Mindful Observation Quotes

Awareness means to listen to me unfocused - alert of course, not fallen asleep, but alert to these birds, their chirping, alert to the wind that passes through the trees, alert to everything that is happening. Concentration excludes much, includes little. Awareness excludes nothing, includes all. Awareness is a state of no-mind. You are, yet you are not focused. You are just a mirror reflecting all, echoing all; see the beauty of it and the silence and the stillness.

To look at a thing is very different from seeing it.

Holmes serves as an ideal model of how we can learn to see and think better.

Listen much, keep silent when in doubt, and always take heed of the tongue; thou wilt make few mistakes. See much, beware of pitfalls, and always give heed to thy walk; thou wilt have little to rue. If thy words are seldom wrong, thy deeds leave little to rue, pay will follow.

In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.

Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom, and behold it (as it were) for the first time; in its right, authentic colors; without making comparisons. Cherish and burnish this faculty of seeing crudely, simply, artlessly, ignorantly; of seeing like a baby or a lunatic, who lives each moment by itself and tarnishes by the present no remembrance of the past.

Walk, but make walking a meditation; walk knowingly Breathe, but let your breathing become a constant meditation; breathe knowingly. The breath going in: watch it. The breath going out: watch it. Eat, but eat with full awareness. Take a bite, chew it, but go on watching. Let the watcher be there in every moment, whatsoever you are doing.

A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a little bit more intention, you see it.

Next time when anger comes just watch it. Don't say, I am angry. Say, Anger is there and I am watching it. And see the difference!

You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying or inquisitive, not bent on seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a single expansion, a single inspiration of air. You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties being in repose. Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

I am spending delightful afternoons in my garden, watching everything living around me. As I grow older, I feel everything departing, and I love everything with more passion.

One of the things that I most believe in is the compose and wait philosophy of photography. It’s a very satisfying, almost spiritual way to photograph. Life isn't’ knocking you around, life isn't controlling you. You have picked your place, you’ve picked your scene, you’ve picked your light, you’ve done all the decision making and you are waiting for the moment to come to you.

Be observing constantly. Stay open-minded. Be eager to learn and improve.

Spend as much time as you can in silence. Look at the way the sun paints the ground gold.

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

Meditation, witnessing, silently sitting and looking at the mind, will be of much help. Not forcing, simply sitting and looking. Not doing much, just watching as one watches birds flying in the sky. Just Lying down on the ground and watching, nothing to do, indifferent. Not your concern really, where they are going; they are going on their own.

Flowers preach to us if we will hear.

There is a difference. You watch television, you don't witness it. But, while watching television, if you start witnessing yourself watching television, then there are two processes going on: you are watching television, and something within you is witnessing the process of watching television. Witnessing is deeper, far deeper. It is not equivalent to watching. Watching is superficial. So remember that meditation is witnessing.

One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.

With mindfulness, we are learning to observe in a new way, with balance and a powerful disidentification.

Gaze steadfastly at things which, though far away, are yet present to the mind.

Knowledge is the harvest of attention

From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out.

You are some kind of a mystery suspended between two eternities. And in that moment, when a mind looks out at a world and asks the question, ‘What is it?’ In that moment art can be created.

Come, live with the doors of the senses guarded, diligent and mindful, vigilant and mindful, with the ways of the mind well watched, possessed of a mind that is awake and observing.