The indolent mind is not empty, but full of vermin.
Burning hearts are not nourished by empty heads
Detachment does not mean non-involvement. You can be deeply involved but not entangled.
You know you have that zealousness of the young person that feels like you can go out and do it all. You know you save the world, save your gente, save women and before you know it if you try to do that you will burn out very quickly. My feeling is that I always think that and my advice to young people regardless of what times in these decades we've been living in there's always work to be done. The point is what can you do personally that you can live with so that you can get up the next morning and have the strength to start it all over again.
Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing.
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it
Most non-New Yorkers, finding themselves within hearing range of strangers' conversation, think it's nice to pretend they didn't hear. But many New Yorkers think it's nice to toss in a relevant comment.
There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.
Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.
Creating a distraction is a skill we should all have. Never take for granted your ability to spot something interesting out of the corner of you eye and take attention away from your thoughtlessness.
When you know for yourselves, 'These things are wholesome; these things are blameless; these things are praised by the wise; these things, if undertaken and practiced, lead to welfare and happiness,' then you should engage in them.
I like when my mind is being stimulated and challenged, and I'm forced to be creative.
I never try and tune anything out. I think that's a mistake. You want to bring all the honest stuff that's going on inside you into your work. Otherwise, you're keeping a lot of authenticity out.
Whenever you interact with people,don't be there primarily as a function or a role,But as a Field of conscious Presence
When we have learnt through a period of finely honed training to live in Imaginative Thinking, when we can engage the whole of our being in this Imaginative Thinking, we find that it immerses us in a reality hitherto unknown to us.
Happiness should be something which results from the creative, genuine, intense relatedness - awareness, responsiveness, to everything in life - to man, to nature.
Right mindfulness does not simply mean being aware; it is like creating a work of art. You can therefore trust what you are doing; you are not threatened by anything. You have room to dance in the space, and this makes it a creative situation. The space is open to you.
People unconsciously know when you are not listening to them. Then they say 'No' to you.
Never just run through a study because you happen to be familiar with it, but use it to see what you can get from it on this new day which has been granted you.
In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.
IN THE ART OF PEACE we never attack. An attack is proof that one is out of control. Never run away from any challenge, but do not try to suppress or control an opponent unnaturally.. Let attackers come any way they like, and then blend with them. Never chase after opponents. Redirect each attack and get firmly behind it.
The power of a text when it is read is different from the power it has when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.
It's wonderful to be part of a film that really reaches an audience's mind and an audience's heart.
If you connect with an artist because of what they make as a body of work, you feel like they're your friend. You feel like you're on the journey of connection with them because they see the world the same way you do. That's so powerful, and if you use that, you can genuinely change minds.
I don't feel I'm very present in each moment. I feel like every moment I'm either thinking about something that's coming down the road or something that's been in the past.
