Alan Watts Quotes

From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment.

Meditation should not be regarded as a learning process. It should be regarded as an experiencing process. You should not try to learn from meditation but try to feel it. Meditation is an act of nonduality. The technique you are using should not be separate from you; it is you, you are the technique. Meditator and meditation are one. There is no relationship involved.

One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are. That’s not considered to be a problem. The point is to see it.

So for a period of time each day, try to sit, without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment you feel your last instant. In each inhalation and each exhalation there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant.

To be here and now, you have to be in meditation, beyond mind.

We tend to think of meditation in only one way. But life itself is a meditation.

But I would assert that despite the wide variety of yoga options and individual preferences, there is one universal element: the union of consciousness and movement, breath and awareness.

There are certain ways in which I cultivate awareness, both through mindful yoga and taking care of my body and taking time to actually drop as deeply as possible into stillness, into whatever is unfolding in the present moment.

Only when your consciousness is totally focused on the moment you are in can you receive whatever gift, lesson, or delight that moment has to offer.

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.

Mindfulness is a quality that's always there. It's an illusion that there's a meditation and post-meditation period, which I always find amusing, because you're either mindful or you're not.

Go deep into meditation. and be meditation I mean silence, awareness, witnessing. You can meditate any time of the day, you can meditate working, walking, doing things. Meditation is not something separate from life; it should not be separate, otherwise it remains a little artificial. Meditation should be spread all over life. You should walk in meditation, you should sit in meditation; that means silently, fully aware. Slowly slowly it becomes your very flavour, then the bridge is created.

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.

Meditation allows us to directly participate in our lives instead of living life as an afterthought.

Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness.

Enlightenment is nothing but your consciousness being concentrated on a single point - now and here.

We don’t sit in meditation to become good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we’ll be more awake in our lives.

If you have your full attention in the moment, you will see only love.

Instead of 'watching the thinker,' you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.

Meditation is basically the process of witnessing: looking from your centre all that is happening. Many things are happening on the outside - the noise of the train far away; something is happening in you body - your knees are hurting - right? Your mind is churning many thoughts, that 'What am I doing here?' Your heart is feeling many emotions, you have waited for this moment for so long. There is joy in the heart, a certain ecstasy, a mood, a receptivity. All those things have to be watched very minutely.

Know that life can only be found in the present moment.

The more you establish quiet time and mediation as part of your daily discipline, the more you go through the rotation into mirror (dream) worlds.

Relax, you're on a journey of discovery. Let life reveal itself to you.

Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day.

Meditation is the art of awareness. And once you are aware, out of your awareness your actions will arise - not out of conscience. Conscience is cultivated by others, by the vested interests, by the establishment. Consciousness is yours. It is individual, it is not collective. Conscience is part of the mob psychology. Consciousness gives you dignity because it gives you individuality. It gives you rebellion, it makes you capable of saying yes or no of your own accord. There is no foreign agency manipulating you in the name of religion, morality, etcetera.