Ramana Maharshi Quotes

The main factor in meditation is to keep the mind active in its own pursuit without taking in external impressions or thinking of other matters.

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

When you practice meditation, the meditator becomes all-important and not the movement of meditation.

Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives.

Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it.

The brain does not manufacture thoughts unless we stimulate it with habitual verbalizing. When we train ourselves by constant practice to stop verbalizing, the brain can experience things as they are.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

If you are vigilant and make a stern effort to reject every thought when it rises, you will soon find that you are going deeper and deeper into your own inner self, where there is no need for your effort to reject the thoughts.

You cannot turn your brain off or stop your thoughts, but you can try while meditating not to become too invested in them. This is called transcendental meditation, which is the kind I practice.

It was Helen Hunt who taught me to incorporate a consistent meditation practice. Her consistency - even when she was at her busiest and most public - was inspiration to me.

Thoughts come and go. It's impossible to stop your thoughts, but the idea is that the thoughts are kind of like waves on the ocean. That's Jon Kabat-Zinn's big analogy and that this is actually kind of diving under the waves. And you know it's kind of interesting.

Om is the pointed piece and Dhyâna (meditation) is the friction.

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

It's helpful to remind yourself that meditation is about opening and relaxing with whatever arises, without picking and choosing.

Meditation will drop all the masks. It is a search for the original face.

Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness.

When you are in the present without thinking, you are for the first time spiritual.

It is better to meditate a little bit with depth than to mediate long with the mind running here and there. If you do not make an effort to control the mind it will go on doing as it pleases, no matter how long you sit to meditate.

Make it your moment-to-moment aim to recognize the difference between being aware of your thoughts, and being carried along by them.

First, meditation should be of a negative nature. Think away everything. Analyse everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will. Next, assert what we really are-existence, knowledge, and bliss-being, knowing, and loving.

By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be.

If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate.

Meditation isn't really about getting rid of thoughts, it's about changing the pattern of grasping on to things, which in our everyday experience is our thoughts.

See who is the doubter, who is the thinker. It is the ego. Hold it; the other thoughts will die away - the ego will be left pure. See the source from where the ego arises and abide in it. That is pure consciousness.

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.