David Rakoff Quotes

It's very important for me to be absolutely present in order to be emotional.

I meditate. Like, I try. Not every day, but even if I'm not doing that meditation, the moments of my day have changed because I'm not on my phone so much. I'm intentionally not checking my phone every two seconds.

When we enter the present moment deeply, our regrets and sorrows disappear, and we discover life with all its wonders.

Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness.

What we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel. What we seldom "take" is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us.

I try to just take in every moment of being alive.

Being aware in the moment of right now is just the most important thing. All of our issues come from us not being aware enough or not seeing through our problems to the depths of the issues.

Give your fullest attention to whatever the moment presents.

Meditation is nothing but a way to learn how to do a thing totally - once you have learnt, make your whole life a meditation, forget all about meditations, let the life be the only law, let the life be the only meditation. And then time disappears.

Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out.

Do not brood. It makes the moment you are living in unavailable for learning and life.

Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions.

An amazing realization is in the present moment there is only what is, but there are no problems. And if your attention remains in the Now, you no longer inhabit a world of problems. Challenges you may still face, but they come to you in the space of Now.

I take it not only a day at a time, but a moment at a time, and keep it at that pace. If you can be happy right now, then you’ll always be happy, because it’s always in the now

The best advice I ever came across on the subject of concentration is: Wherever you are, be there.

People think meditation is a huge undertaking.

I'm not sitting somewhere dwelling on the past. I'm not fretting or obsessing about something in the future.

Be in the moment as an actor and as a human being, and you're going to be happy.

Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you're always standing at the center of the world.

Intelligence is the capacity to be in the present. The more you are in the past or are in the future, the less intelligent you are. Intelligence is the capacity to be here-now, to be in this moment and nowhere else. Then you are awake.

Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help.

Take some time each day to bring clarity to your inner world.

Each moment you are alive is a gem. It needs you to breathe gently for the miracles to be displayed.

There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness.

So give your complete attention to what you feel, and refrain from mentally labeling it. As you go into the feeling, be intensely alert. At first, it may seem like a dark and terrifying place, and when the urge to turn away from it comes, observe it but don’t act on it. Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is. Stay alert, stay present - present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.