In our crazy busy lives, we often forget to enjoy the moment. We forget to appreciate the present, and to deeply understand how lucky we are to be alive, healthy and as lucky as we are.
Sometimes, we just need to stop for a bit, observe, and absorb everything that is around us.
Most often, when I am eating my lunch, I would just try to eat it as fast as possible so I could continue with my work. But after practicing mindfulness, I would enjoy every bite of my food, and be deeply grateful because I can afford it, and because I am healthy to eat on my own.
I hope that you will find a similar kind of inspiration to be more mindful after reading my collection of the best Mindfulness Quotes that I could find online, and gather them here in one place.
Enjoy!
10 Best Mindfulness Quotes To Help You Appreciate Everything You Have
1. “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
2. “Looking at beauty in the world, is the first step of purifying the mind.” ― Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations
3. “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
4. “The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it. (21)” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
5. “Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality.” ― Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams and Reaching Your Destiny
6. “In the end, just three things matter:
How well we have lived
How well we have loved
How well we have learned to let go” ― Jack Kornfield
7. “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” ― C.G. Jung
8. “The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.” ― Gabor Maté
9. “I don’t need anyone else to distract me from myself anymore,
like I always thought I would.” ― Charlotte Eriksson, You’re Doing Just Fine
10. “It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.” ― Germany Kent
20 Famous Mindfulness Quotes
1. “Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
2. “Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
3. “To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.” ― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
4. “Breath is the finest gift of nature. Be grateful for this wonderful gift.” ― Amit Ray, Beautify your Breath – Beautify your Life
5. “Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.” ― Mother Teresa
6. “Let go of your mind and then be mindful.
Close your ears and listen!” ― Rumi, Love’s Ripening: Rumi on the Heart’s Journey
7. “The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
8. “I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.” ― Elon Musk
9. “I don’t talk things, sir,’ said Faber. ‘I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
10. “While you’ll feel compelled to charge forward it’s often a gentle step back that will reveal to you where you and what you truly seek.” ― Rasheed Ogunlaru
11. “Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.” ― Louis L’Amour
12. “[T[his isn’t just “another day, another dollar.” It’s more like “another day, another miracle.” (213)” ― Victoria Moran, Lit From Within: Tending Your Soul For Lifelong Beauty
13. “True compassion is undirected & holds no conceptual focus. That kind of genuine, true compassion is only possible after realizing emptiness.” ― Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Carefree Dignity: Discourses on Training in the Nature of Mind
14. “And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus
15. “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on earth.” ― Línjì Yìxuán
16. “Through recognizing and realizing the empty essence, instead of being selfish and self-centered, one feels very open and free” ― Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Carefree Dignity: Discourses on Training in the Nature of Mind
17. “Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walking
18. “The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.” ― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
19. “. . . I feel we don’t really need scriptures. The entire life is an open book, a scripture. Read it. Learn while digging a pit or chopping some wood or cooking some food. If you can’t learn from your daily activities, how are you going to understand the scriptures? (233)” ― Sri S. Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali
20. “Treat everyone you meet as if they were you.” ― Doug Dillon
20 Mindfulness Quotes For Adults
1. “Mindless fear is greater than mindful fear.” ― Idowu Koyenikan
2. “What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
3. “If you think you are beaten, you are
If you think you dare not, you don’t,
If you like to win, but you think you can’t
It is almost certain you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!” ― Walter D. Wintle
4. “I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.” ― Marilynne Robinson
5. “Until you realize how easy it is for your mind to be manipulated, you remain the puppet of someone else’s game.” ― Evita Ochel
6. “Yoga practice can make us more and more sensitive to subtler and subtler sensations in the body. Paying attention to and staying with finer and finer sensations within the body is one of the surest ways to steady the wandering mind. (39)” ― Ravi Ravindra, The Wisdom of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide by Ravi Ravindra
7. “Somewhere in this process you will come face-to-face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation they have not.” ― Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English
8. “You have to remember one life, one death–this one! To enter fully the day, the hour, the moment whether it appears as life or death, whether we catch it on the inbreath or outbreath, requires only a moment, this moment. And along with it all the mindfulness we can muster, and each stage of our ongoing birth, and the confident joy of our inherent luminosity. (24)” ― Stephen Levine, A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last
9. “Mindful leadership keeps you cool and energetic in any situation, so that you can make the best possible decisions.” ― Amit Ray, Mindfulness Meditation for Corporate Leadership and Management
10. “Forgiveness is a personal process that doesn’t depend on us having direct contact with the people who have hurt us.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
11. “And at some point, I thought, well, I’ve been really lucky to see many, many places. Now, the great adventure is the inner world, now that I’ve spent a lot of time gathering emotions, impressions, and experiences. Now, I just want to sit still for years on end, really, charting that inner landscape because I think anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so in order to move around—you’re traveling in order to be moved. And really what you’re seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life. I thought, there’s this great undiscovered terrain that Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Merton and Emily Dickinson fearlessly investigated, and I want to follow in their footsteps.” ― Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
12. “Most of us take for granted that time flies, meaning that it passes too quickly. But in the mindful state, time doesn’t really pass at all. There is only a single instant of time that keeps renewing itself over and over with infinite variety.” ― Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life
13. “With mind distracted, never thinking, “Death is coming,”
To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,
And then to come out empty–it is a tragic error. (116)” ― Huston Smith, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Liberation Through Understanding the Between
14. “Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
15. “Happiness is not constant; it is cyclical. Happiness is broad and resilient, and the happiest people still experience negative feelings.” ― Robert Gill Jr., Happiness Power: How to Unleash Your Power and Live a More Joyful Life
16. “Taking in the good is not about putting a happy shiny face on everything, nor is it about turning away from the hard things in life. It’s about nourishing well-being, contentment, and peace inside that are refuges you can always come from and return to.” ― Rick Hanson, Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
17. “All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others” ― Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
18. “Like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight, there’s no need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds, and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we already are – as soon as we stop pretending we’re small or unholy.” ― Bo Lozoff
19. “Whether it is in your work, or your relationships, or your food choices, or your interaction with any part of nature, or anything that you think, speak, or do, mindfulness has the power to align you with expressing your highest Self, for your personal and our collective highest good.
Via mindfulness we can make the choices today, that will pre-pave the desired outcomes for all of our tomorrows. Via mindfulness we put ourselves in the flow of life, where life is no longer a series of “good” and “bad” moments, but about living with ease, contentment, wellbeing, and inner peace. Ultimately mindfulness requires action, with the first step being to make mindfulness a priority in your life.” ― Evita Ochel
20. “Until you are clear nothing will be. The moment you are clear everything will be.” ― Rasheed Ogunlaru, Soul Trader: Putting the Heart Back into Your Business
See also: 130 Motivational You Are Enough Quotes To Know Your Worth
20 Mindfulness Quotes For Students
1. “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient” ― Marilynne Robinson
2. “Am I crazy?” she asked. “I feel like I am sometimes.”
“Maybe,” he said, rubbing her forehead. “But don’t worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It’s your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It’s a good thing not a bad thing.” ― Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
3. “I have never seen battles quite as terrifyingly beautiful as the ones I fight when my mind splinters and races, to swallow me into my own madness, again.” ― Nicole Lyons, Hush
4. “When you open your mind, you open new doors to new possibilities for yourself and new opportunities to help others.” ― Roy T. Bennett
5. “Patience has all the time it needs.” ― Allan Lokos, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living
6. “As we encounter new experiences with a mindful and wise attention, we discover that one of three things will happen to our new experience: it will go away, it will stay the same, or it will get more intense. whatever happens does not really matter.” ― Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
7. “If you’re reading these words, perhaps it’s because something has kicked open the door for you, and you’re ready to embrace change. It isn’t enough to appreciate change from afar, or only in the abstract, or as something that can happen to other people but not to you. We need to create change for ourselves, in a workable way, as part of our everyday lives.” ― Sharon Salzberg, The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Programme for Real Happiness
8. “Don’t let a day go by without asking who you are…each time you let a new ingredient to enter your awareness.” ― Deepak Chopra, The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life
9. “Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
10. “The grass is not ‘greener’ on the other side – it is just another shade of green.” ― Annika Sorensen, Take Stress from Chaos to Calm
11. “Being a critic is easy.
But if the critic tries to run the operation, he soon understands that nothing is as easy as his criticisms.
Criticism without a solution is merely an inflation of the critic’s ego.” ― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm in a Busy World
12. “YOU HAVE TO BE STRONG ENOUGH TO BE WEAK
Allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness, riding the waves of “up” and “down,” “good” and “bad,” “weak” and “strong,” until you see that they are all inadequate to fully describe your experience. Be with the experience itself. Trust in your deepest strength of all: to be present, to be wakeful.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
13. “The most profound personal growth does not happen while reading a book or meditating. It happens in the throes of conflict, when you are angry, afraid, frustrated. It happens when you are doing the same old thing and you suddenly realize that you have a choice.” ― Vironika Tugaleva
14. “Everything will be okay as soon as you
are okay with everything. And that’s the
only time everything will be okay.” ― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
15. “We are constantly evolving as we are interacting with the world. Mindfulness and growth mindset drives our evolution faster and on the right track.” ― Amit Ray, Mindfulness Meditation for Corporate Leadership and Management
16. “Stay present for the “now” of your life. It’s your “point of power.” ― Doug Dillon
17. “If you are not in control of your thoughts then you are not in control of yourself. Without self-control, you have no real power, regardless of whatever else you accomplish. If you are not aware of the thoughts that you are thinking in each moment, then you are the rider with no reins, with no power over where you are going. You cannot control what you are not aware of. Awareness must come first.” ― Thomas M. Sterner, The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus into Your Life
18. “Mindfulness won’t ensure you’ll win an argument with your sister. Mindfulness won’t enable you to bypass your feelings of anger or hurt either. But it may help you see the conflict in a new way, one that allows you to break through old patterns.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
19. “Learn to say no to demands, requests, invitations, and activities that leave you with no time for yourself. Until I learned to say no, and mean it, I was always overloaded by stress. You may feel guilty and selfish at first for guarding your down- time, but you’ll soon find that you are a much nicer, more present, more productive person in each instance you do choose to say yes.” ― Holly Mosier
20. “Convince yourself everyday that you are worthy of a good life. Let go of stress, breathe. Stay positive, all is well.” ― Germany Kent
See also: 180 Inspirational Quotes For Teens To Strike Young Hearts
20 Mindfulness Quotes For Anxiety
1. “If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.” ― Amit Ray, Om Chanting and Meditation
2. “The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” ― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
3. “One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.” ― Alan Wilson Watts, Psychotherapy East and West
4. “Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be—we will never relax with where we are or who we are.” ― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
5. “Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.” ― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
6. “There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sprouting of the second group and transforming the first group.” ― Amit Ray, Walking the Path of Compassion
7. “Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).” ― James Baraz
8. “While focusing on the present moment, we soothe our minds and construe our intuition and inner wisdom. Our mindfulness allows us to access lower levels of awareness and gain insight into our reflections and emotions. At the same time, it lessens overthinking and anxiety. (“The infinite Wisdom of Meditation“)” ― Erik Pevernagie
9. “In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility. (17)” ― Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit
10. “Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that – thoughts.” ― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
11. “Head Vs Heart:
A crowded mind
Leaves no space
For a peaceful heart” ― Christine Evangelou, Beating Hearts and Butterflies: Poetry of Wounds, Wishes and Wisdom
12. “How you refill. Lying there. Something like happiness, just like water, pure and clear pouring in. So good you don’t even welcome it, it runs through you in a bright stream, as if it has been there all along.” ― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars
13. “The present is all we have, yet it is the one thing we will never learn to hold in our hands.” ― Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing
14. “We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That’s a fact but one we fight.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
15. “Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you’re doing.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
16. “If you’re always racing to the next moment, what happens to the one you’re in? Slow down and enjoy the moment you’re in and live your life to the fullest.” ― Nanette Mathews
17. “Suffering usually relates to wanting things to be different from the way they are.” ― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
18. “We too should make ourselves empty, that the great soul of the universe may fill us with its breath.” ― Lawrence Binyon
19. “Start living right here, in each present moment. When we stop dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, we’re open to rich sources of information we’ve been missing out on—information that can keep us out of the downward spiral and poised for a richer life.” ― Mark Williams, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
20. “Enjoy the peace of Nature and declutter your inner world.” ― Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment – Living in the Breath
20 Short Mindfulness Quotes
1. “Be mindful. Be grateful. Be positive. Be true. Be kind.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
2. “Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.” ― Thich Nhat Hang, Stepping into Freedom: Rules of Monastic Practice for Novices
3. “Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
4. “The mind is just like a muscle – the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.” ― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability
5. “Mind is a flexible mirror, adjust it, to see a better world.” ― Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment – Living in the Breath
6. “Life is a dance. Mindfulness is witnessing that dance.” ― Amit Ray, Mindfulness Living in the Moment – Living in the Breath
7. “Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living
8. “Respond; don’t react.
Listen; don’t talk.
Think; don’t assume.” ― Raji Lukkoor
9. “You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep.” ― Pawan Mishra
10. “Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
11. “There is no key to open the heart of another – except curiosity.” ― Stefan Molyneux
12. “It’s good to have an end in mind but in the end what counts is how you travel.” ― Orna Ross, Beyond The Law of Attraction: A Creativist Compendium
13. “Just because you take breaks doesn’t mean you’re broken.” ― Curtis Tyrone Jones
14. “Baseless victimhood is usually the last stage before outright aggression.” ― Stefan Molyneux
15. “You cannot control the results, only your actions.” ― Allan Lokos, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living
16. “Mindfulness has never met a cognition it didn’t like.” ― Daniel J. Siegel, The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being
17. “Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
18. “My experience is that many things are not as bad as I thought they would be.” ― Mary Doria Russell, Children of God
19. “A mind set in its ways is wasted. Don’t do it.” ― Eric Schmidt
20. “You actions are your only true belongings.” ― Allan Lokos, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living
See also: 130 Wise Acceptance Quotes To Help You Grow And Prosper
20 Mindfulness Quotes To Think About
1. “Always ask yourself: “What will happen if I say nothing?” ― Kamand Kojouri
2. “If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart…” ― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living
3. “Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
4. “We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.
When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.
It’s like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable.” ― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
5. “Do not speak about anyone who is not physically present.” ― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
6. “You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.” ― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
7. “In meditation we discover our inherent restlessness. Sometimes we get up and leave. Sometimes we sit there but our bodies wiggle and squirm and our minds go far away. This can be so uncomfortable that we feel’s it’s impossible to stay. Yet this feeling can teach us not just about ourselves but what it is to be human…we really don’t want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. These are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down…so whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to “stay” and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay! Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay!” ― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
8. “We have negative mental habits that come up over and over again. One of the most significant negative habits we should be aware of is that of constantly allowing our mind to run off into the future. Perhaps we got this from our parents. Carried away by our worries, we’re unable to live fully and happily in the present. Deep down, we believe we can’t really be happy just yet—that we still have a few more boxes to be checked off before we can really enjoy life. We speculate, dream, strategize, and plan for these “conditions of happiness” we want to have in the future; and we continually chase after that future, even while we sleep. We may have fears about the future because we don’t know how it’s going to turn out, and these worries and anxieties keep us from enjoying being here now.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Breath: A Practice for Our Busy Lives
9. “Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves. We can open to everything with the healing force of love. When we feel love, our mind is expansive and open enough to include the entirety of life in full awareness, both its pleasures and its pains, we feel neither betrayed by pain or overcome by it, and thus we can contact that which is undamaged within us regardless of the situation. Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be.” ― Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
10. “Life’s most precious moments are not all loud or uproarious. Silence and stillness has its own virtues.” ― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
11. “We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.
Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.” ― Blaise Pascal, Pensées
12. “In a true you-and-I relationship, we are present mindfully, nonintrusively, the way we are present with things in nature.We do not tell a birch tree it should be more like an elm. We face it with no agenda, only an appreciation that becomes participation: ‘I love looking at this birch’ becomes ‘I am this birch’ and then ‘I and this birch are opening to a mystery that transcends and holds us both.” ― David Richo, When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships
13. “It stands to reason that anyone who learns to live well will die well. The skills are the same: being present in the moment, and humble, and brave, and keeping a sense of humor. (361)” ― Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit
14. “Think of the old cliché about the mind being ‘an excellent servant but a terrible master’. This, like many clichés, so lame & banal on the surface, actually expresses a great & terrible truth.” ― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
15. “We must look upon what is to occur as having already occurred, and see nothing but the present in the future, for the future is but the present a little farther on.” ― Jules Verne, Five Weeks in a Balloon
16. “Our culture encourages us to plan every moment and fill our schedules with one activity and obligation after the next, with no time to just be. But the human body and mind require downtime to rejuvenate. I have found my greatest moments of joy and peace just sitting in silence, and then I take that joy and peace with me out into the world.” ― Holly Mosier
17. “If you know how to be happy with the wonders of life that are already there for you to enjoy, you don’t need to stress your mind and your body by striving harder and harder, and you don’t need to stress this planet by purchasing more and more stuff. The Earth belongs to our children. We have already borrowed too much from it, from them; and the way things have been going, we’re not sure we’ll be able to give it back to them in decent shape. And who are our children, actually? They are us, because they are our own continuation. So we’ve been shortchanging our own selves. Much of our modern way of life is permeated by mindless overborrowing. The more we borrow, the more we loser. That’s why it’s critical that we wake up and see we don’t need to do that anymore. What’s already available in the here and now is plenty for us to be nourished, to be happy. Only that kind of insight will get us, each one of us, to stop engaging in the compulsive, self-sabotaging behaviors of our species. We need a collective awakening. One Buddha is not enough. All of us have to become Buddhas in order for our planet to have a chance. Fortunately, we have the power to wake up, to touch enlightenment from moment to moment, in our very own ordinary and, yes, busy lives. So let’s start right now. Peace is your every breath.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Breath: A Practice for Our Busy Lives
18. “Mindfulness meditation doesn’t change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart’s capacity to accept life as it is. It teaches the heart to be more accommodating, not by beating it into submission, but by making it clear that accommodation is a gratifying choice.” ― Sylvia Boorstein, Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There: A Mindfulness Retreat with Sylvia Boorstein
19. “Many of us live like dead people because we live without awareness. We carry our dead bodies with us and circulate throughout the world. We are pulled into the past or we are pulled forward into the future or we are caught by our projects or our despair and anger. We are not truly alive; we are not inhabited by awareness of the miracle of being alive.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life
20. “It’s all about reprogramming our minds to focus more on what brings us joy.” ― Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace: Essential Teachings for Enriching Life
Final Word
I hope that you have got the message right with these mindfulness quotes – enjoy every single moment of your life, and do take time enjoying it!
Because, what is life, if it just passes by you, while you are busy worrying about other things?
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