Pema Chodron Quotes

The very actions themselves can be a meditation. For me, walking is certainly a meditation if I walk for awhile. First my mind is busy and I'm thinking about different things and after a while that starts to fall away and I start to become very present in the moment. And that feeling of being present in the moment is being. That's when we know we're connecting with being energy.

Go deep into meditation. and be meditation I mean silence, awareness, witnessing. You can meditate any time of the day, you can meditate working, walking, doing things. Meditation is not something separate from life; it should not be separate, otherwise it remains a little artificial. Meditation should be spread all over life. You should walk in meditation, you should sit in meditation; that means silently, fully aware. Slowly slowly it becomes your very flavour, then the bridge is created.

The ability to just sit there. That's being a person.

The experience taught me to be present in the real Buddhist sense of paying attention to the moment.

It's a transformative experience to simply pause instead of immediately filling up space.

That's what I think is the biggest challenge, is just being still and learning how to just be present in that stillness and not over do it, not over act.

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.

I have a real problem with stillness. With just stopping and being quiet.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.

I have not yet learned to keep still.

Nearly everybody I know does something to try to remove herself to clear her head and to have enough time and space to think... All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness to offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world.

Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth.

Yoga is really all about process, acceptance, and becoming more present, and I really want to show that it can expand off the mat.

I firmly believe that if we all just took a little time - like 10 or 15 minutes a day - to do nothing but sit calmly with our thoughts, this world would be a much better place.

Real music will make you more and more refined. It will become more and more silent. In fact, real music will help you to listen to silence, where all notes disappear, where only gaps remain. One note comes, disappears, and another has not come, and there is a gap. In that gap meditation flows in you.

We try to abolish intervals by our manic insistence on keeping busy, on doing something. And as a result, all we succeed in doing is destroying all hope of tranquility. ... . You have to learn to immerse yourself in the silences between.

With a practice, we can always remain alive in the present moment. With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.

Sit quietly and listen for a voice that will say, "Be more silent." As that happens, your soul starts to revive.

In its outward manifestation, meditation appears to involve either stopping, by parking the body in a stillness that suspends activity, or giving oneself over to flowing movement. In either case, it is an embodiment of wise attention, an inward gesture undertaken for the most part in silence, a shift from doing to simply being. It is an act that may at first seem artificial but that we soon discover, if we keep at it, is ultimately one of pure love for the life unfolding within us and around us.

May we all grow in grace and peace and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

Only keep still, wait, and hear, and the world will open.

I had been reading this book about Zen Koan philosophy, and it was talking about the right here and the right now, and how important it is, and I was really trying to get there in my life.

Above anything, welcome silence, for it brings fruits that no tongue can speak of, neither can it be explained.

Coming before God in quietness & waiting upon Him in silence often can accomplish more than days of feverish activity.