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Quotations on:
Mindfulness
The Buddha |
Attention leads to immortality. Carelessness leads to death. Those who
pay
attention will not die, while the careless are as good as dead already.
Foolish, ignorant people indulge in careless lives, whereas a clever
man guards
his attention as his most precious possession. |
Ajahn Chah |
Try to be mindful, and let things take their natural course. Then your
mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds
of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly
see the nature of all things. You will see many strange and wonderful things
come and go, but you will be still. This is the happiness of the Buddha.
If you have time to be mindful, you have time to meditate. |
The Buddha said that we should completely subdue our minds. Whatever we do,
for good or ill, it is our mind that is the true agent. In the very depths of
our being, we all desire one thing: we want to be happy. We don't want to suffer.
But because of this - this wanting - the three defilements of craving, aversion,
and ignorance arise, and suffering is what we get. It is because of these defilements
that we accumulate actions that prevent us from escaping from Samsara.
So it is important right from the start to see the difference between a good
motivation and an evil one. Our own mindfulness should be our teacher. We must
examine what is positive
and what is negative
with mindfulness. If positive thoughts arise, we should go along with them.
If nonvirtuous thoughts arise, we should put a stop to them. A virtuous mind
is the source of happiness. An unvirtuous mind is the source of pain.
Dudjom Rinpoche, Counsels from My Heart
Thich Nhat Hanh |
A friend of mine drinks a lot of whiskey and
is concened about how this will affect his path.
Thich Naht Hahn
replied: "Thats OK if he drinks mindfully, he will realise what it is doing, and
will gradualy stop drinking
One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and
nuns. he did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly
silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind
the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone
in the audience smiled at him and at the flower.... To me the meaning is quite
simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to
see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking,
who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled.
That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present
moment, we miss everything.
Peace Is Every Step
Mindfulness is the energy that helps us to be truly present. When you are truly present, you are more in control of situations, you have more love, patience, understanding, and compassion. That strengthens and improves your quality of being. It can be very healing to touch your true nature of no-self. Psychotherapy can learn a lot from this teaching.
Answers from the Heart: Practical Responses to Burning Questions |
In Asian languages, the word for ‘mind’ and the word for ‘heart’ are the same word. So when we hear the word ‘mindfulness’, we have to inwardly also hear ‘heartfulness’ in order to grasp it even as a concept, and especially as a way of being.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness is not just a word or a discourse by the
Buddha, but a meaningful state of mind.
It means we have to be here now, in this very moment,
and we have to know what is happening
internally and externally. It means being alert to our
motives and learning to change
unwholesome thoughts and emotions into wholesome ones.
Mindfulness is a mental activity
that in due course eliminates all suffering.
Ayya Khema, 'Be an Island'
Mindfulness is the root of Dharma
Mindfulness is the body of practice
Mindfulness is the fortress of the mind
Mindfulness is the aid to the wisdom of innate wakefulness
Lack of Mindfulness will allow the negative forces to overcome you
Without Mindfulness you will be swept away by laziness
Lack of Mindfulness is the creator of evil deeds
Without Mindfulness and presence of mind, nothing can be accomplished
Lack of Mindfulness piles up lots of shit
Without Mindfulness you sleep in an ocean of piss
Without Mindfulness you are a heartless zombie, a walking corpse
Dear Dharma friends, please be mindful!
By the aspiration of the holy lamas, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and lineage masters,
May all Dharma friends attain stable Mindfulness and ascend the throne of perfect
Awakening.
Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche
These are the difficult practices of mindfulness, of expulsion and of 'interrupting
the flow.'
As for the first of these, the difficult practice of mindfulness, it is necessary
to recognize afflictive emotions as soon as they arise and it is hard, at first,
to remain sufficiently aware to be able to do this. However, when negative emotions
arise, we should identify them as anger, desire or stupidity. Even when emotions
have been recognized, it is not easy to drive them out with the antidote. If,
for instance, an uncontrollably strong emotion comes over us, so that we feel
helplessly in its power, we should nevertheless confront it and question it.
Where are its weapons? Where are its muscles? Where is its great army and its
political strength? We will see that emotions are just insubstantial thoughts,
by nature empty: they come from nowhere, they go nowhere, they remain nowhere.
When we are able to repel our defiled emotions, there comes the difficult practice
of 'interrupting the flow.' This means that, on the basis of the antidote described,
defiled emotions are eliminated just like a bird flying through the air: no
trace is left behind. These are practices in which we should really strive.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the Seven-Point Mind Training
Both mindfulness and discriminative alertness are needed in responding to sensory
input of the three types--attractive, unattractive and neutral. Once again,
in this tradition mindfulness does not mean simply to witness. It is a more
discriminative kind of thing. You are asking yourself, "What is my response?"
and then actively responding by applying the antidotes to attachment and hostility.
The word mindfulness is a little bit different in different contexts. Here,
Mindfulness refers to the mental faculty of being able to maintain continuity
of awareness of an object. Vigilance is concerned with the quality of mind,
watching to see, for example, if the mind is veering off to other objects.
Gen Lamrimpa (Ven. Jampal Tenzin), Calming the Mind: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on Cultivating Meditative
Quiescence
Ani Tenzin Palmo |
While I was in Malaysia, I saw a T-shirt depicting a surfboard aloft huge waves.
Sitting on the surfboard was a figure meditating cross-legged. The slogan read,
"Riding the waves of life, be mindful, be happy." That's it. Awareness.
Being present. Knowing thoughts as thoughts, emotions as emotions. It's just
like riding a surfboard. You gradually develop the poise to cruise along on
the roughest seas until, no longer immersed in the waves, you are riding on
top of them. Of course you have to start with small waves until you get your
balance. Then the higher the wave, the better! Likewise, when we begin to train
in awareness, it is better if we have an atmosphere which is nonthreatening
and peaceful. That's why people go on retreat. That's also a reason why people
set aside regular sitting periods. But once we learn how to be balanced, we
become like a surfer who finds that the bigger the wave, the greater the fun.
Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism
When
we rush in with this mental chatter, we are no longer being mindful. We are just
thinking about being mindful. Mindfulness is not thinking about, it is being present
and actually knowing in the moment without any mental commentary. If commentary
begins to happen, we simply ignore it and return to being present in the moment.
Think about this. There are so many things happening in our lives that we never
really experience. We experience only ideas, interpretations, and comparisons.
We dwell on things that happened in the past or anticipate future events. But
we almost never experience the moment itself. It is for this reason that we often
find our lives boring and meaningless. What we need to realize is that this sense
of meaninglessness does not come from our lives, but from the quality of awareness
with which we live our lives.
Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings
on Practical Buddhism |
Mindfulness is the root of all the methods that tame the mind. First it focuses the mind. Then it eases the mind. Finally it is the luminous nature, beyond thoughts.
Patrul Rinpoche
Bare awareness is not easy to develop and maintain because of the mind's disposition
to be constantly preoccupied by thoughts. We easily lose attention because our
mind is so busy. When we do, our emotional life can creep up on us and take
us over. Without mindfulness, the capacity to maintain attention, disidentification
is very difficult, and bare awareness even more so. Through meditation it is
possible to cultivate a quiet, unintrusive awareness that greatly strengthens
our capacity to remain with our feelings. We simply allow their presence without
judging them, or needing to make them different.
The early stage of meditation focuses attention and cultivates mindfulness.
Mindfulness is our capacity to watch and remain conscious as emotions, feelings,
and thoughts arise. We may begin in meditation by observing the breath and gradually
quietening the mind from the constant discursive chatter that interrupts our
attention. In time a quality of bare awareness is established free from the
conceptual confusion that discriminates and evaluates what arises and parcels
it up in conceptual boxes of good or bad. Furthermore, this quiet awareness
does not become pulled into the contents of mental activity and drown in their
confusion.
Rob Preece, The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra
If this elephant of mind is bound on all sides by the cord of mindfulness,
All fear disappears and complete happiness comes.
All enemies: all the tigers, lions, elephants, bears, serpents (of our emotions);
And all the keepers of hell; the demons and the horrors,
All of these are bound by the mastery of your mind,
And by the taming of that one mind, all are subdued,
Because from the mind are derived all fears and immeasurable sorrows.
Shantideva
Mindfulness of oneself cultivates wisdom.
Mindfulness of others cultivates compassion.
Stonepeace
At certain times, a silent mind is very important, but 'silent' does not mean closed. The silent mind is an alert, awakened mind; a mind seeking the nature of reality.
Lama Yeshe
Last
updated:
December 11, 2016
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