Jane Hirshfield Quotes

Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone. Slowly slowly, you start feeling a new quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence—which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you. It has roots in your existence.

Sit with silence a lot - real silence, where nothing is happening - because you learn so much in those moments of quiet.

If you cultivate your body, your mind, your emotions, and your energies to a certain level of maturity, meditation will blossom.

Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.

I aspire only to silence.

I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.

I always try meditation. Meditation means always keeping one mind, not-moving mind.

The purpose of meditation is personal transformation.

When you walk 10 hours, 11 hours a day by yourself, you are doing a walking meditation.

Well, I was passionately curious about what my body was doing, and when I got the lessons on how to meditate, it seemed really solid to me. It seemed real.

My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration.

I firmly believe that if we all just took a little time - like 10 or 15 minutes a day - to do nothing but sit calmly with our thoughts, this world would be a much better place.

Whenever you meditate, there are glimpses. Then the mind comes in and says, 'Be happy! Look, I have done it.' And immediately the contact is lost.

By consciously meditating upon spiritual truths and cultivating personal integrity, one need never fear negative circumstances.

Keep the remembrance of your real nature alive, even while working, and avoid haste which causes you to forget. Be deliberate. Practice meditation to still the mind and cause it to become aware of its true relationship to the Self which supports it. Do not imagine that it is you who are doing the work. Think that is the underlying current which is doing it. Identify yourself with the current.

The most effective way to live in the flow of the timeless is meditation.

The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.

The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude.

Inner silence is not just the absence of thoughts. No! Silence is the blossoming of our indomitable inner will. Silence is our inner wisdom-light.

Remember, meditation will bring you more and more intelligence, infinite intelligence, a radiant intelligence. Meditation will make you more alive and sensitive; your life will become richer

The point of meditation is not merely to be an honest or good person in the conventional sense, trying only to maintain our security. We must begin to become compassionate and wise in the fundamental sense, open and relating to the world as it is.

Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you—silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast.

The experience of silence alone is the real and perfect knowledge.

In silence, we have an opportunity to reflect, listen, and gain new insights about ourselves. In silence, we can think, feel, and most important of all, breathe. When you seek guidance, understanding, clarity, or peace of mind, the first step is to master the art of silence and to rethink the value of solitude.