Joan Didion Quotes

don't stop to think of the words when you do stop, just stop to think of the picture better-and let your mind off yourself in this work.

Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.

I think talent has a huge amount to do with concentration, concentration rather than the athletic ability of your neurons. If you can concentrate on an esoteric piece of math, how can you think about the rest of your life? That's why people can leave their car keys in the gutter; they're in the midst of obsession and concentration.

The West is concentration of the mind: the East is meditation of the mind. The West is thinking: the East is non-thinking. The West is mind: the East is no-mind.

I think there's too much mult-tasking going on. I think people need to quiet down and focus and be still more.

I am a very good archer. I use archery as my way of meditation. I cannot sit down and just meditate in the classical sense. I am very active. So, I use archery. I have my bow, my arrow and I use this tension and relaxation in the second after throwing the arrow. And it is my way to meditate and this is the only thing that clears my mind. When I do archery, I am totally there with my bow, my target, my arrow, and I don't think, I am communion with the universe.

I try to clear my mind of everything, I try to think of nothing. I just let my body act, the body can take control and do what it's trained to do.

Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind thinks nothing, is just there, is just a presence. And more and more totality will be coming.

Bring your mind to noble silence. Unify your mind in noble silence. Concentrate your mind in noble silence... Enter into rapture and pleasure born of silence derived of concentration and awareness that is free from thought and fabrication.

Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking.

Contemplating an object fixedly with the mind, asking myself, 'What is it?' without thinking of any other object or relating it to anything else for hours on end.

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

Control your thoughts. Decide about that which you will think and concentrate upon. You are in charge of your life to the degree you take charge of your thoughts.

People who want to rise above a well-cooked meal and a well-tailored garment, are out of their spiritual minds.

I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it's fantastic. Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind you're left with great precision.

Meditation is a sort of prayer and prayer is meditation. The highest meditation is to think of nothing. If you can remain one moment without thought, great power will come.

It is here that I can concentrate my mind upon the Remembered Earth. It is here that I am most conscious of being, here that wonder comes upon my blood, here I want to live forever; and it is no matter that I must die.

We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better.... or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do.... But at this precise moment, you also realize that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it's Eternity.... It isn't what you did in the past the will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.

I think my mission is to support people in being steadfast in not having thoughts of harm - thoughts of judgment, worry, or hatred - directed toward themselves or others.

We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.

We've lost our way, we have lost our centeredness. We don't have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what's important. I would bet most people don't have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don't have to be sitting, they can be walking.

Now, you'll hear people call here on my show claiming they used to be lib and they've changed their minds. That happens, but it happens naturally. It's not because I've focused on trying to persuade people. I think while it's a noble objective to try to help people to see things the right way, this is a different psychological collection of human beings, and they are walled off from anything that's not them.

When a doctor is performing an operation, his mind cannot be somewhere else.

I'm alive. When I'm eating that's all I think about. If I'm on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight,it will be just as good a day as any to die. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. Life is the moment we are living now.

My whole effort is how to beautify this present moment, how to make people more celebrating, how to make people more joyous, how to give them a little glimpse of blissfulness, how to bring laughter to their life. Then the future takes care of itself. You need not think of the tomorrow, it comes. It comes out of this moment. Let this moment be of great celebration.