Thomas Merton Quotes

Being enlightened is just being aware. It's just being aware of something that you weren't aware before.

It is not a question of sitting silently, it is not a question of chanting a mantra. It is a question of understanding the subtle workings of the mind. As you understand those workings of the mind a great awareness arises in you, which is not of the mind. That awareness arises in your being, in your soul, in your consciousness.

Meditation cannot be taught, it can only be caught. I am meditation. If you are available you can catch it.

Just one quality of the Buddha has to be remembered. He consists only of one quality: witnessing. This small word witnessing contains the whole of spirituality. Witness that you are not the body. Witness that you are not the mind. Witness that you are only a witness. As the witnessing deepens, you start becoming drunk with the divine. That is what is called ecstasy.

This watchfulness, this witnessing is the ultimate secret of creating a religious life, of creating a life of transcendence, a life of spirituality, of enlightenment, of buddhahood.

Desire disappears as you become more and more aware. When awareness is one hundred percent, there is no desire at all.

Only when the mind is still, tranquil, not expecting or grasping or resisting a single thing, is it possible to see what is true. It is the truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

Instead of being lost in your thinking, when you awaken you recognize yourself as the awareness behind it. Thinking then ceases to be a self-serving autonomous activity that takes possession of you and runs your life.

The science of meditation: it brings you to the present, it brings you to this moment. The past is a thought; it disappears when thoughts disappear. The future is also a thought; it disappears when you drop thinking. When you are in a state of no-thought - there is no past, no future, there is only the present - in that state of no-thought you are ONE, in tune with God. And suddenly the flood is there: you are flooded with light, with love, with grace. You are no more a man, you are divine. You have surpassed humanity. Humanity is in a state of deep sleep.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either.

I am a firm believer that one way to become enlightened is to be so relaxed, as relaxed as you possibly can be.

Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded Consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.

I'm not speaking as someone who has reached satori or anything else. I'm a student.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive - that you can touch the miracle of being alive - then that is a kind of enlightenment.

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

When a human being becomes so still that they begin to lose awareness of their gender, and they are simply looking into that abyss where there is no notion of self whatsoever, the world disappears. And that's really the only place to go. It's the only place to remain.

The universe is within us. We forget that and make up realities for ourselves that we are small and insignificant. Meditation brings us back to our natural state of consciousness.

By meditation we try to slow down the mechanism of projections. If the mechanism is slowed down and even for a single moment you begin to be aware of the gap - imageless gap of the screen - you have the glimpse. Suddenly you know that you have lived in the dreams of your own creation; and whatsoever you have known as the world was not the world really, it was YOUR world.

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.

Meditation is one of the most direct and powerful ways to awaken to who we really are and to experience happiness as a state of consciousness that already exists within us.

There is no mind to control if you realise the self. The mind having vanished, the self shines forth. In the realised man, the mind may be active or inactive, the self remains for him.

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