Quotes about Contemplation

The reason why social life is complicated, is because your parents superimpose certain values and norms. Whereas such values, alike the once most people get told by religion. Aren't real and not accurate to present date. The confusion of such a discovery makes people cling to working methodology, simplifying their life but disabling the self-contemplation part of their minds. In so, people become one big generalisation machine just confusing, as there are more exceptions than rules. Because real life comes closer to science than anything else.

It's important to be heroic, ambitious, productive, efficient, creative, and progressive, but these qualities don't necessarily nurture the soul. The soul has different concerns, of equal value: downtime for reflection, conversation, and reverie; beauty that is captivating and pleasuring; relatedness to the environs and to people; and any animal's rhythm of rest and activity.

Meditation is not contemplation because it is not thinking at all – consistent, inconsistent, crazy, sane. It is not thinking at all; it is witnessing. It is just sitting silently deep within yourself, looking at whatsoever is happening inside and outside both. Outside there is traffic noise, inside there is also traffic noise -- the traffic in the head. So many thoughts – trucks and buses of thoughts and trains and airplanes of thoughts, rushing in every direction. But you are simply sitting aloof, unconcerned, watching everything with no evaluation.

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.

When a man is stimulated by his own thoughts, full of desire and dwelling on what is attractive, his craving increases even more. He is making the fetter even stronger. But he who takes pleasure in stilling his thoughts, practising the contemplation of what is repulsive, and remaining recollected, now he will make an end of craving, he will snap the bonds of Mara. His aim is accomplished, he is without fear, rid of craving and without stain. He has removed the arrows of changing existence. This is his last body.

"I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room."

Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God. Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God.

Gandalf: Three hundred lives of men I have walked this earth and now I have no time.

Trust the uni~verse and respekt your hair.

There is a principle which is the basis of things, which all speech aims to say, and all action to evolve, a simple, quiet, undescribed, undescribable presence, dwelling very peacefully in us, our rightful lord: we are not to do, but to let do; not to work, but to be worked upon.

"Why would one give up everything to live on the streets of India, when there are so many wonderful opportunities to be homeless right here in America? Closer to home, and without the expense. Whether you stake your spot and sit in meditative contemplation, or stalk the streets like a raving lunatic, like John The Baptist---others---here or there, will still look upon you with total indifference."

Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused.

I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?

Contain your experience with the divine so that it does not escape you but rather shapes you.  Be silent.  Silence will help you avoid engaging in the games of competition and illusion that regularly seduce us in the outside world.  Silence also helps you avoid distraction.  It helps focus the busy mind---the mind that always has to be doing something, thinking something, the mind that always has to be otherwise engaged lest it become introspective and allow the soul's voice to override its own.  The silence I am describing is a silence that you use to contain the grace you receive when you enter the Castle of your soul.  This quality of silence allows you to engage in discernment.  You carry this silence within you, even when you are with others.  It allows you to hold your center amid the chaos of your life; it keeps you clear so that you do not do or say things you will regret or make decisions out of fear.

Silence is like a cradle holding our endeavors and our will; a silent spaciousness sustains us in our work and at the same time connects us to larger worlds that, in the busyness of our daily struggle to achieve, we have not yet investigated. Silence is the soul's break for freedom.

That which a man acquires by contemplation he should spend in love.

Take an hour every day at dawn and give it to your Self. Meet your Self there, in the holy moment. Then go about your day. You will be a different person.

Your deepest, most perfect happiness will be found within, and once you find it, nothing exterior to your Self can match it, nor can anything destroy it.

The question of what is "traditional" always baffles me.  Who is to say whether something is traditional or not?  The question I ask is, "When does contemporary become traditional?"

Contemplation is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.