures the fantasy that somehow life will begin when the kids’ soccer season is over or when I lose ten pounds or when I get over this cold or even when I take that meditation course and learn how to be more present! Practicing presence is bringing ourselves to the recognition that life is happening right now – and it is inviting us to wake up and notice.
-- Abby Seixas in Finding the Deep River Within
24. I have set the Infinite before me always . . . -- Psalms 16:8
25. So often we walk in mindless detachment from the world around us. We hurry from parking lots to offices without noticing a single thing along the way . . . . We long for reminders of life’s miracles and lose touch with the wonder we pass everyday. We forget that the route to sacred places always leads through the mind and soul. Recognition depends on awareness and vision. The sacred simply waits for us to notice.
-- Carolyn Scott Kortge (The Spirited Walker)
26. If you make a practice of stopping every so often simply to be present to the present – what you see, what you smell, who is with you, how this moment feels physically and emotionally – you are well on your way to
getting the maximum amount of life out of your life.
-- Victoria Moran
27. Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
-- David Bader
28. Yesterday and tomorrow do not exist.
--Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav
29. A rabbi once taught that we can learn from animals how to live totally in the present. They have no worries or anxieties about the future. Whenever we see a bird, dog, cat, squirrel, or butterfly, we can say to ourselves, “Let me learn from this creature to live in the present.” The rabbi was asked, “Isn’t it a bit humiliating to have to learn from an animal or an insect?” His reply: “Perhaps – but isn’t it even more humiliating not to?”
30. In Hebrew, the word for “time” is “zeman.” “Zeman” connotes a second meaning as well – it also means “invitation.” The idea is simple yet quite profound: Time is an invitation. You can experience a month as one day that is repeated thirty times or as thirty days that grow out of each other, each day building on the one that preceded it.
31. See here how everything leads up to this day . . .
-- Robert Hunter
32. Let’s go somewhere fun and not really experience it.
-- caption in a New Yorker cartoon
33. My path is the path of stopping, the path of enjoying the present moment. It is a path where every step brings me back to my true home.
It is a path that leads nowhere. I am on my way home. I arrive at every step.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
34. Between now and now there is only now.
-- Grover Gaunt III
35. What is life if, full of care,We have no time to stand and stare?
-- W.H. Davies
36. Be still and know that I am God.
-- Psalm 46:11
With practice, you can affirm the truth of this sacred instruction:
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know that I.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.
37. All you need is deep within you waiting to unfold and reveal itself. All you have to do is be still and take time to seek for what is within, and you will surely find it.
-- Eileen Caddy
38. When the Holy One, Blessed be He, gave the Torah, no bird chirped nor was the sound of fluttering wings to be heard. Oxen did not bellow, angels did not fly, nor did the Serafim-angels chant “Holy, Holy, Holy.” The sea did not stir. Not a single creature spoke. Rather the entire world was still. Then – and only then – was the sound heard, “Anochi . . . I am the Lord, your God.”
-- Exodus Rabbah 29:9
39. For fast-acting relief, try slowing down. – Lily Tomlin
40. You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. -- Indira Gandhi
41. There is nothing worth more than this day. -- Goethe
42. Tomorrow is not promised, nor is today. So I choose to celebrate every day I’m alive by being present in it. Living in the present means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. -- Oprah Winfrey
43. Every moment is a new beginning; every act your very first. Never regard your action as if it were the second or fourth or hundredth, but always as if it were the very first time you’ve ever done it. -- Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav
44. What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath. -- Thomas Crum
45. More and more I find I want to be living in a Big Here and a Long Now.
-– Brian Eno
46. The Now is endlessly mystical and transforming. When we stop and gaze we are astounded to discover at the edges of our fears the jeweled stitchery from God’s hand, the embroidery of love sewing our days together in all seasons.
-- Robert Merrill Eddy & Kathy Wonson Eddy
47. The present moment is where life can be found, and if you don’t arrive there, you miss your appointment with life. You don’t have to run anymore. Breathing in, we say, “I have arrived.” Breathing out, we say, “I am home.”
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
48. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.
-- Alice Walker
49. To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.
-- Aristotle
50. When asked what time it was, Yogi Berra once replied:“You mean now?”
51. When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and end of spiritual practice.
-- Jack Kornfield
52. And if not now, when?
-- Hillel
53. How much of your life do you spend looking forward to being somewhere else?
-- Mathew Flickstein (Journey to the Center)
54. The essence of our experience is change. Change is incessant. Moment by moment life flows by and it is never the same. Perpetual alternation is the essence of the perceptual universe. A thought springs up in your head and half a second later, it is gone. In comes another one, and that is gone too. A sound strikes your ears, and then silence. Open your eyes and the world pours in , blink and it is gone too. People come into your life and they leave again. Friends go, relatives, die. Your fortunes go up, and they go down. Sometimes you win and just as often you lose. It is incessant: change, change, change.
-- Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English
55. Awakening cannot be reduced to a single experience. It is a process of dissolution, which involves letting go completely of hatred, greed and delusion. You do not awaken to something external, but to your own true nature.
-- Martine Batchelor
56. The more and more you listen, the more and more you will hear. The more you hear, the more and more deeply you will understand.
-- Khyentse Rinpoche
57. When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their souls come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.
-- Hasidic Teaching
58. There are many fine things which you mean to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is yours is the present.
-- Grenville Kleiser
59. Remember: be here now.
-- Ram Dass
60. The longing for light is the longing for consciousness.
-- Carl C. Jung
61. The mystery, the essence of all life is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening.
-- Toni Packer
60. Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you are going to do now and do it.
-- William Durant
61. We collect data, things, people, ideas “profound experiences,” never penetrating any of them … But there are other times. There are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.
-- James Carroll
62. Ultimately, we come to see that we can cradle all of it [our thoughts] in awareness with a light and gentle touch, including the wandering of the mind, with all its obsessions and its struggles . . . We may come to realize that our moments of greatest struggle can be our moments of greatest learning.
-- Mark Williams in The Mindful Way through Depression
63. To be reborn hourly and daily in this life, we need to die – to give of ourselves wholly to the demands of the moment, so that we utterly “disappear.” Thoughts of past, present, or future, of life and death, of this world and the next, are transcended in the superabundance of the now.
-- Philip Kapleau
64. A lot depends on my commitment to listening and my intention to stay coherent with this note. It is only when life is tuned to my note that I can lay life’s mysterious and holy music without tainting it with my own discordance, my own bitterness, resentment, agendas, and fears.
-- Rachel Naomi Remen
65. I have an existential map. It has “You are here” written all over it.
-- Steven Wright
66. You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. -- Evan Esar
64. To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.
-- Chang Tzu
65. We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
-- H.L. Mencken
66. Today isn’t any other day, you know. -
- Lewis Carroll
67. If you miss the here, you are also likely to miss the there. -
-- Jon Kabat-Zinn
68. Be aware that the mystic is none other than each one of us . . . It is your mind, right here, right now.
-- John Daido Loori in The Zen of Creativity
69. Live now. Procrastinate later.
-- Karen Salmansohn
70. There is only one world, the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute – here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle. Which is exactly what it is – a miracle and unrepeatable.
-- Margaret Storm Jameson
71. Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
-- Alan Watts
72. A young man fears that by going too slow he risks missing something. An older man knows that by going too fast he risks missing everything.
-- David Peterson
73. Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
-- Frederick Buechner
74. Time is not a line, but a series of now-points.
-- Taisen Deshimaru
75. All negativity is caused by denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future and not enough presence. Presence is the reality that dissolves the illusion of the past and the future.
-- Eckhart Tolle
76. Pay attention to what? For starters: to what you are feeling, what you are sensing, and what you are thinking; to the sounds around you, the opening bud, the color of the autumn leaf; to the wind, the shrug of a soldier, the taste and texture of your food. This kind of paying attention immerses you in life in a new way.
-- Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers in Creativity in Business
77. We are here to do,And through doing to learn;and through learning to know;and through knowing to experience wonder;and through wonder to attain wisdom;and through wisdom to find simplicity;and through simplicity to give attention;and through attentionto see what needs to be done . . .
-- Ben Hei Hei
78. Let me forget about today until tomorrow.
-- Bob Dylan
79. The “burning bush” was not a miracle. It was a test. God wanted to find out whether or not Moses was paying attention to something for more than a few minutes. When Moses did, God spoke. The trick is to pay attention to what is going on around you long enough to behold the miracle without falling asleep. There is another world, right here within this one, whenever we pay attention.
-- Lawrence Kushner
80. If you drive slower, you’ll get there sooner.
-- Jewish Proverb
81. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.
-- Robert M. Pirsig
82. In order to be utterly happy the only thing necessary is to refrain from comparing this moment with other moments in the past, which I often did not fully enjoy because I was comparing them with other moments of the future.
-- Andre Gide
83. When you drink water, remember its source.Chinese Saying 84.The more conscious your commitment to being here, the deeper your soul will manifest in your being.
-- Gershon Winkler
85. The best dreams begin after your eyes open.
-- Four Seasons hotel ad
86. I was regretting the past and fearing the future. Suddenly God was speaking. “My name is ‘I am.’”I waited God continued.“When you live in the past, with its mistakes and regrets, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not ‘I was.’“When you live in the future, with its problems and fears, it is hard. I am not there. My name is not ‘I will be.’“When you live in this moment, it is not hard. I am here. My name is ‘I Am.’”
-- Helen Mallicoat
87. There is only the moment, and yet the moment is always giving way to the next, so that there is not even Now, there is Nothing. True, true. There is Nothing, if that is the way to understand how much there is.
-- M.C. Richards
88. Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
-- Henry David Thoreau
89. The secret of simple enjoyment is paying attention and cultivating taste. I cannot see the sky if I am looking at my feet or worrying about my job. I cannot feel the warmth of the sun or smell fresh air when I am stuck in a windowless air-conditioned office. I cannot enjoy the natural pleasure of moving my body if I am forever slumped in front of the TV or driving a car. And I will never enjoy anything unless I pay it the courtesy of my attention and seek to widen my world, opening myself to the many satisfactions of body and soul.
-- David Yount
90. When we pay attention, whatever we are doing – whether it be cooking, cleaning, or making love – is transformed . . . We begin to notice details and textures that we never noticed before; everyday life becomes clearer, sharper, and at the same time more spacious.
-- Rick Field
91. As your consciousness is awakened, you access deeper awareness, giving birth to deeper and more meaningful ways of being. With consciousness, what was ordinary becomes extraordinary. What once was limiting and confined, with consciousness becomes open and spacious. What once was judgmental, with consciousness becomes unconditionally liberating. Perceiving an ordinary act in all the dimensions of physical, emotional, spiritual, and hallowed ways of being leads you closer to the destiny you were born to fulfill.
-- Rabbi Shoni Labowitz
92. Without judgment, thoughts are less sticky. You can relax and notice how they float through the clear blue sky of your natural mind . . . Meditation is about making the shift from identifying with the changing clouds to resting in the spacious sky out of which they come and into which they fade away again. The sky is pure Being, the experience of Now . . . In those precious moments of Now, your whole self becomes a big, generous Thank You.
-- Joan Borysenko (Inner Peace for Busy Women)
93. Don’t believe everything you think.
-- Bumper Sticker
94. If you’re at the sink washing the cup, wash the cup. Don’t worry about everything else . . . . we forget to appreciate the simplest moments of the day, the sublime in the ordinary.
-- Julia Roberts
95. When a man’s mind is rooted in wisdom,everything he does is worshipand his actions all melt away.
-- Bhagavad Gita
96. I say unto you: Your every act should be a ceremony. If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion. Life itself will be the religion.
-- Osho
97. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.
-- Pema Chodron
98. A hundred times a day I have to turn down the volume of the static in my mind, take a breath, separate myself from the racing rats, and return to my own skin. The stillness that exists in these moments serve as a constant warp that clarifies and makes cohesive the bright busy weft of everyday life. Without it, there is no form, no pattern to my existence, merely a long run on a treadmill going nowhere.
-- Nevada Barr
99. Spirituality isn’t about ritual, or affirmations, or dogma, or belief, or feelings. Spirituality is about paying attention.
-- Rabbi Rami Shapiro
100. Take time by the forelock. Now or never. You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this.
-- Henry David Thoreau
201.
The moment between before and after is called Truth.
– Katagiri Roshi
202.
Nothing is more valuable to man than presence in silence.
– Menander
203.
Nothing comes in its full state at once. The first step is to be more conscious. The second step is to be still more conscious.
– Peter Ouspensky
204.
The present moment holds infinite riches beyond your wildest dreams but
you will only enjoy them to the extent of your faith and love. The more a soul
loves, the more it longs, the more it hopes, the more it finds. The will of God
is manifest in each moment, an immense ocean which only the heart fathoms
insofar as it overflows with faith, trust and love.
– Jean-Pierre De Caussade
205.
Every moment is enormous, and it is all we have. Our life is
a path of learning to wake up before we die.
– Natalie Goldberg
206.
One twelve-year-old boy, when asked by his father what
he would like for his birthday, said, "Daddy, I want you!" His father
was rarely at home. He was quite wealthy, but he worked all the
time to provide for his family. His son was a bell of mindfulness for him.
The little boy understood that the greatest gift we can offer our loved ones
is our true presence.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
207.
The present moment, like the spotted owl or the sea turtle, has become an
endangered species. Yet more and more I find that dwelling in the present moment,
in the face of everything that would call us out of it, is our highest spiritual discipline.
More boldly, I would say that our very presentness is our salvation; the present
moment, entered into fully, is our gateway to eternal life.
– Philip Simmons
208.
There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no
one way to love, no one way to grow or heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel,
no one thing to know or be known.
– Jon Kabat-Zin
n
209.
We get caught in the belief that this is not quite it.
– Dasarath
210.
To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the following:
Get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?
– David Bader
211.
You could say that presence is actually doing what you’re doing when you’re doing it.
– Abby Seixas
212.
Poet and doctor William Carlos Williams would always carry a notepad that
listed “Things I noticed today that I’ve missed until today.”
213.
No more words. In the name of this place we drink in
with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower.
So the nightbirds will start singing.
– Rumi
214.
Holding onto beliefs limits our experience of life. That doesn’t mean that beliefs
are a problem. It’s the stubborn attitude of having to have things a particular way
that causes the problems. Using your belief system this way creates a situation
in which you choose to be blind instead of being able to see, to be dead rather
than alive, asleep rather than awake.
– Pema Chodron
215.
In Zen meditation, there is no next.
– Zen Proverb
216.
Learning to live in the moment is sort of like getting behind the wheel of a car for the first time, All of a sudden, you’re in charge of where the vehicle will take you. As you become more proficient in living in the moment, you’ll be able to decide, moment to moment, what your experience of life
will be.
-- Richard Carlson
217.
A single moment can retroactively flood an entire life with meaning.
– Victor Frankl
218.
A simple walk from one point to another can be a moment of regaining an uncomplicated and more spiritually aligned presence. All we need is to apply our ability to choose to
place our attention on sensation when we walk,
– Daniel Singer & Marcella Bakur Weiner
219.
When I dance, I dance. When I sleep, I sleep. Yes, and when
I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time, for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness
of this solitude, to myself.
– Montaigne
220.
We are the flow; we are the ebb.
We are the weavers; we are the web.
– Shekinah Mountainwater
221.
We would suggest that meditation, by whatever definition, is basically “getting out of the way.”
– Lazaris
222.
We cannot become truly good in a better, more marvelous, and yet easier way than by the simple use of the means offered us by God: the ready acceptance of all that comes to us at each moment of our lives.
– Jean Pierre de Caussade
223.
Realize that now, in this moment of time, you are creating.
You are creating your next moment. That is what's real.
– Sara Paddison
224.
The stillness and the peace of now enfold you in perfect gentleness.
– A Course in Miracles
225.
Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you
look for it in the present you will never find it.
– Thomas Merton
226.
Our first teacher is our own heart.
– Cheyenne Proverb
227.
Zen pretty much comes down to three things – everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.
– Jane Hirschfield & Bill Moyers
228.
Forever is composed of nows.
– Emily Dickinson
229.
Where are you looking for your life? What makes you feel most alive? What is life to you? Ponder these questions and enjoy them. Now today, moment by moment, realize that each person and event that happens is life for you. Life is not somewhere else. See how fully you can accept the life that presents itself to you know.
– Brenda Shoshanna
230.
Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal time cuts off. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere . . .
the experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or evil, is the function of life.
This is it.
– Joseph Campbell
231.
Each moment, as it is, is complete and full in itself. seeing this, no matter what arises in each moment, we can let it be, Right now, what is your moment? Happiness? Anxiety? Pleasure? Discouragement? Up and down we go, but each moment is exactly what each moment is.
– Charlotte Joko Beck
232.
Once in a while, you get shown the light in the strangest
of places, if you look at it right.
– Grateful Dead
233.
I have never been able to fully empty my mind. But I am quite capable of losing it. I lose it – or “loosen” it – whenever I am riding my horse named Desert Star out among the cotton fields. I “lose it” when I am standing in a hot, hot shower, letting the water sting and stimulate and “sensate” my back. I lose it when I sit with my mother and watch the clouds billow and mushroom and bloom over a Sedona sunset sky. I lose it when I see sunlight hitting a reed tipped by a red-winged blackbird. When I am most aware of the beauty in God’s world is when I lose my mind.
-- Laurie Beth Jones
234.
There are more portals than you can imagine – and not just on
the Internet. The doors are open. The only question is: are you?
In the Bible, Adam falls asleep, but nowhere does the text say that he ever wakes up. To live without a deep awareness of the holiness of this place, this moment, this breath, this opportunity to connect to something beyond the buzz of our own internal noise is indeed a kind of sleepwalking. Every spiritual practice is a wakeup call if you listen to it right.
235.
I think God’s going to come down and pull civilization
over for speeding.
– Steven Wright
236.
The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an
instant and is still.
– Author Unknown
237.
At the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life that you don't understand, you are closer to understanding it all than at any other time.
– Jane Wagner
238.
Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is.
In the very here and now, the practitioner dwells in
stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows how to dwell in mindfulness night and day, “one who knows the better
way to live alone.”
– Bhaddekaratta Sutta
239.
The beauty of life is, while we cannot undo what is done,
we can see it, understand it, learn from it and change.
So that every new moment is spent not in regret, guilt,
fear or anger, but in wisdom, understanding and love.
– Jennifer Edwards
240.
If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
241.
The mind craves the false security of answers, authorities, belief systems, techniques and methods. But true freedom is right here in the absolute simplicity of what is.
– Joan Tollifson
242.
A teacher assigned her class to list the "Seven Wonders of the World." Though there were some disagreements, the following received the most votes:
1. Egypt's Great Pyramids
2. Taj Mahal
3. Grand Canyon
4. Panama Canal
5. Empire State Building
6. St. Peter's Basilica
7. China's Great Wall
While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student
had not finished her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she
was having trouble with her list. The girl replied, "Yes, a little.
I couldn't quite make up my mind because there were so many." The teacher said, "Well, tell us what you have, and
maybe we can help." The girl hesitated, then read,
“The Seven Wonders of the World are:
To see.
To hear.
To Touch.
To taste.
To Feel.
To Laugh.
And to love.”
When we stop to look, we can see the extraordinary in the
so-called ordinary. Simply to be is an unending wonder.
– adapted from Neale Donald Walsch, The Journey
243.
There are so many daily aggravations – traffic jams, waiting in line, poor service in a store or restaurant – any one of which can disconnect us from the present moment in a black cloud of frustration or rage . . . but is it the external experiences that
do it to us, or the way we react?
244.
The steady beat of a drum is a persistent call – “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”
– Rapahel Cushnir
245.
Cultivating gratitude, generosity, and kindness, may I be
ully present for the many blessings in my life so I may
know happiness through my gratitude for even the
smallest wonders.
– Jean Smith
246.
The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for
our wits to grow sharper.
– Eden Phillipotts
247.
We do not have to struggle to find the truth. Every single moment is expressive of the truth of our lives, when we
know how to look.
– Sharon Salzberg
248.
We get caught in the belief that this is not quite it …
– Dasarath
249.
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
– Karl Meninger
250.
Blessed is the Source of Life of all the World whose
Wonder removes sleep from my eyes, so that I might
awake to the wonder of Life!
-- daily morning Jewish blessing
(translated by Rabbi Marcia Prager)
251.
The archetypal Jewish tale of self-discovery begins in the Torah when God tells Abraham to leave his home, after he
has trashed the merchandise in his father’s idol shop. The Hebrew words “Lech lecha” literally mean “Get going” or “Go for your own sake, but the Hebrew offers yet another possible translation: “Go. Go to yourself.” A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step, but the journey to discover our interior landscape begins when we close our eyes and stay put.
252.
Sit down and enter into your own breathing, if only for a few minutes. Don’t look for anything – neither flowers nor light nor a beautiful view. Don’t extol the virtues of anything or condemn the inadequacy of anything. Don’t even think to yourself, “I am going inward now,” just sit. Reside at the
center of the world. Let things be as they are.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
253.
While Hasidism believed in the importance of observing the mitzvoth, learning Torah, and praying with devotion, they believed that there was a deeper spiritual realm of listening
to the world as the song of God. The disciples of the Maggid
of Mezritch, for example, noted that their teacher went to the pond every day at dawn and stayed there for a little while before returning home again. One of his students explained that he was learning the song with which the frogs praise God.
– David S. Ariel
254.
The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings.
– Lao-tzu
255.
Watching is meditation. What you watch is irrelevant. You can watch the trees, you can watch the river, you can watch the clouds, you can watch children playing around. Watching is meditation. What you watch is not the point; the object is not the point. The quality of observation, the quality of being aware and alert – that’s what meditation is.
– Osho
256.
Meditation is an open attitude – open in two directions: toward God and toward material life. It is a trusting and attentive attitude of waiting.
– Paul Tournier
257.
It needs only one conscious breath to be back in contact
with yourself and everything around you, and three precious
breaths to maintain that contact.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
258.
Only in the oasis of silence can we drink deeply from our inner cup of wisdom.
– Sue Patton Thoele
259.
To meditate is to be innocent of time.
– J. Krishnamurti
260.
I am where my attention is.
– G.I. Gurdjieff
261.
Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.
– Peter Balin
262.
… our minds are part of an extended web or field of consciousness composed of all the beings who are simultaneously sharing this present moment.
– Christopher M. Bache
263.
People who are in an auto accident often report that the crash seemed to unfold in slow motion. They saw the windshield shattering, the individual shards of glass tumbling through the air. Many details of the event are etched into their minds, as if the event was prolonged and they had time to study it. And yet, to bystanders witnessing the crash, it all happened in a split second.
Why? Because in that very brief time, the person in the accident was really there – fully present. They weren’t distracted by thought. When we awaken into this moment, we experience this same effect. Nothing is actually slowed, of course – but our attention has sharpened, allowing us to better see it all unfold.
– Steve Hagen
264.
When a visitor asked the fifteenth-century master Ikkyu to write down a maxim of “the highest wisdom.” Ikkyu wrote
one word: Attention. The visitor asked, “Is that all?” Ikkyu
then wrote down two words: Attention. Attention.
– A Zen legend
265.
If you pay attention at every moment, you form a new relationship to time. . . . Not only do you become immersed
in the moment, you become that moment.
– Michael Ray
266.
The dew on the grass is present in the moment without any drama. The full harvest moon on the water is both simple and profound. . . . We will never be able to live the paradox of how the ordinary and the extraordinary come together if we are not willing to accept life as it is.
– Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
267.
Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.
– Gaston Bachelard
268.
Paying disinterested attention paradoxically renews the self. Ther is no arguing, after all, with a fresh morning, a beautiful voice, or a sip of good tea. And the self that registers one or another seems to simultaneously surrender its baggage – ephemeral positions, opinions, attitudes – and, in effect, to grow young again.
– Aram Saroyan
269.
Eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.
– Erwin Schrodinger
270.
Mellow moments have a way of erasing all others.
-- Joan Anderson
271.
Time never stops to rest, never hesitates, never looks
forward or backward. Life's raw material spends itself
now, this moment, which is why how you spend your time
is far more important than all the material possessions you may own or positions you may attain.
– Denis Waitley
272.
Love the moment and the energy of that moment will spread
beyond all boundaries.
– Corita Kent
273.
So happy just to be alive underneath this sky of blue.
-- Bob Dylan
274.
The good Lord gave me a brain that works so fast that in one moment I can worry as much as it would take others a whole year to achieve.
– Author Unknown
275.
Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.
– Mahatma Gandhi
276.
Life is made of millions of moments, but we live only one
of these moments at a time. As we begin to change this moment, we begin to change our lives.
– Trinidad Hunt
277.
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
– Oprah Winfrey
278.
There is never time in the future in which we will work out
our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
– James Baldwin
279.
You can take the most mundane activity and turn it into an opportunity to practice being more present. Two things I love to do, for example, are watering the plants in the summer and sweeping the yard. Both activities are like meditations for me. While I do them, I keep my mind as clear as possible and simply sweep or water – nothing else.
– Richard Carlson
280.
Being present is the best way of letting go, and , curiously,
as we let go we become more present. It may even be possible . . . to die with curiosity, and to breathe our last breathe without expectation or regret.
– Judy Lief
281.
I lay on the bowsprit, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight towering above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment lost myself—actually lost my life. I was set free . . . dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm and the high dim-starred sky. . . . I belonged within a unity and joy to life itself.
-- Eugene O’Neil
282.
Let go. Don’t let up.
-- Maurine Stuart
283.
What you see with your eyes closed is what counts.
-- Lame Deer, Lakota Sage
284.
Each second is a universe of time.
-- Henry Miller
285.
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
-- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
286.
It’s not what you think it is. And neither is it otherwise.
-- Zen Proverb
287.
It’s always just beginning. Everything is always just beginning.
-- Jakusho Kwong
288.
Opening to oneself fully is opening to the world.
-- Chogyam Trungpa
289.
Sometimes I think I understand everything. Then I regain consciousness.
-- Ray Bradbury
290.
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.
-- Corita Kent
291.
When we sit in stillness we are profoundly active. Keeping silent, we can hear the roar of existence.
-- Gunilla Norris
292.
If we are worried about something, thinking over a recent conversation, hoping an event will go a certain way, troubled about our appearance, wishing a person would act differently, or any of a thousand familiar ruminations, we are in a jungle without much light. We have tricked ourselves into believing that we need to think about these things.
-- David A. Cooper
293.
The first step in growth is to do what we love to do and to become aware of doing it.
-- Sujata
294.
When we experience a moment of peacefully abiding, it seems so far-out. . . . But all that’s really happening is that for a moment we’re in tune with our mind . . . now we are really here. In fact, being in the present moment is ordinary; it’s the point of being human.
-- Sakyong Mipham
295.
Artists often feel most alive when their work demands their total attention. Great athletes become still and centered in themselves when playing because they are totally on the spot, having to keep their attention on the game at every moment. All real enjoyment, success, and excellence depend on this ability to be present.
-- John Welwood
296.
May I learn to attend
to all the mindfulness bells
in my world,
so I can be present for my life
and for the blessings that surround me.
-- Jean Smith
297.
Seated upon the porch one finds it unnecessary to comment upon or analyze what one sees and hears. It is enough that it is. Being is not something to be taken for granted nor overlooked, but something to be breathed in and celebrated with sweet contentment and a grateful heart. The porch is the home's sacred space of contemplation, the structural articulation of the home's most treasured and earnest secret.
-- Wendy Wright
298.
Alertness is a form of renewal. It helps us to live in the present tense. The newness inside is really renewal, making the present fresh, letting the past be the past and moving on into the portable now.
– Daniel Singer & Marcella Bakur Weiner
299.
Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
-- James Thurber
300.
Listen more carefully to what is around you Right Now.
– Hafiz
300.
Listen more carefully to what is around you Right Now.
– Hafiz
301.
It's never too late to discover the present. The older we get, the better chance we have to learn to wait. As babies, we wanted our needs to be satisfied now. As we age, we learn that nows hold much more than merely satisfying our hunger. Letting others go first also needs to be done, sometimes."
-- David K. Reynolds
302.
It is only in the intentional silence of vigil and meditation, or in the quiet places of nature, that we encounter the song of the universe. Like the wind through the telegraph wires, this song echoes along the pathways of the cosmic web: it includes the celestial spinning of the planets, as well as the hum of insects and the dancing song of the grass; it includes the song of all the ancestors and spirits as well as the beating of our own hearts.
-- Caitlin Matthews
303.
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
-- Erich Fromm
304.
At any moment, whatever we are experiencing, only one of two things is ever happening: either we are being with what is, or else we are resisting what is. Being with what is means letting ourselves have and feel our experience, just as it is right now. When we choose to be actively present with what is, we radiate a powerful energy that is most compelling. This is where genuine creativity, health, and communication, as well as spiritual power, arise from.
– John Welwood
305.
When you do a thing, do it with the whole self. One thing at a time. Now I sit here and I eat. For me nothing exists in the world except this food, this table. I eat with the whole attention.
– G.I. Gurdjieff
306.
If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.
If you don't wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.
– Senegalese Proverb
307.
If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.
If you don't wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.
– Senegalese Proverb
308.
Nothing divides one so much as thought.
– Reginald Blyth
309.
Even when we talk about inner work – seeing clearly, inquiring, investigating, and seeing into things – our mind wants something from it. What would it mean to look at life without asking anything from it – even if only for a moment?
– Christopher Titmuss
310.
Study the way waves wash onto the shore,
Or the way rings float out on a lake
When a pebble splashes through the surface,
Moving without apparent effort. There is
an organic pace to this. We, too, have an organic pace.
Silence can help us feel it.
– Gunilla Norris
311.
It is not about letting go of anything. It is about letting everything be.
– Josh Baran
312.
As long as you are trying to be something other than what you actually are, your mind wears itself out.
– J. Krishnamurti
313.
Bliss, the sages tell us, is not a thing to be acquired, conquered, or possessed by outer means; rather, it
is an ongoing experience to relax into.
– Laurence G. Boldt
314.
Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement.
– Jack Kornfield
315.
Don’t chase after thoughts, and don’t push them away. Just let them come in and go out like a swinging door.
– Jakuso Kwong
316.
When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
– Alan Watts
317.
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is “look under foot.” You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
– John Burroughs
318.
If trying harder doesn’t work, try softer.
– Lily Tomlin
319.
Awareness is like a beam of light that shines endlessly into space. We only perceive that light when it is reflected off some object and consciousness is produced...Awareness is the light by which we see the world...We mistake the clear light of pure awareness for the shadows that it casts in consciousness...We forget that we are the light itself and imagine that we are the densities that reflect the light back to us.
– Stephen Levine
320.
The true name of eternity is today.
– Philo
320.
No one ever sees a flower, really. It is so small, we haven’t time – and to see takes time.
– Georgia O’Keefe
321.
No, no, you’re not thinking, you’re just being logical.
– Niels Bohr
322.
Words are good, but there is something better. The best is not to be explained by words. In the end, one returns to a wordless beholding.
– Goethe
323.
If you expect your life to be up and down,
your mind will be much more peaceful.
– Lama Yeshe
324.
I’m not ever going to become a mindful Buddha, but of late I’ve actually taken one baby step toward tranquility. Every day for the past two weeks, I’ve taken two minutes to watch – or more accurately, feel – the sun rise. Yeah, I know, I know. I was skeptical, too. Just try it. I’ve liked it. Outside. On the deck. Before the starter’s pistol. A tip of the cap to the daily creation.
– Hugh O’Neill
325.
Happiness is not a when or a where, but a here and a now.
– Zig Ziglar
326.
Whenever we do something the same way, over and over, it tends to become rote. This bars us from the potential liveliness in the activity, as well as from the moment in which it’s happening. Even a slight shift in the way we perform activities can snap us to attention. With more attention comes renewed presence, along with the fulfillment that presence always brings.
– Raphael Cushnir
327.
I hope you’ll hear what I’m about to tell you. I hope you’ll hear it all the way down to your toes. When you’re waiting, you’re not doing nothing. You’re doing the most important something there is. You’re allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be.
– Sue Monk Kidd
328.
A powerful technique for becoming more peaceful is to be
aware of how quickly your negative and insecure thinking
can spiral out of control. Have you ever noticed how uptight
you feel when you're caught up in your thinking? And, to
top it off, the more absorbed you get in the details of whatever is upsetting you, the worse you feel. One thought leads to another, and yet another, until at some point, you become incredibly agitated.
– Richard Carlson
329.
Only when we free ourselves from pressure, judgment and calculation can we experience life anew. First we need to notice how insistently our habitual thoughts grasp at us. Then we can confront two important truths: first, life doesn’t need to be as mechanized as it usually is and, second, presence must be practiced.
– Patty De Llosa
330.
…in the present moment, there is no time…. In other words, eternity is now, and by learning to lose track of time through present focus, we begin to discover hidden dimensions to everyday experience, which have always been there for us, but have been veiled by our being time-bound. The moment is a doorway into eternity.
– Ram Dass
331.
We have “in order to” mind; we are always doing this in order to get that, or in order to be that. Yet that very tendency – to strive, be ambitious, be preoccupied with a goal, get ahead of ourselves – takes us out of the present moment, away from how we are now. It can actually prevent intimacy . . . Our wish for intimacy can prevent us from being intimate.
– Larry Rosenberg
332.
We need a path not to go from here to there, but to go from
here to here.
– Jakusho Kwong
333.
Like my life, this book has ambiguity.
Like my life, this book is about
not knowing, having to change,
taking the moment and making the
best of it, without knowing
what’s going to happen next.
– Gilda Radner
334.
We have no art here – we just do everything
as well as we can.
– Balinese Proverb
335.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
– Chinese Proverb
336.
Waking up can take place anywhere. Now, as you’re on your way to the meditation center in your car. Now, as you’re walking up the steps to the door. Now, as you take your shoes off and place them mindfully on the shoe rack. Now, as you read this sentence. It’s simply a matter of making the effort to be awake. Now, not later on. Now.
– Steve Hagen
337.
Lifestyle is taking time to watch a sunset. Lifestyle is listening to silence. Lifestyle is capturing each moment so that it becomes a new part of what we are and of what we are in the process of becoming. Lifestyle is not something we do; it is something we experience. And until we learn to be there, we will never master the art of living well.
– Jim Rohn
338.
An effective tool for bringing your mind back to the present
is the “Now I am aware” exercise. Very calmly and slowly keep on repeating the words: “Now I am aware…” noticing various objects and items in your immediate environment.
For example, “Now I am aware of the number on this page. Now I am aware of this chair. Now I am aware of a red pen. “ Speaking slowly and calmly, do this with at least six objects each time.
– Zelig Pliskin
339.
We don’t have to wait until we are on our deathbed to realize what a waste of time it is to carry the belief that something is wrong with us. Yet because our habits of feeling insufficient are so strong, awakening from the trance involves not only inner resolve, but also an active training of the heart and mind.
– Tara Brach
340.
Every day is a good day.
– Zen Proverb
341.
Think about a piece of music – some great symphony – we don’t expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.
– Alan Watts
342.
When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
– Shunryu Suzuki
343.
To make your dream come true, you have to stay awake.
– Author Unknown
344.
To simply stop hanging on to what has been in the past and longing for what might be in the future is better than making
a ten-year pilgrimage.
– Lin-Chi
345.
One day a master was just about to give a sermon when
a bird started to sing. The master said nothing and everyone listened to the bird. When the song stopped, the master announced that the sermon had been preached and
went on his way.
– Timothy Freke
346.
We are what we practice. If we become angry a lot, then essentially we are practicing anger. And we become quite good at it. Conversely, if we practice being joyful, then a joyful person is what we become. We are what we practice. Each of us must consciously decide who and what we want to be – or the circumstances of our life will choose for us.
– Avram Davis
347.
In Zen, you are never rehearsing because your practice, at
the moments during practice, is your life. It is always now, whether you are in zazen or standing in a long line at the grocery store or running full-speed after the tow-truck that
just towed your car.
–Gary McLain & Eve Adamson
348.
The whole point of life is to live NOW in this present moment, always. If one makes a fetish of improving conditions in the future, one lives neither in the apparent present nor in the illusory future. The present moment is the eternal moment. There is no eternity but NOW, before time ever was.
– Ramesh S. Balsekar
349.
Just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate – that's
my philosophy.
– Thornton Wilder
350.
One of the main apprenticeships a poet serves is the apprenticeship of attention...of paying attention to whatever
is there....and to let (things) bas as they are...Attention is actually a live connection to the world ... when you have
a live connection to the world, you have to live up to the consequences of what that world brings you; that the world itself changes as we do.
– David Whyte
351.
The goal of (spiritual) warriorship is to reconnect to the nowness of reality, so that you can go forward without destroying simplicity, without destroying your connection
to this Earth.
– Chogyam Trungpa
352.
The marathon monks go all the way to the edge of death ,
so they may come back and be alive, so they can know gratitude for this moment. We need to wake up when we buy groceries, push the cart down the aisle, feel our step on the floor tile. Every moment is enormous, and it is all we have.
– Natalie Goldberg
353.
Allow your breath to be a doorway, a portal between the inside and the outside. Being with the breath, the internal world with all its memories, traumas, fears, hopes, dreams, and plans is unfed. As with a fire that goes out without fuel, the world of karma burns itself away when given no attention. Keep your attention for here, the present, for life, for the compassionate goodness that is your original nature. Being with the breath, the external world with all its successes, promises of power, wealth, fame, importance, being special, is unnourished. Once again, the world of karma must feed on itself and begins to wither away.
– Cheri Huber
354.
Just take one day. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not
come. We have only today to love.
– Jesus
355.
If Past to Future is on a horizontal line, the present moment is not in time – it is a vertical movement – transcending time.
– Osho
356.
Mindfulness… is bare attention and just looks at whatever comes up. Conscious thought loves to paste things over our experience, to load us down with concepts and ideas, to immerse us in a churning vortex of plans and worries, fears and fantasies. When mindful, you don't play that game. You just notice exactly what arises in the mind, then you notice
the next thing. "Ah, this... and this... and now this."
– Henepola Gunaratana
357.
Success is not down the road. It can be precisely where you are on the road, right now, today.
– Victoria Moran
358.
There are two days in the week about which and upon I never worry. Two carefree days, kept sacredly free from fear and apprehension. One of the days is Yesterday. . . . And the
other day I do not worry about is Tomorrow.
– Robert Jones Burdette
359.
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring.
– Henry David Thoreau
360.
Moment by moment our practice is like a choice, a fork in the road: we can go this way, we can go that way. It’s always a choice, moment by moment, between our nice world that we want to set up in our heads and what really is.
– Charlotte Joko Beck
361.
We do not need a special time or place to be where we are. We do not need to retreat, to isolate, in order to be where we are. We do not need anything. We need nothing.
– Steven Harrison
362.
One effect of meditation is to soften the barriers between the conscious and the unconscious.
– Allan Combs & Mark Holland
363.
You cannot become someone other than who you are until you know who you are. And you cannot know who you are until you accept who you are right now and in this place. For the time is now, not some other time; and the place is here, not somewhere else.
– Lawrence Kushner
364.
In the fury of the moment, I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.
– Bob Dylan
365.
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
– David Whyte
366.
Waiting for a bus, standing in line at the market or waiting
to go into a bathroom during intermission at the theater becomes another chance to practice awareness. The usual frustrations of waiting and standing can be transformed into serious spiritual opportunity, a return to our pursuit of a more conscious, present existence grounded in respect for the sacred element in living.
– Daniel Singer & Marcella Bakur Weiner
367.
For me, retreat is a time to endure suspense; find, not seek; relish what comes by chance; repair body and soul; wait patiently; and live into the questions. It is a time to get acquainted with silence – that friend we’ve kept at a
distance; a time to be open to the spaciousness of a day . . .
– Joan Anderson
368.
It also helps to realize that all moments are created equal; that is, a moment has no duration, no limitation, but is simply your point of contact with eternal time. No moment can reach backward or forward. It just is. You have almost unlimited freedom in what you do with each moment, but you don’t change the nature of the moment itself.; you change only its content. Ultimately and transcendentally, you are that moment.
– Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers
369.
Many of us move so fast that we have to stop and give our souls a chance to catch up to where we are. Whether by meditation, prayer, reciting a mantra, or just quietly walking in the woods, stopping ourselves is part of what we need to get ourselves in spiritual sync.
– Rabbi Dannel I. Schwartz
370.
Watching satellites and staring at the stars, I seemed to lose contact with my earth and body and to spread out through the cosmos by means of an awareness that permeates both space and life – as though I were expanding from a condensation of awareness previously selected and restricted to the biological matter that was myself.
– Charles Lindbergh
371.
If I don’t celebrate the exquisiteness of each day, I’ve lost something I will never get back.
– Sally P. Karioth
372.
The first duty of love is to listen.
– Paul Tillich
373.
At some point during the day, take a moment to appreciate right then whatever is provided. This practice takes no time
at all, only attention. Drinking a swig from your water bottle, appreciate water. Talking with a friend, appreciate companionship. Eating a bit of Caesar salad, appreciate anchovies and croutons and Parmesan and hearts of
romaine and taste buds. Riding in the subway, appreciate
the mass of humanity, everyone unique, everyone mortal. Dedicate a moment, each day, to appreciation. To gratitude.
– Nina Wise
374.
Observe how you react to traffic lights. The next time you find yourself projecting, let it go. Enjoy the simple reality of stop on red, slow down on yellow, or go on green.
-- Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat
375.
If you are afraid, just be fear, and right there you are fearless.
– Charlotte Joko Beck
376.
Creation was not a one-time event. Creation is a continual event. All we have to do is look.
377.
When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift.... thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.
– from a poem written by a terminally ill
girl in a New York City hospital
378.
This very moment is a seed from which the flowers of tomorrow’s happiness grow.
– Maragret Lindsey
379.
The world is full of miracles . . . the trick is to look with fresh eyes, hear with new ears. When we do, we come alive to the wonders all around us – the slant of light on the skyscraper, the smell of hot asphalt as the rain hits the pavement, the sparkle of a stranger’s smile – and we feel an uplift of emotion.
– M.J. Ryan
380.
We need to carve time for dwelling in the quiet places, to discover our own inner landscape and the landscape of God. We also must pay attention in the “cracks” of our life to see the “gracelets,” the moments of meaning in the mundane.
– Celeste Snowber Schroeder
381.
Each time I become present, I experience the state of my body, mind and emotions all at once. My body is a container of all that I am, and within it I’m teeming with jumping thoughts, popping emotions, pulling tensions. When I wish to rest on the present moment, I need to empty a lot of that “stuff” out to make room for my own awareness. Until I do, I have no listening space. I’m all reaction.
– Patty De Llosa
382.
An artist creates out of the materials of the moment, never again to be duplicated. This is true of the painter, the musician, the dancer, the actor, the teacher, the scientist, the businessman, the farmer – it is true of us all, whatever our work, that we are artists so long as we are alive to the concreteness of a moment and do not use it to some other purpose.
– M.C. Richards
383.
It is only possible to live happily-ever-after on a day-to-day basis.
– Margaret Bonanno
384.
To live a life with meaning, you must notice the invisible.
– Karyn D. Kedar
385.
In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger.
– Annie Dillard
386.
After a few years of meditation practice, we can even
learn how to occasionally ignore ourselves. And what
relief that can be!
– Wes Nisker
387.
There is only one time that is important – NOW!! It is the most important time because it is the only time that we have any power.
– Leo Tolstoy
388.
I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place of friendly detachment toward myself, so I can look out at the world and see all those other things with respect. Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don’t drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor’s yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence.
– Anne Lamott.
389.
Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it.
– Simone Weil
390.
Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly.
– Eskimo saying
391.
Everything in our lives can help us to wake up or to fall
asleep, and basically it’s up to us to let it wake us up . . .
with awareness, you are able to find out for yourself what causes misery and what causes happiness.
– Pema Chodron, Buddhist Teacher and Author
392.
Be willing to follow the clues of the spirit, meditate to find the pure silence within yourself, know that the goal of the spirit is true and worth pursuing.
– Deepak Chopra, Author, Physician and Teacher
393.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
– Theodore Roosevelt
394.
There have not been many moments in my life in which I ever imagined the life I am living now, and so I am cautious about predicting what may or may not happen to me next. The best things in my life have all been a surprise to me, and I have learned just to be still and be ready.
– Robert Benson
395.
I listened to my feet touching the ground and with each step I felt stronger, present in every moment. It was the happiest half hour of my life. Each second was precious and powerful. I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.
– Lynn Marie Smith
396.
One great thing about growing old is that nothing is going to lead to anything. Everything is of the moment.
– Joseph Campbell
397.
We have a tendency to view many of the repetitive tasks
that fill our daily lives as something to be gotten through
so we can get to the experiences we consider desirable, or transcendental. But the chores on our "to do" list, in and of themselves, are gateways to the enlightened state of mind. Every moment is an opportunity to awaken.
– DailyOm.com
398.
This tendency for the mind to roam here and there and away from the moment is simply what minds do. But there is also an assumption implicit in the pull towards the past or future and away from the present that some other time must be more important than this moment. This underlying belief that the grass is always greener on the other side of here and now effectively blocks presence.
– Abby Seixas in Finding the Deep River Within
399.
And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing:
To live to see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.
– Inuit Song
400.
Joy comes from appreciation. Appreciation comes from paying attention.
– Jane Dobisz
401.
When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future. When I am depressed it is because I am living in the past.
– Author Unknown
402.
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
– Dale Carnegie
403.
Sitting still in silence, we feel a sense of timelessness. Present, past, and future dissolve in the eternal present, a boundless field of mind in which we feel our connection to everything and everyone in the range of our experience. This boundless, eternal realm is the realm of God. Approaching it, we approach God.
– Alan Lew
404.
When experience is viewed in a certain way, it presents nothing but doorways into the domain of the soul.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
405.
When you stop comparing what is right here and now with what you wish were, you can begin to enjoy what is.
– Cheri Huber
406.
The opportunity to learn the lesson of awareness is presented each time you feel a sense of discontent in your life. With every desire for a shift in your path, or vision of something different, comes the chance to look within and ask yourself, “What is the truth of what I want? What change do I want to make?”
– Cherie Carter-Scott. Ph.D.
407.
The soul savors the present moment. You don’t find it hiding out in the past or waiting for you in the future. It says pay attention to what is happening to you right now.
– Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
408.
For me, the purpose of listening is to hear the beating heart of the universe – to know that we’re all part of a realm of light where the heart sings, the eyes feel, and the hands hear.
– Rabbi Shohama Wiener
409.
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
410.
A Zen monk should even waste time with wholehearted attention.
– Zen Saying
411.
Pay particular attention to the way you mentally judge and organize. Do not try to stop this judging. When you become aware you are doing it, simply note to yourself, “Judging.”
– Philip Martin
The Zen Path through Depression
412.
Recall that in a line six inches long, there are an infinite number of points, and in a line one inch long there are just as many. Well, then, how many moments are there in fifteen minutes, or five, or ten, or forty-five? It turns out we have plenty of time, if we are willing to hold any moments at
all in awareness.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
Wherever You Go, There You Are
413.
All men should strive to learn before they die, what they
are running from, and to, and why.
– James Thurber
414.
Our problem is not that we’re warped or broken at the core. Our problem is that we get caught up in our thinking. Instead of simply feeling, we mentally obsess about those feelings, and then confuse these thoughts with Reality. We grasp the fleeting feeling and hang on, continuing to relive our painful thoughts over and over. While we’re mentally fixated on an event that took place yesterday, or last week, or twenty years ago, the actual, fresh, clean, vibrant reality of this moment flashes by without our even noticing.
– Steve Hagen
415.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend
our lives.
– Annie Dillard
416.
A friend of mine, a distinguished explorer who spent a couple of years among the savages of the upper Amazon, once attempted a forced march through the jungle. The party made extraordinary speed for the first two days, but on the third morning, when it was time to start, my friend found all the natives sitting on their haunches, looking very solemn and making no preparation to leave.
“They are waiting,” the chief explained to my friend. “They cannot move farther until their souls have caught up with their bodies.”
– James Ytuslow Adams
The Tempo of Modern Life
417.
You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when.
You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.
– Joan Baez
418.
There is a special moment as the waves foam in. It occurs just at the instant that one wave has spent itself on the sand but, suspended, has not yet begun to be pulled back out to sea. For less than a second the waters stop churning and, through their clearness, I can see the ground beneath, see the rocks, the shells, the sand.
Sometimes I think that’s how much of a glimpse we are ever given of what is really going on in this life. We get a small clip of time as the forces that buffet us reach an occasional uneasy equilibrium. Then they retreat and the next wave smashes in and we lose that special momentary clarity.
But while the clarity is there, while the action is suspended, calm, we should gather it in and store it deep within us so that when the next wave hits – and inevitably it will – we can keep our balance.
– Bill Tammeus
Faith columnist for the Kansas City Star
419.
Think of your best moments with others: I am sure you were right there, fully attentive. By paying attention, we attribute meaning and importance, we offer nourishment, and we are close to another human being. We give the presence and the energy of the heart. We can care for, we can love, and we can enjoy one another only in the present. And if conflict arises, we deal best with it not by daydreaming, but by
being awake.
– Piero Ferrucci , The Power of Kindness
420.
Awareness equals the potential for freedom from our habituated mind. A recent study showed that thinking about what you ate for lunch resulted in an average fourteen-pound weight loss.
– M.J. Ryan, This Year I Will . . .
421.
Delight is a secret. And the secret is this: to grow quiet and listen; to stop thinking, stop moving, almost to stop breathing; to create an inner stillness in which, like mice in a deserted house, capacities and awarenesses too wayward and too fugitive for everyday use may delicately emerge.
– Alan McGlashan
422.
What’s the rush? Where are you going? There is not here. Doing is not being. High gear, high speed, diminishes our appreciation of all our senses . . . Our soul is not engaged when we’re moving too fast.
– Alexandra Stoddard
423.
A story is told of the Hasidic master Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev who once spotted a man who was obviously in a great hurry. The master asked him, "Why are you rushing so?" The man replied, "I'm running after my livelihood, I'm rushing after success." Said Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, "And are you so sure that you're the one carrying out the pursuit? Perhaps success is really pursuing you and you're running away!"
424.
Only as I am aware of the present will I have the opportunity to be fully alive.
– Anne Wilson Schaef
425.
Some people are afraid to enjoy the present because they anticipate that their happiness will soon come to an end. They create their own misery either by worrying about their past or by being anxious about the future, both of which are beyond their control. In this way they forfeit the joy of the present.
– Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav
426.
The word “listen” contains the same letters as the word “silent.”
– Alfred Brendel
427.
You will never experience the earth with all its wonders in this time again. Don’t wait for one last look at the ocean, the sky, the stars. or a loved one. Go look now.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
428.
In the Israelites' journey through that wild desert we can see a metaphor for our own transformation. Our lives, like the desert, can be both harsh and beautiful. We don't always know where we’re going, nor how long it will take us to get there. And sometimes the voice of God is most audible when we create our own holy spaces, and when we make a practice of pausing in those spaces, surrounded by but separate from the hubbub of ordinary life.
– Rachel Barenblat
429.
Intuition comes to a prepared mind, fine spun from a quiet mind, at peace. We nourish our intuition in moments of silence, when we go inward, as when we’re in the most beautiful natural settings. In moments of contemplation,
we feel a presence, a sense of harmony, an insight that
comes to us.
– Alexandra Stoddard
430.
It’s easy to operate under the illusion that what we are doing is so important we cannot stop doing it. We think we cannot slow down, especially for something so trifling as a turtle. But that is exactly the sort of thing we must never be too busy for. Stopping is a spiritual art. It is the refuge where we drink life in.
– Sue Monk Kidd
431.
Spirituality is the sacred center out of which all life comes, including Mondays and Tuesdays and rainy Saturday afternoons in all their mundane and glorious detail . . . .
The spiritual journey is the soul’s life commingling with ordinary life.
– Christina Baldwin
432.
In moments of illumination, or during experiences of inner relaxation and freedom, we wish that there be still more. That the moments of illumination be more frequent, that the sense of relaxation and freedom stay longer and become deeper . . .
but the wish for more is yet another form of ambition, and like every ambition it is a wish for the future. The future in that case may be just the next moment, but the wish for more directs attention away from the present, away from what is, here and now.
– Ilan Amit
433.
As I write this, I am not in that awareness. But when I meditate and sometimes when I’m going about my day – washing dishes, talking on the phone – I can open a wedge between me and what I’m thinking, watching my thoughts rather than be absorbed and agitated by them. When strong emotions – anger, sadness – take over the body and brain like a dybbuk, I find that if I step into awareness for a moment and watch the rage or tears, the grip loosens. I see that my thoughts and feelings are like smoke, gathering and dispersing, real but with no solidity, and this is freeing.
– Sara Davidson, in Leap!
434.
In each moment we are awake, we can feel what is reverberating within ourselves and respond in a way that lights up the world in either a weird or a wonderful way.
In moments of distraction, when mindlessness sets in, the momentum of habit propels us. In moments of mindfulness,
we at least have a choice.
– Joel Levey and Michelle Levey,
in Simple Meditation & Relaxation
435.
Life is not hurrying on to a receding future,
nor hankering after an imagined pat. It is the
turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the
lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory
as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
– R.S. Thomas
436.
Without the ability to enter the present moment, a kind of restless desire often keeps us busy looking for the next thing that might stimulate our senses and satisfy the vague desire for something more, something other than what is right here, right now.
– Abby Seixas
in Finding the Deep River Within
437.
If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently . . . and even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour [of contemplation] but bring your heart back, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
– Saint Francis de Sales
438.
We have the power . . . to recognize our own thinking when it’s taking us places we don’t want or need to go. When we
do, we’re able to bring our attention back to the moment –
to whatever we are doing or whomever we are with. You’ll notice that when you can do this, you’ll experience whatever you’re dealing with far less stressfully. It’s like waking up from a bad dream and saying, “Wow, I was really off somewhere.” The only difference is, your dream is happening while you
are awake.
– Richard Carlson
439.
You cannot encounter your art except in the exact now. This is what spiritual seekers of all stripes are after: an experience of the power of now. (God has been called “the great now.”) As an artist, you must focus on the now, meaning on God, although you may never conceptualize it that way. You experience “art” as a form of the verb “to be.”
– Julia Cameron
440.
No matter what our circumstances, we can slow down enough to notice and give thanks to our breath going in and out, the food we are about to eat, the book we are reading, the kindness of the stranger we bumped into. As we take the time to open our five senses to the world around us, we won’t miss the shooting star, the life-altering words, the tiny blue violets. And our lives will be enriched by the bounty all around us.
– M.J. Ryan
441.
Hang on to your day. If you hang on to your day, you will stay young.
– Buck O’Neil, Negro Leagues baseball legend
442.
God speaks to all individuals through what happens to them moment by moment.
– Jean-Pierre De Caussade
443.
I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.
– Miles Davis
444.
Time is Breath.
– G.I. Gurdjieff
445.
My life changes when I learned to concentrate on little moments. It is during the little moments rather than the
big ones that I learn the most. Little moments contain all
the wisdom, all the truth, all the pleasure that I need to continue to grow. And when I focus my attention on
those little and simple moments, I can filter out all the distracting static created by the voices that urge me
to do this or that. Collect little moments.
– Joan Anderson
446.
There must be a time of day when we, who make plans, forget our plans and act as if we had no plans at all. There must be a time of day when we who have to speak fall very silent.
– Thomas Merton
447.
If you stay put, your place may become a holy center, not because it gives you special access to the divine, but because in your stillness you hear what might be heard anywhere. All there is to see can be seen from anywhere in the universe, if you know how to look; and the influence of the entire universe converges on every spot.
– Scott Russell Sanders
448.
I knew that if you had the eyes to see, there was beauty everywhere, even when nature was barren or sloppy, and
not just when God had tarted things up for the spring.
– Anne Lamott
449.
The more we suspect that we are headed nowhere, the faster we need to run.
– David Loy and Linda Goodhew
450.
Sometimes the best art isn’t immediaitely obvious. You might not get it or even like it the first time you experience it. But, if you take a moment and give it another try, it might reach you in a way you never thought possible. It’s a bold move to see again, read again, listen again.
– Erin McKeown, singer
451.
Eighty per cent of life is just showing up.
– Woody Allen
452.
Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself
is a form of prayer.
– Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
453.
Someone pointed out to me that the words now, here, and nowhere have the same arrangement of letters, but differ when a small space is inserted. Likewise a fine space separates us from experiencing our life as nowhere or
now here.
– Sue Monk Kidd
454.
The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a
miracle and unrepeatable.
– Storm Jameson
455.
If you want to be happy, be.
– Leo Tolstoy
456.
The present moment is always right here, yet more often than not it is not apparent to us and therefore, practically speaking, unavailable, that is, we cannot avail ourselves of it. Its rich dimensionality is hidden and unknown in the press of our preoccupations with getting somewhere else, speeding through the present without noticing it or that we are always in it, there being literally no place else to go, no other time to occupy.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
457.
Life is very simple for the body. The body lives in linear time, in the present moment; although it handles many internal functions at once, it can only be here now. But for the mind, it’s a different story. When we’re caught in rush hour traffic,
for example, our body just sits there behind the wheel, but
our mind is standing on the front bumper, pushing the car
in front, yelling, “Come on! Come on!”
– Dan Millman
458.
When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
– Alan Watts
459.
Contemplate your mind. What is in it? What is in it that you wish were not? Is it like a clothes closet that is filled with 1980s fashion? Or is it like a busy TV show, a sitcom, where people are saying idiotic things to each other and there is canned laughter? Is it like a horror movie? Do you know how to empty your mind? Do you believe you can learn to trust a mind that isn’t always speaking to you? Can you imagine a mind that feels itself part of one big mind; the mind of the universe, waiting on instruction?
– Alice Walker
460.
Like a rest in a musical score, the pure stillness of a pause forms the background that lets the foreground take shape
with clarity and freshness. The moment that arises can,
like the well-sounded note, reflect the genuineness, the wholeness, the truth of who we are.
– Tara Brach
461.
Sometimes the only demand of love is presence.
– Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
462.
One of the most dramatic changes that occurs in the lives of near-death experiencers is that their concern for the past and future diminish markedly . . . As so many of them told me, the crucial thing is to extract the most meaning from each and every drop of life.
– Phillip L. Berman
463.
Happiness to me is just being able to breathe well.
– Bob Dylan
464.
When you walk or drive, pay attention to the beautiful scenery, the chirping of the birds and crickets, and the feel
of the warm sunshine or chill in the air. Focus on the way
your body feels as you go through routine motions of driving, opening the door, walking to your destination . . . If a stressful thought comes to mind, choose to move on to a thought that
is related to what you are presently seeing, hearing. smelling, or feeling.
– Don Coplbert, M.D.
465.
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
– Henry Miller
466.
Glance at the sun. See the moon and stars. Gaze at the beauty of the green earth. Now think.
– Hildegard of Bingen
467.
The ghosts you chase you never catch.
– John Malkovich
468.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
– Henry Thoreau
469.
Fascinated with what we’re doing
Lost in what we’re doing
One with what we’re doing
Wholly involved in what we’re doing.
– Sam Horn
470.
All formal ways, including martial arts, calligraphy, and flower arrangement, seem at first glance to be ways of getting things done. They really are ways beyond just getting things done. In all formal ways, you are given a task to do and then
asked to go beyond thought to become the action itself.
– Maverick Sutras
471.
More and more we will experience that our mind is tranquil, yet still present and alert. Not the stillness of sleep, but the stillness of water which reflects clearly . . . Meditation is becoming aware of this vital stillness and hearing within
that stillness. It is naturally present before you become attached to thoughts and things; before you identify
with thought-feeling-reaction . . . Turn the light of your consciousness inward instead of always running out after things.
– dailyzen.com
472.
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
– Gandhi
473.
Tain’t worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.
– Sarah Orne Jewett
474.
Don’t worry; please, please. How many times do I have to say it? There is no way not to be who you are and where.
– Ikkyu
475.
Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement. It would be wonderful if they came to us unsummoned, but particularly in lives as busy as the ones most of us lead now, that won’t happen. We have to teach ourselves how to make room for them, to love them, and to live, really live.
– Anna Quindlen
476.
I think, therefore I don’t jam.
– Miles Davis
477.
It was one of those days so clear, so silent, so still, you almost feel the earth itself has stopped in astonishment at its own beauty.
– Katherine Mansfield
478.
We do not see the world as it is. We see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
479.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
– Edmund Burke
480.
Bertolt Brecht likened moments of silent wonder to “lying in the meadow and dangling with my soul.”
– Sam Horn
481.
Meditation – it’s not what you think.
– Bumper Sticker
482.
When someone asked a great Sufi master how he learned to meditate, he said, “By watching a cat watch a mouse. Just
by watching them I learned how to meditate.
– Anthony Damiani
483.
Pay attention to everything. Develop what I call "passive awareness." I like to use the example of solar heating to clarify what I mean by passive awareness: The sun warms some type of collector–tiles, stones, barrels of water–and the collector stores the heat. The sun is not trying to heat the collector, and the collector is not trying to store the heat, but together they create solar heating. Each is present, and the transformation happens.
– Cheri Huber
484.
We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand… and melting like a snowflake.
– Marie Beynon Ray
485.
Every day, think as you wake up,
Today I am fortunate to have woken up,
I am alive; I have a precious human life.
I am not going to waste it,
I am going to use all my energies to develop myself.
To expand my heart out to others,
To achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings,
I am going to have kind thoughts towards others,
I am not going to get angry, or think badly about others,
I am going to benefit others as much as I can.
– Dalai Lama
486.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
487.
Hawks are universal symbols for paying attention. They sit for hours in dignified, calm stillness, then glide gracefully across the skies, vigilant for prey. We’re told that their eyesight is probably eight times as powerful as our own. When we hear of someone with the eyes of a hawk, we think of a person who is acutely alert and perceptive. The Way of the Hawk is the way of calmly paying attention.
–Scott Cooper
488.
We can touch wonder in every moment as we slow down and perceive the world around us as if for the first time. And when we contact wonder, we know thankfulness for the most ordinary, extraordinary things of life.
– M.J. Ryan
489.
No, he is not absentminded. He is just present-minded somewhere else.
– William James, upon being told that
a certain person was absentminded
490.
That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.
– Willa Cather
491.
The essence of mindfulness is to make every moment you have your own. Even if you are hurrying, which is sometimes necessary, then at least hurry mindfully. Be aware of your breathing, of the need to move fast, and do it with awareness. If you find your mind compelling you to get every last thing done, then bring awareness to your body and the mental and physical tension that may be mounting and remind yourself that some of it can probably wait.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
492.
No moment stands still, and neither should we. There is functional movement, there is mindless movement, and then there is dance. Dancing connects us with flow, with spirit, and, almost instantly, with the now. In order to reap the gifts dance has to offer, we don’t need to be skillful at it – just willing.
–Raphael Cushnir
493.
Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
– Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
494.
Life moves pretty fast and if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you are going to miss it.
– Ferris Bueller
495.
Be aware of your surroundings. Notice the color of flowers, the scent of rain, even the gum on the sidewalk. Pay attention to what is happening at every moment, but don't fight what is. Accept that there is a long line at the post office, but don't let
it upset you. After all, there's nothing you can do about it anyway. By simply accepting each moment as if you have chosen it, you'll be surprised at what the day has to offer you.
– dailyom.com
496.
We have more possibilities available in each moment than
we realize.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
497.
It is easy to capture a bandit in the mountains; it is difficult to catch the thief in the mind.
– Wang Yangming
498.
Do not occupy your precious time except with the most precious of things, and the most precious of things is the
state of being occupied with the present.
– Abu Said
499.
Things, by definition, could always be better than they
are now. On the other hand, succumbing to the way things are now is to cease dreaming. The balance, perhaps, is to accept the way things are because, like it or not, for better
or for worse, that is literally the only way things are. They,
of course, can be different, but only later. To worry about “later” is to miss “now.”
– Lawrence Kushner
500.
A miracle is our capacity to see the common in an
uncommon way.
– Noah Ben Shea
501.
On my way to work through the park one day, I picked up a fallen apple blossom, perfect in every way but very delicate.
I placed it at the center of my cluttered desk. All day, as I worked around it, sometimes annoyed, sometimes filled with emotion, I felt it call me into present awareness. The blossom reminded me of exquisite delicacy, a quality my job had no room for, and yet it also represented the impermanence of beauty, nature and myself.
– Patty de Llosa
502.
I am open to receive with every breath I breathe.
– Msia Song
503.
Well, let’s stop arguing – we’re both here now.
– Egg to chicken in New Yorker cartoon
504.
If the prospect of stopping is intimidating because you think you might miss something, remember that without stopping, you could miss everything. Look for places in your experience where a pause can be inserted.
– Victoria Moran
505.
If what a tree or bush does is lost on you, you are surely
lost. Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must
let it find you.
– David Wagoner
506.
There are two things it is forbidden to worry about:
That which is possible to fix,
And that which is impossible to fix.
What is possible to fix – fix it, and why worry?
What is impossible to fix – how will worrying help?
– Rabbi Yehiel of Zlotchov
507.
If you pour a cup of tea, you are aware of extending your arm and touching your hand to the teapot, lifting it and pouring the water. Finally the water touches your teacup and fills it, and you stop pouring and put the teapot down precisely, as in the Japanese tea ceremony. You become aware that each precise movement has dignity. We have long forgotten that activities can be simple and precise. Every act of our lives can contain simplicity and precision and thus can have tremendous beauty and dignity.
– Chogyam Trungpa
508.
If you pay attention at every moment, you form a new relationship to time . . . In some magical way, by slowing down you become more efficient, productive, and energetic, focusing without distraction directly on the task in front of you. Not only do you become immersed in that moment; you become that moment.
-- Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers
in Creativity in Business
509.
Let go. Don’t let up.
– Maurine Stuart
510.
Every situation – no, every moment – is of infinite worth;
for it is the representative of a whole eternity.
– Goethe
511.
Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
– Agnes de Mille
512.
To live in grace you must use up each moment and become empty again. If you accept the fullness of each moment and engage it without hesitation and restraint, if you use it up and leave nothing in its wake, you will be empty again and ready for the next moment.
– Rabbi Rami Shapiro
513.
Awaken your sense, your intuition, your desires. Awaken the parts of yourself that have been sleeping. Life is a dream, and to live it, you must be awake.
– Rachel Snyder
514.
Wherever our attention is, there our energy goes. Whatever we dwell on, whether past or future, is fed by our present energy. At any moment, I’m turning my attention towards something or someone, giving away this precious energy or letting it trickle out of me into all kinds of unnecessary distractions or reactions to the world around me.
– Patty De Llosa
515.
Out beyond wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
– Jalalal-Din Rumi
516.
When we invest our work with judgment and impatience, always striving for speed and efficiency, we lose the capacity to appreciate the million quiet moments that may bring us peace, beauty, or joy.
– Wayne Muller
517.
To be present is to awaken into that dimension of your self and that dimension of life which is transcendent of the thinking mind. You are silent and you are fully present with what is actually here now.
– Leonard Jacobson
518.
One thought follows another without interruption. But if you allow these thoughts to link up to a chain, you put yourself in bondage.
– Zen Saying
519.
Out of the millions of moments that make up our lives, we actually remember very few. Those that we do remember, therefore, are often distorted. They can seem more intense or important than the original experience. Strung together, these moments make up the stories of our lives. We tell these stories often, to ourselves and to others, believing that they’re entirely true. When we narrow the past in such a way, we also narrow our availability to the present.
– Raphael Cushnir
520.
Listen to the way people say, “Now what?” – usually in a sort of sarcastic huff, not as a lucid opening into this moment, but as an irritated anticipation of the next . . . But inflected differently, that same phrase can be the mantra that reminds you to notice the actuality of the present: the what of now.
– Dean Sluyter
521.
Presence teaches that what you do today is important, because you are trading a day of your life for it.
– Dan Millman
522.
Every now and then, take a good look at something not made with hands: a mountain, a star, the curve of a stream. There will come to you wisdom and patience, and above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world.
– Sidney Lovett
523.
When I am home, my daily walk takes me by a daycare center. Parents bring their kids early, and many youngsters head right for the huge sandbox. It’s a joy to spend a moment watching them. The experience of the sand and the shovels and the pails is all fresh and new to the children, every day. Mindfulness would have us see that freshness and newness
in our own daily life experiences.
– Greg Anderson
524.
It is not by chance that wholeness and holiness sound alike. They speak to a paradigm of unity, a totality containing the many. When we do something in a whole way, with all of ourselves fully attentive, we are connecting to the truth of the divine presence, for the sacred is also one.
– Daniel Singer & Marcella Bakur Weiner
525.
The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.
– Andy Warhol
526.
Do not do a spiritual practice as if your life depended upon it. Practice as if it is your life. Let it be empty. Let it be light. Let it be sweet. Let each moment be a mystery that brings you to the next moment.
– Jason Shulman
527.
I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
– Steven Wright
528.
From the moment we wake up, we can apply intent to our situation by simply saying to ourselves, "I am aware that I am now awake." We can use this simple tool throughout our day, saying, "I am aware that I am driving to work." "I am aware that I am making dinner." Or even, "I am aware that I am breathing." As we acknowledge what we are doing in these moments, we come alive to our bodies and to the world, owning our actions instead of habitually performing them. We may realize how often we act without intention and how this disengages us from reality. Applying the energy of intent to even one task a day has the power to transform our lives. Just imagine what would happen if we were able to apply that power to our entire day.
– DailyOm.com
529.
Five Steps for Practicing Mindfulness Throughout The Day
When possible, do just one thing at a time.
Pay full attention to what you are doing.
When the mind wanders from what you are doing, bring it back.
Repeat step number three several billion times.
Investigate your distractions.
– Larry Rosenberg
530.
We sometimes think of the here and now as a minute, insignificant little line between a vast past and a vast future; however, the more we observe the mined the more we realize that the here and now is that which is vast and the past
and future are like vague mirages. The now is vast and immeasurable, infinite . . . . In that timeless presence,
there is the quality of delight, the natural joy of the
free mind.
– Amaro Bhikku
531.
Being mindful means knowing that our thoughts are passing mental events, not reality itself, and that we are more in touch with life as it is when we allow ourselves to experience things through the body and our senses rather than mostly through our unexamined and habitual thoughts.
– John Teasdale
532.
Even on vacation, we can fill up all our time seeking to have
a good time, only to wonder where it all went, or to come home feeling vaguely dissatisfied. We have the photo album to prove we were there, but were we really? The “postcard from the edge” reads: “Having a great time. Wish I were here.”
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
533.
To begin writing from our pain eventually engenders compassion for our small and groping lives. Out of this broken state there comes a tenderness for the cement below our feet, the dried grass cracking in a terrible wind. We can touch the things around us we once thought ugly and see their special detail, the peeling paint and gray shadows as they are – simply what they are: not bad, just part of the life around us – and love this life because it is ours and in the moment there is nothing better.
– Natalie Goldberg
534.
This is the heart of whole body eating: Be there when you eat. Achieve the fullest experience of your food. Taste it. Savor it. Pay attention to it. Rejoice in it. See how it makes your body feel. Take in all the sensations. But don’t just eat the food. Eat the ambiance. Eat the colors. Eat the aromas. Eat the conversation. Eat the company sitting next to you. Eat the entire experience.
– Marc David
535.
To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else.
– The Dalai Lama
536.
Try not to rush through your day without checking up on nature. Even if you live in the city, try to sit on a bench for a couple of minutes and watch some clouds. Listen for birds. Sit in a park. Admire a flower bed . . . Rub some petals between your fingers. Sniff. Speaking of sniffing, inhale a deep breath
of crisp winter air. Smell spring. Breathe in freshly cut grass . . .
Go outside at night and look for the moon.
– Alex J. Packer, Ph.D.
537.
It only takes a moment to shift into soulful awareness, a type
of attentiveness that turns everyday moments into meaningful ones. And it doesn’t require much effort: a simple moment of pause and acknowledgment will move you toward making the most of these moments.
– Jueli Gastwirth & Avram Davis
538.
To master any positive quality, you must master being able to access or create that positive quality in the present moment. Let’s say that you would like to master the ability to be happy and joyful whenever you wish. You only need to be able to access or create happiness and joy right now. As you do this, you will realize, “I am always in the now. Because I can be happy or joyful now, I can choose to experience this whenever I wish.” The same applies to many attributes: you only need to access them now, not in the future. You only need to choose kindness and compassion in the present moment. You only need to choose patience and serenity in the present moment.
– Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
539.
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk on either water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
540.
As we practice Momfulness, we can pay attention to the moment we are in, finding the wholeness that exists below
the busyness . . . We relax into life and stop wanting to be somewhere other than where we are. We realize that our true home is so close to us: it is in this moment; it is in the eyes of our child or in the greeting of our partner or in the hug of a dear friend. Our home is as close as our next breath.
– Denise Roy
541.
There is beauty in circumstance. Pause at any given moment. Notice the events and the people around you, Whisper to yourself: Where is the beauty in this moment, in this set of circumstances? In the very instant in which we pause, any circumstance can astound.
–Karyn Kedar
542.
Learning to be aware of our breathing is one of the single best tools we have for keeping a foothold in the present moment.
It also helps us refrain from trying to control things with our minds that cannot or do not need to be controlled, a limiting act many of us often engage in.
– Shannon Duncan
543.
What we are talking about is very practical. Mindfulness practice is simple and completely feasible. And because we are working with the mind that experiences life directly, just by sitting and doing nothing, we are doing a tremendous amount.
– Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
544.
It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding.
– Vincent Van Gogh
545.
No sight is more provocative of awe than is the night sky.
–Llewelyn Powys
546.
Be attentive in all that you do; do not judge one deed
small and another great, for you cannot always know
their significance.
– Judah HaNasi
547.
I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.
– Steven Wright
548.
We complicate moments. Hardly anything happens without the mind spinning it up into an elaborate production. It’s the elaboration that makes life more difficult than it needs to be.
– Sylvia Boorstein
549.
See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence . . .
We need silence to be able to touch our souls.
– Mother Teresa
550.
Teach us to care and not to care,
Teach us to sit still
– T.S. Eliot
551.
Within you there exists a stillness and sanctuary to which
you can retreat at any time and be yourself.
– Siddartha
552.
The winter sun is trying to come through . . . beans on the stove . . . cat asleep on the sofa . . . this is the soft music of
our lives.
– Joe (posted on GracefulPresence.blogspot.com)
553.
When it comes to the quality of our attention, we are like
a child, who, when he or she initially picks up a hammer,
just smashes away at the nail without having yet understood that there is a way to hold a hammer and hit a nail that uses no excess energy and affords an extraordinarily high degree of accuracy. In our ordinary consciousness, our attention clumsily and often even aggressively hammers away at
our experience, making judgments and demanding that things be different.
– Richard Moss, MD
554.
Life is full of tremendous trifles. Mindfulness develops the appreciation that every activity belongs to the great web of life. Trapped in our habits and conditioning, we engage in much of what we do in a preoccupied or distracted way. These patterns dull our daily lives so that we often hate doing certain things. We convince ourselves that the tasks are the problem. Yet it is our relationship to those daily responsibilities that matters.
– Christopher Titmuss
555.
Every day I connect to nature in some way. I might look at the sky filled with puffy clouds or twinkling stars, stand barefoot in cool grass, play in the snow, walk in squishy mud, smell newly mown hay, listen to frogs in spring and summer, taste sweet strawberries from the field, or feel the wind and sun on my skin. These small meditations remind my soul that there is something bigger than the thoughts that fill my mind throughout the day.
– Vicki L. Dury
556.
I embrace emerging experience. I participate in discovery.
I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector.
– William Stafford
557.
The whole world is you. Yet you keep thinking there is something else.
– Hsueh-Feng
558.
When I take a moment to observe myself having thoughts,
I am no longer the thoughts. I get to be and observe at the same time. That's why if I continue to come back to my breath which always occurs in the here and now, it draws me into the present. From that vantage point I can observe as past and future attempt to draw me away from the moment. This paying attention to the here and now, to the breath, to the observing one's thoughts without being critical or judgmental is what many people call Mindfulness.
– mindfulness.com
559.
Put simply, “This Is It." This moment, even if it is flavored with sadness, is It -- the Big It, God, the Friend, Enlightenment, the Now, Being, Awareness. There are no bells and whistles to announce God's Presence: only the opened mind of the one who is present with It.
– Jay Michaelson
560.
Presence equals stillness, activation of the senses, and a sense of self that spans the physical and the spiritual. Presence is about more than just growing quiet.; first the mind becomes quiet, then the spirit becomes involved, then new power courses through you.
– Eric Maisel (in Ten Zen Seconds)
561.
Who bends a knee where violets grow
A hundred secret things shall know.
– Rachel Field
562.
Courage is the key that opens the mind. While the closed mind limits itself to the familiar and fixed compartments of ideas, views, beliefs, and habits the open mind encompasses a space of limitless possibilities. The open mind is not for the faint hearted. It take courage both to hold what you know and like lightly,to behold what you have long denied and to encounter and befriend what appears strange or unfamiliar.With courage we are equipped to fearlessly know our fear, and to feel compassion towards the burning pain of our anger. Within the open mind there are few certainties and many possibilities.
– Joel and Michelle Levy
563.
If you listen deeply for the soul bridge within, you may become aware of an infinite and eternal listening. What is possible with your silent awareness, your wakeful listening and your seeing? If you listen deeply, your listening may invite another person to an awareness of their Essential Presence. In the warm hold of holy listening coming through you - a listening from wholeness - another may experience the presence of holy listening within herself.
– Anonymous
564.
It is in meditation, in quiet walks in the park, when standing in awe before a sunrise or a sunset, and in the pause between two affirmations that there comes the stillness that is the very heart and soul of who we are and the place of encounter with God. It is the still point between the sobs of a grieving parent. It is in the space between the canvas and the artist’s brush, in the space between two heartbeats and before and after a lover’s sigh. We hear it between two notes of music and between two clangings of a church bell.
– Father Paul Keenan
565.
I will appreciate the moment. I will notice the good things that are happening to me right now, whether it’s a beautiful sky, a happy child, an efficient grocery store clerk, or hitting all the green lights for a change. I don’t know how many years or days I’ll live, so I want to live this moment fully. I will ask myself often, “If this turns out to be the last day of my life, have I enjoyed it to the fullest extent possible?” It’s easy to lapse into worrying about the future, or dreaming of better things to come, or stewing in our regrets over the past while we miss the golden sunlight streaming in our window, or don’t hear the lovely song playing on the radio. I will try not to miss this moment because I’m so focused on what I should be doing next. Even when I am working toward a future goal, I will try to enjoy the process of getting there. I will ask myself constantly, “What can I do to wring the most joy from this moment, from this experience?” I will remind myself that taking out the garbage in the rain is a chance to smell the wet earth, to feel nature’s fresh raindrops on my skin, maybe even to stomp in a puddle. I will seize every opportunity to laugh and have fun and learn from every task, no matter how routine or boring. Housework becomes fun when I blast Motown and dance while drying the dishes or sing along
with the Supremes while making the bed, so this is what I
will do to make my life joyful.
– Molly Stanahan
566.
I am a storyteller at heart. I am a man who goes about trying to be awake to the news of the immediate ordinary world; to make sense of what I see; to pass my thoughts along . . . And
I say, in one way or another, “Meanwhile don’t miss the good stuff. Pass it on.”
– Robert Fulghum
567.
When you change the way you look at things, the things
you look at change.
– Max Planck
568.
If you think about what you’re getting from this moment, you’re not in this moment.
– Steve Hagen
569.
What can anyone give you greater than now,
Starting here, right in this room, when you
turn around?
– William Stafford
570.
One after another they {shooting stars] come, blazing across the heavens. And without warning a spell of reverence falls across the backyard. We lie in silence while the ground beneath us grows holy and God’s presence burns across the sky, yet deep and luminous inside me too. It is a rare moment. Not because the sight is so spectacular, but because I am aware of it. Because I have been taken out of myself.– Sue Monk Kidd
571.
Somewhere deep inside there is a sound that is mine alone, and I struggle daily to hear it and tune my life to it.
– Rachel Naomi Remen
572.
The Zen master Ling Chi said that the miracle is not to walk on burning charcoal or on the water; the miracle is just to walk on earth. You breathe in. You become aware of the fact that you are alive. You are still alive and you are walking on this beautiful planet . . . . The greatest of all miracles is to be alive.
– Yhich Nhat Hanh
573.
What stops you from being, from being present, is nothing but your hope for the future. Hoping for something to be different keeps you looking for some future fantasy. But it is a mirage; you’ll never get there . . . when you follow the mirage you are rejecting yourself.
– A.H. Almaas
574.
If we’re always in the present, how do we learn from the past or plan for the future? Within the context of mind training, when we have a need to think about something in the past or the future, we’re awake to the fact that we are thinking about the past or the future within the space of present awareness.
In other words, we can have thoughts of the past or future knowing they are just thoughts, and not be taken away by them.
– Dr. Joe Parent
575.
Thoughts open you or close you. The thought that you might not be able to pay your rent closes you. The thought that the Universe is your friend opens you. The thought that your marriage might dissolve closes you. The thought that you are your own source of well-being opens you. What your thoughts open or close you to is your existence. They determine whether you will fear and resist your experiences, or whether you will embrace them and be supported by them.
– Gary Zukav
576.
In order to overcome hesitation and commit, a leap is necessary. The way to be daring, the way to leap, is to disown the ups and downs of your thoughts and step beyond your hope and fear.
– Chogyam Trungpa
577.
Most of the thoughts that rob one of serenity have to do with being upset about the past and feeling anxious about the future. When you master the ability to live totally in the present and you are able to be calm about that present, you will have mastered serenity. One needs to plan ahead. This is one definition of a wise person. Do so serenely in the present.
– Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
578.
The other day I was walking along the river. The wind was blowing. Suddenly I thought, Oh! The air really exists. We know that the air is there, but unless the wind blows against our face, we are not aware of it. Here in the wind I was suddenly aware, yet it's really there. And the sun too. I was suddenly aware of the sun, shining through the fair trees. Its warm, its brightness, and all this completely free, completely gratuitous. Simply there for us to enjoy. And without my knowing it, completely spontaneously, my two hands came together, and I realized that I was making a deep and reverent bow. And it occurred to me that this is all that matters: that we can bow, take a deep bow. Just that.
Just that.
– Rev. Eido Tai Shimano
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