Karen Russell Quotes

Taoist chanting, Confucian chanting, Christian chanting, Buddhist chanting don't matter. Chanting Coca Cola, Coca Cola, Coca Cola … can be just as good if you keep a clear mind. But if you don't keep a clear mind, and are only following your thinking as you mouth the words, even the Buddha cannot help you.

When you trance out properly, when you're completely in that world, there is no other world, so there's no conflict.

Sincere thought means thought of concentration (quiet awareness). The thought of a distracted mind cannot be sincere

I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.

When a man thinks happily, he finds no foot-track in the field he traverses. All spontaneous thought is irrespective of all else.

You grow your best thoughts in silence, solitude, and meditation. When you relax and think deeply, you are giving your inmost powers their best opportunity to disclose themselves.

For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.... I think it's very much like dreaming or like surfing. You go out there and wait for a wave, and when it comes it takes you somewhere and you don't know where it'll go.

I loved meditation. I love it because that's where you find what your voice is. You cannot really find it easily in this culture. This culture is the noisiest culture ever, ever. I think the damage that it has done to people is in that realm of silencing them. They are overwhelmed by gadgets. They don't know what to think because they're so heavily programmed about what it is that they should want and should think.

I don't think of myself as making art. I do what I do because I want to, because painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.

I'm trying to be present, not thinking and worrying about the past or the future. That's such a waste of time, you know?

Some people think that meditation takes time away from physical accomplishment. Taken to extremes, of course, that's true. Most people, however, find that meditation creates more time than it takes.

One way of pointing to this realization is, when you think you have big problems, ask yourself, "What problem do I have at this moment?" Usually, you will find that you don't have a problem at this moment because you're sitting here and you're breathing, you're looking out the window, and it's fine.

I think you have to love yourself and you have to have a strong sense of self-love in order to really show up for other people, because if you love yourself, you're not questioning your own mind any more and you are really able to be present and available for others.

Writing at least is a silent meditation even though you’re going a hundred miles an hour.

Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you awaken you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.

I sometimes think that I think too much. Sometimes I envy the ignorant. I envy people who can just turn it off and be blissful and not care. But that isn't me. I just have never found a way.

Don't think you have to be solemn to meditate. To meditate, well, you have to smile a lot.

On my hike my brain was left to wander. That was often maddening because it was tedious and monotonous sometimes, but then my the mind would take over, and that's when I'd start hearing the music in my head or thinking deeply about people I know or things that I didn't even know I remembered anymore. Those thoughts would be there. I wouldn't have had them otherwise.

I listen to music a lot, if I need to get into a particular space. I do stretching and breathing, and take time to mostly be quiet and find the stillness. I think that's important.

I didn't fight or shame my thoughts, I questioned them, and they stopped shaming me.

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

The main factor in meditation is to keep the mind active in its own pursuit without taking in external impressions or thinking of other matters.

Meditation is a great way to stay centered and I think inversions are great for aging. Specifically, I think the Kundalini yoga is really a life changer.

Whenever your mind is totally absorbed in whatever activities you are performing, your mind will remain calm and content.