Quotes about Presence

How can one become enlightened in one single moment? One can, because one is enlightened -- one just has to recognize the fact. It is not something that happens from the outside, it is something that arises from the inside. It has always been there but you were clouded, you were full of thoughts.

Enlightenment is finding that there is nothing to find. Enlightenment is to come to know that there is nowhere to go. Enlightenment is the understanding that this is all, that this is perfect, that this is it. Enlightenment is not an achievement, it is an understanding that there is nothing to achieve, nowhere to go. You are already there -- you have never been away. You cannot be away from there. God has never been missed. Maybe you have forgotten, that's all. Maybe you have fallen asleep, that's all.

The teaching of the buddhas is: Find time and a place to remain unoccupied. That’s what meditation is all about. Find at least one hour every day to sit silently doing nothing, utterly unoccupied, just watching whatsoever passes by inside. In the beginning you will be very sad, looking at things inside you; you will feel only darkness and nothing else, and ugly things and all kinds of black holes appearing. You will feel agony, no ecstasy at all. But if you persist, persevere, the day comes when all these agonies disappear, and behind the agonies is the ecstasy.

I simply wanted to experience the presence of this man [Gerald Heard] who had revolutionized my understanding. After a while we sat in silence, gazing at the barren canyon walls. And the mute desert seemed to carry on our conversation for us.

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

To describe the animate life of particular things is simply the most precise and parsimonious way to articulate the things as we spontaneously experience them, prior to all our conceptualizations and definitions.

Our most immediate experience of things is necessarily an experience of reciprocal encounter – of tension, communication, and commingling. From within the depths of this encounter, we know the thing or phenomenon only as our interlocutor – as a dynamic presence that that confronts us and draws us into relation. We conceptually immobilize or objectify the phenomenon only by mentally absenting ourselves from this relation, by forgetting or repressing our sensuous involvement. To define another being as an inert or passive object is to deny its ability to actively engage us and to provoke our senses; we thus block our perceptual reciprocity with that being. By linguistically defining the surrounding world as a determinate set of objects, we cut our conscious, speaking selves off from the spontaneous life of our sensing bodies.

If, on the other hand, we wish to describe a particular phenomenon without repressing our direct experience, then we cannot avoid speaking of the phenomenon as an active, animate entity with which we find ourselves engaged. To the sensing body, no thing presents itself as utterly passive or inert. Only by affirming the animateness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world.

You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind in itself is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.

The Earth with its layers of land and water and air provides the space within which all living things are nurtured and the context within which humans attain their identity. If in the excitement of a secular technology reverence for the Earth has diminished in the past, especially in the western world, humans now experience a sudden shock at the devastation they have wrought on their own habitation. The ancient human-Earth relationship must be recovered in a new context, in its mystical as well as in its physical functioning. There is need for awareness that the mountains and rivers and all living things, the sky and its sun and moon and clouds all constitute a healing, sustaining sacred presence for humans which they need as much for their psychic integrity as for their physical nourishment. This presence whether experienced as Allah, as Atman, as Sunyata, or as the Buddha-nature or as Bodhisattva; whether as Tao or as the One or as the Divine Feminine, is the atmosphere in which humans breathe deepest and without which they eventually suffocate.

Being present is real work.

When we are able to make ourselves as still within as an untouched mountain lake, we have an exquisite reflection of all that is in and around us.

If we are to contribute to the changes so desperately needed in our agencies, communities, and societies, we must first and foremost develop the capacity to be present with all that arises, stay centered throughout, and be skilled at maintaining an integrated self.

The presence of advanced attention is the only thing that really changes us, and the benefits of receiving it are always extraordinary.

Sometimes it's a form of love to talk to somebody that you've nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

Isn't that how it is with words and beliefs?  They're only useful when you don't need them.  They're not like me...here I am.

A present from the heart: I'm not here because I'm supposed to be here, or because I'm trapped here, but because I'd rather be with you than anywhere in the world.

Our consciousness does not need to be informed by formal religious awareness in order to be disposed and recptive to the divine disclosure. Our very nature as human beings is to be open and porous to deeper meaning. And the spiritual story of humankind, unfolding over the millennia, suggests that the divine life force (God) reveals itself with a prodigious generosity of presence, power, and cultural expression.

You know that our breathing is the inhaling and exhaling of air.  The organ that serves for this is the lungs that lie round the heart, so that the air passing through them thereby envelops the heart.  Thus breathing is a natural way to the heart.  And so, having collected your mind within you, lead it into the channel of breathing through which air reaches the heart and, together with this inhaled air, force your mind to descend into the heart and to remain there. 

"If you think you're enlightened go spend a week with your family."

"Before you leave this planet, change just one person's mind...Guess whose?"

Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity... Choose ye this day, this hour, for no Redeemer liveth!

Focus attention on the feeling inside you.
Know that it is the pain-body.
Accept that it is there.
Don't think about it - don't let the feeling turn into thinking.
Don't judge or analyze.
Don't make an identity for yourself out of it.
Stay present, and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you.
Become aware not only of the emotional pain but also of "the one who observes," the silent watcher.
This is the power of the Now, the power of your own conscious presence.
Then see what happens.

"They have heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy to them, as it has to me. "Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future."

If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to

 Then he is not omnipotent.

If he is able, but not willing

 Then he is malevolent.

If he is both able and willing

 Then whence cometh evil?

If he is neither able nor willing

 Then why call him God?

If your everyday practice is open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that - then that will take you are far as you can go.  And then you'll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.

The dream was always running ahead of one. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was a miracle.

So be true to life by being true to your inner purpose. As you become present and thereby total in what you do, your actions become charged with spiritual power. P 269

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight.  The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was meant to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

"What is God? The eternal one life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of the one life deep within yourself and all creatures; to be it! Therefore, all love is the love of God."

It's common to say that trees come from seeds. But how can a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources need to grow a tree.  These must come from the medium or environment within which the tree grows.  But the seed does provide something that is crucial : a place where the whole of the tree starts to form.  As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth.  In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges.