Mental Cultivation Quotes

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.

Our great mistake in education is ... the worship of book-learning-the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. ... We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children-to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavour to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts.

A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.

Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness.

Act is the blossom of thought; and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and biter fruitage of his own husbandry

What you put your attention on grows strong in your life.

There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.

And, I mean, I think poetry does need to be met to some extent, especially, I guess, 19th century poetry, and for me, it's just been so worth the effort. It's like I'm planting a garden in my head.

If we don't consciously plant the seeds of what we want in the gardens of our minds we'll end up with weeds.

It is felt that a disciplined mind leads to happiness and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering, and in fact it is said that bringing about discipline within one's mind is the essence of the Buddha's teaching.

I do not perceive even one other thing, O monks, that when undeveloped and uncultivated entails such great suffering as the mind. The mind when undeveloped and uncultivated entails great suffering.

...there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation.

Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.

Whenever we practise meditation, whether or not our meditation is clear, we are performing a virtuous mental action that is a cause of our future happiness and peace of mind.

The ideal is the flower-garden of the mind, and very apt to run to weeds unless carefully tended.

Our minds work like a garden. It is fertile ground that accepts any and everything we plant. Good or evil, constructive or destructive, our lives will bear the fruit of the seeds we plant in our minds.

Your mind is like a garden - unless you cultivate flowers, weeds will flourish. To keep your mind positive, substitute positive thoughts for negative thoughts.

Your minds may now be likened to a garden, which will, if neglected, yield only weeds and thistles; but, if cultivated, will produce the most beautiful flowers, and the most delicious fruits.

The 7 factors of enlightenment: mindfullness, investigation of mental objects, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration and equanimity.

The mind is like a fertile garden in which anything that is planted, flowers or weeds, will grow.

There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centred on the body

By practicing meditation we establish love, compassion, sympathetic joy & equanimity as our home.

Meditation is like farming... the right soil is required to grow anything, nothing will grow if the soil is polluted by striving or pushing too hard.

The first effect of the mind growing cultivated is that processes once multiple get to be performed in a single act. Lazarus has called this the progressive "condensation" of thought. ... Steps really sink from sight. An advanced thinker sees the relations of his topics is such masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to explain to younger minds it is often hard ... Bowditch, who translated and annotated Laplace's Méchanique Céleste, said that whenever his author prefaced a proposition by the words "it is evident," he knew that many hours of hard study lay before him.

We'll fill our lives with what we cultivate the most. Plant grace by the acre.