Mindfulness

The practice of mindfulness seeks to become aware of subjective conscious experience.

B

 * There is, monks, this one way to the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and distress, for the disappearance of pain and sadness, for the gaining of the right path, for the realization of Nibbāna :—that is to say, the four foundations of mindfulness.
 * Gautama Buddha, Digha Nikaya, Sutta 22 (Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta), as translated by M. Walshe, (1987), p. 335

G

 * It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe.
 * Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press: 2002), Oration 27


 * Mindfulness is nonconceptual awareness. Another English term for sati is “bare attention.” It is not thinking. It does not get involved with thought or concepts. It does not get hung up on ideas or opinions or memories. It just looks. Mindfulness registers experiences, but it does not compare them. It does not label them or categorize them. It just observes everything as if it was occurring for the first time. It is not analysis that is based on reflection and memory. It is, rather, the direct and immediate experiencing of whatever is happening, without the medium of thought. It comes before thought in the perceptual process.
 * Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English (2011), p. 134


 * Mindfulness is present-moment awareness. It takes place in the here and now. It is the observance of what is happening right now, in the present. It stays forever in the present, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time.
 * Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English (2011), p. 134

H

 * Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.  p.83
 * Hermann Hesse in Journey to the East (1932)

K

 * The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness.
 * Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

N

 * Mindfulness, though so highly praised and capable of such great achievements, is not at all a “mystical” state, beyond the ken and reach of the average person. It is, on the contrary, something quite simple and common, and very familiar to us.
 * Nyanaponika, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 24

P

 * It may be relevant here to recall gratefully a fraternal correction I was kindly offered by the Archimandrite Ambrosius of the Greek Orthodox Church. After listening to a lecture I delivered at Oxford University some years ago, he gently chided me (in private, not in public) for not perceiving the difference between the brand of Hellenism affecting Western theology that had absorbed the philosophical thought of ancient Greece, and the Hellenism of Eastern Orthodox theology which had assimilated the spiritual praxis of their non-Christian ancestors. Mulling over this critical observation of his, I came to understand why our scholastic tradition has not given importance to what Greek Orthodox spirituality has named nepsis (vigilance), which is its own technical term for mindfulness.
 * Aloysius Pieris, "Spirituality as Mindfulness: Biblical and Buddhist Approaches," Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, vol. 10, no. 1, Spring 2010

R

 * Life is a collection of moments. Mindfulness is beautification of the moments.
 * Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment - Living in the Breath (2015)


 * Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance.
 * Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment - Living in the Breath (2015)


 * Mind is a flexible mirror, adjust it, to see a better world.
 * Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment - Living in the Breath (2015)


 * Mindfulness is not chasing the moment but beautifying the moment.
 * Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment - Living in the Breath (2015)

T

 * See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
 * Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p.56


 * Most humans are still in the grip of the egoic mode of consciousness: identified with their mind and run by their mind. If they do not free themselves from their mind in time, they will be destroyed by it. They will experience increasing confusion, conflict, violence, illness, despair, madness. Egoic mind has become like a sinking ship. If you don't get off, you will go down with it. The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet.
 * Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p.67


 * Open your eyes and see the fear, the despair, the greed, and the violence that are all-pervasive. See the heinous cruelty and suffering on an unimaginable scale that humans have inflicted and continue to inflict on each other as well as on other life forms on the planet. You don't need to condemn. Just observe. That is sin. That is insanity.
 * Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p.71


 * If a word doesn't work for you anymore, then drop it and replace it with one that does work. If you don't like the word sin, then call it unconsciousness or insanity. That may get you closer to the truth, the reality behind the word, than a long-misused word like sin, and leaves little room for guilt.
 * Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p.71


 * Being aware of your breathing takes attention away from thinking and creates space. It is one way of generating consciousness. Although the fullness of consciousness is already there as the unmanifested, we are here to bring consciousness into this dimension...The new earth arises as more and more people discover that their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this world and so use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness... Awakened consciousness then takes over from ego and begins to run your life. You may then find that an activity that you have been engaged in for a long time naturally begins to expand into something much bigger when it becomes empowered by consciousness.
 * Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)


 * “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” writes the biblical prophet (Revelation 21:1). The foundation for a new earth is a new heaven – the awakened consciousness. The earth – external reality – is only its outer reflection. The arising of a new heaven and by implication a new earth are not future events that are going to make us free. Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening.
 * Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)


 * Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence. So the new heaven, the awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a new earth are arising within you at this moment, and if they are not arising at this moment, they are no more than a thought in your head and therefore not arising at all.
 * Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)