Quotes about Meditation

Just as we care for our bodies with good food and rest, so we must also care for our spiritual selves, that part of us that is connected to God. If we are spiritually ill, our bodies and minds also become sick. This is why regular prayer and times of silent contemplation are necessary parts of our daily lives. Periodically, we must also take extra measures of self-examination and learning, that we might be ever-perfected in the grace of the infinite and perfect God.

Search your hearts and minds for the spiritual wounds of unforgiveness and fear, which are atheistic and unchristian, and repent of them so that you might be healed by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Your Father in Christ,
Bishop JOSEPHhttp://www.antiochianladiocese.org/

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

Remember one thing: meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action.

Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful.

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.

Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative.

This is the way of meditation: encountering the present in all its tremendous beauty, just being in the present. Inside, the mind stops. Outside, the world changes totally. It is no more the ordinary world you have known before. In fact, you have not known it at all. Your mind was distorting everything, your mind was creating fantasies. Your eyes were full of fantasies and you were looking though those fantasies. They never allowed you to see that which is. If the mind is gone, even for a moment, suddenly the whole existence explodes upon you.

Religion has only one answer and that answer is meditation. And meditation means how to empty yourself.

Meditation means removing all your prejudices, putting all your conclusions aside, seeing without any hindrance, seeing without any curtains, seeing clearly without any mediation of any thought, seeing without Buddha standing between you and reality, or Krishna, or Christ.

Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent, not even a flicker of thought – and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees.

"Boast not of tomorrow, for you know not what any day may bring forth" (Proverbs 27:1).

Brethren, let us not boast of that which is not in our power. The Lord has placed the times and the years under His power and He disposes of them. Only God Himself alone knows whether tomorrow's day will number us among the living or the dead. Some have died on the eve of their marriage; again, others have descended into the grave on the eve of their coronation with a royal diadem. Therefore, let no one say that tomorrow will be for me the happiest day of my life; tomorrow, I enter into marriage! Or, tomorrow I will be crowned with a royal diadem! Or, tomorrow I am going to a great feast! Or, tomorrow a great gain is coming to me! O, let no one speak of the happiness of tomorrow's day. Behold, yet this night your soul may depart your body and tomorrow you will find yourself surrounded by black demons in the tollhouses [Mitarstvo]! And yet, even this night, a man can be separated from his relatives and friends, from wealth and honor, from the sun and the stars and find himself in a totally unknown company, in an unseen place and at an unexpected judgment.

Instead of boasting of tomorrow's day, it would be better to pray to God to "Give us this day our daily bread." Perhaps today's day may be our last day on earth. That is why it is better to spend this day in repentance for all our past days on earth rather than vainly fantasizing about tomorrow's day, about the day which perhaps will not dawn for us. Vain fantasizing about tomorrow's day cannot bring us any good, but repentance for one day with tears can save us from eternal fire.

O righteous Lord, burn up the insane vanity that is in us.

+To You be glory and thanks always. Amen.+

From Prologue of Ohrid by St. Nicolai Vilimirovich

The only way to see if it works is to try it. What have you got to lose besides suffering?

Only if you see yourself as zero and being full of passions can you see God.  If you can not see that you are nothing, then you cannot see God.  God lives only in the humble person.

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it's about letting go of control.

Meditation is a dress rehearsal for death.

True meditation is letting go of manipulating our experience.

During a retreat on spirituality a woman rose and said: "I have no need of these practices. I feel spiritual all the time without doing anything." Reb Yerachmiel looked at her more than a moment and said: "The next time you have an urge to be spiritual, take a cold shower. Then dry off and do something kind for someone else."

The mental ability to concentrate is inherent to all; it is not extraordinary or mysterious. Meditation is not something that a Yogi has to teach you; you already have the ability to shut out thoughts.

To achieve that state of lasting happiness and absolute peace, we must first know how to calm the mind, to concentrate and go beyond the mind. By turning the mind's concentration inward, upon the self, we can deepen that experience of perfect concentration. This is the state of Meditation.

Meditation is a creation in our subconscious mind and it has a beginning but no ending.  it's just a happening by itself.  All you can do is create an environment & circumstance for it.  Further, the fruit, as result of it is enlightenment.  On the other hand, happiness & sorrow are creation in our conscious mind & has beginning & ending which replace each other. 

Stop complaining. Take charge of your life. You need to control the mind and the senses - sharp, alert, awake. Focus your life on God by getting control of your senses. That loss of control of your senses means that you're not going to God. You control your mind with intelligence. Use your brain for control. Hardly anybody is controlling their mind and their emotions, hardly anybody. And because of this, most people are in chaos in one way or another in their lives.

Practice (...) meditation while you are on the phone; for the entire time that you are on the phone, no matter who you are talking to, regardless or your like or dislike of them, you remain 100 percent in control of your being - which you can only do by controlling your emotions. Do it in a really attentive way. Don't chatter and communicate about anything unimportant. Remember to be constantly listening to everyone you are talking to; listen to the tone of their voice; be in a calm, peaceful, and controlled state. Bring a meditative state and consciousness into your life 24 hours a day, so that you will want to do this meditation for the pleasure it brings.

Mastery in meditation is not the cessation of thoughts. Rather, it is mastery over the belief that your thoughts are who you are. Then, the mind and its musings are no longer troubling to the meditator.

There is no meditation without wisdom, and there is no wisdom without meditation. When a man has both meditation and wisdom, he is indeed close to nirvana.

I meditate for the last time on this mountain that is bare, though others all around are white with snow.  Like the bare peak of the koan, this one is not different from myself.  I know this mountain because I am this mountain, I can feel it breathing at this moment, as its grass tops stray against the snows.  If the snow leopard should leap from the rock above and manifest itself before me - S-A-A-O! - then in that moment of pure fright, out of my wits, I might truly perceive it, and be free.

The real purpose of prayer and meditation is to travel deeply enough within yourself to attract the presence of God.

Meditation is union with the divine.

Koan: Why DID the chicken cross the road?

There is neither unwisdom nor ignorance; neither bondage, nor liberation. There is but one pure consciousness.

When you're with stillness, you merge with everything around you. You can't pin-point where it's coming from. From inside? From outside? Where? It just is.

The mark of the true meditator, the mark of the true sadhak, is love. I don't have to see or know how much sadhana you do in your life; I just have to spend a moment with you to sense if the perfume of love is with you.