Renee > Renee's Quotes

“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”
― James Baraz

“Respond; don't react.
Listen; don't talk.
Think; don't assume.”
― Raji Lukkoor

“The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.”
― Gabor Maté

“The cure for pain is in the pain.”
― Rumi

“Attention can be trained very naturally, with affection, just as you train a puppy. When something distracts your attention, you say “Come back” and bring it back again. With a lot of training, you can teach your mind to come running back to you when you call, just like a friendly pup.”
― Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: How to Find Patience, Peace, and Meaning

“In mindfulness, acceptance always comes first, change comes after.”
― Shamash Alidina

“In a situation of potential conflict, let compassion guide you.”
― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace

“You cannot control the results, only your actions.”
― Allan Lokos, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living

“Suffering usually relates to wanting things to be different from the way they are.”
― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living

“You fill a bucket drop by drop. You clear your mind thought by thought. You heal yourself moment by moment. Today I make one drop, clear one thought, and get present to one moment. And then I do it again.”
― Lisa Wimberger, New Beliefs, New Brain: Free Yourself from Stress and Fear

“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

“. . . 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

“We use mindfulness to observe the way we cling to pleasant experiences & push away unpleasant ones.”
― Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation

“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

“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 – A Down-to-Earth Guide to Meditation and Being for Calm, Clarity, and Joy

“Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here & now.”
― Sharon Salzberg, The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Programme for Real Happiness

“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”
― Emo Philips

“If you’re living in the present...you only have to deal with what’s actually going on in that moment.”
― Sheri Van Dijk, Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life for Teens: Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills for Helping Teens Manage Mood Swings, Control Angry Outbursts, an

“There are two ways to wash dishes: One is to wash them in order to make them clean; the other is to wash them in order to wash them.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awakening: Conversations with the Masters

“Judgement is poverty.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home

“The beauty of mindful-life-breath meditation is that you are not restricted to having to sit in the lotus position to be present. Whether you are on a busy train, driving a car or walking down a crowded high-street, you can easily remind yourself to focus on your breathing. Appreciate the subtle sensation of oxygen flowing in and out of your nostrils.”
― Christopher Dines, Mindfulness Meditation: Bringing Mindfulness into Everyday Life

“Perhaps the most liberating moment in my life was when I realized that my self-loathing was not a product of my inadequacy but, rather, a product of my thoughts.”
― Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness

“Life is not about what happened yesterday nor what will happen tomorrow,it's about this particular moment!”
― Runa Magnus

“Create inclusion - with simple mindfulness that others might have a different reality from your own.”
― Patti Digh, Life Is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally

“Let go of your mind and then be mindful.
Close your ears and listen!”
― Rumi, Love's Ripening: Rumi on the Heart's Journey

“Mindfulness allows you to face the past with courage, whether it is scarred with pain or caressed with joy, and it gently holds you in the safe haven of the present without allowing you to become overwhelmed with what may or may not be waiting in the future.”
― Deborah A. Beasley

“Another thing I've been trying to do on my walks is to know what I'm looking at, when I'm looking at it. I want to be smart. When I walk down the sidewalk I see about a hundred different kinds of bugs and all I do is point at them like a caveman and say 'Ugh, look, a bug,' but I know each one of them must have a different name and a different reason why and how it came to be on the planet, and I don't know any of that stuff.”
― Jack Gantos, What Would Joey Do?

“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

“Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.”
― Louis L'Amour

“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living