quotations about meditation
The man of meditation is happy not for an hour or a day, but quite round the circle of his years.
ISAAC TAYLOR
Saturday Evening
Labor, but slight not meditation; meditate, but slight not labor.
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The very aim of meditation is firstly subjugation of the mind, so that it can no longer be an obstacle to a clear vision of the Supreme cliché. Secondly, it is the full silencing of that mind, so that consciousness becomes similar to the mirror-like surface of a quiet lake or pool. I can see the real Reflection of Truth in it then, but not otherwise.
MOUNI SADHU
Meditation: An Outline for Practical Study
Meditation is the search after the Supreme Reality in the cavity of our heart.
KESHAVADAS
Gayatri: The Highest Meditation
Meditation ... must be power of will and strength of attention, being like a flight to great heights wherein wings must be plied hard though joyfully.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Though observation and instruction, reading and conversation may furnish us with many ideas of men and things, yet it is our own meditation and the labour of our own thoughts that must form our judgment of things.
ISAAC WATTS
The Improvement of the Mind
In advanced meditation you become light. You transcend self, ego, time, space, and dimensionality.
FREDERICK LENZ
"Advanced Meditation", Rama Quotes
But we must not at all forget, how he communes with his heart, how his spirit makes diligent search, how he considers himself, lest he be tempted; and what is that sin which easily besets him. For thus he regards the avenues of temptation, because he knows what is the plague of his heart.--What shall we say more of him? In the divine law, "he meditates day and night; and shall be like a tree planted by the river of water, that bringeth forth fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doth shall prosper."
WILLIAM MCEWEN
"On Meditation", Select Essays Doctrinal & Practical on a Variety of the Most Important and Interesting Subjects in Divinity
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation. Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound.
KABIR
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul
Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand.
OWEN FELLTHAM
Resolves: Divine, Moral and Political
Meditation is not a noun, but a verb. Meditation is a dynamic process, like the liquid flowing state of water as opposed to frozen ice.
VICTOR DAVICH
8 Minute Meditation
It is not surprising that the practice of meditation ... has remained under a cloud in the West, and that we have, consequently, created a culture of extroverts.
SAM KEEN
The Passionate Life
Meditation is the signpost directing the steps to the main highway of realization.
GUY BOGART
The Open Court, September 1921
One other channel by which meditation pours greatness I will follow, namely, that it leads us to a knowledge of ourselves; I mean not of what we may have done with ourselves, but of what our true nature is. It is familiar that the Greeks laid great stress on this knowledge, and summed up all wisdom in the command, "Know thyself." How can anything seem to us sublime that is really so unless we know what is truly ourselves and is made to see sublimity and to rejoice in it? Emerson says: "What the heart declares great is great." Yes, indeed, if the heart have knowledge of itself, that it is human and what is to be human; for then it will know the things to be sublime that truly are so. But if the heart have no knowledge of itself above what it shares with dumb creatures, it will think a bone or a crust to be great. William Law says: "When a right knowledge of ourselves enters into our mind, it makes as great a change in all our thoughts and apprehensions as when we awake from the wanderings of a dream.... My children, there are things in the world which pass for wisdom, politeness, grandeur, happiness and fine breeding, which show as great ignorance of ourselves, and might as justly pass for thorough madness, as when a man fancies himself to be glass or ice." Now we shall know what our nature is by meditation, often asking ourselves 'What am I? What ought I to live for? What is the real and true good and the most valuable thing to such a creature as I am?' Nay, we should put a quotidian question, thus: What great or sublime thing have I thought this day? Is it not reasonable to think a day wasted in which we can recall nothing grand and quiet filling us, but only noisy things? Plainly, if so we will question, it is in the power of meditation to make us in fact what by nature's intention we are.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
"Of Meditation", Essays
A time comes when you don't have to use meditation techniques anymore. You just sit down and you are nonexistence itself.
FREDERICK LENZ
"Advanced Meditation", Rama Quotes
We mistake if we think meditation requires leisure, for there may be quiet without leisure. But must we not be faithful to the noisy cares? Yes, and that is to give them their place; but not more than their place. What that place is each one must meditate for himself.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
"Of Meditation", Essays
Meditation is a way to the depth of the human personality.
CYRIAC MUPPATHYIL
Meditation as a path to God-Realization
When even one virtue becomes our nature, the mind becomes clean and tranquil. Then there is no need to practice meditation; we will automatically be meditating always.
SWAMI SATCHIDANANDA
The Yoga Sutras
Meditation is the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day.
GUY BOGART
The Open Court, September 1921
One way of meditation to make us grow great and noble is that it brings us into great company. For as a sage wished "that virtue might assume a visible form," so the mind constantly clothes grandeur with shape, looking at it not as a spread of power in the sky, but as a soul and life in some person. Therefore to meditate on high and sacred things is to bring before us often great spirits, whether historical from the past or known only to our own eye in the present, who are clothed with those virtues or whose lives are the garments of the greatest thoughts. Thus to meditate is to look often into faces which appear before us with a fixed grandeur, their features set as if by a chisel or brush into a noble expression without change. Now, to keep great company is to grow in greatness. Lowell has said that the dignity of elder masters of English writing sprang from the great books they consorted with, there being but few at hand, and those the loftiest: "they lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato," and grew to the grand manner of that grand company. Can one go to the presence of a brave man full of simplicity and not be glorified?--as Michelangelo said that when he read Homer, "he looked at himself to see if her were not twenty feet in height." And whoever lives long and often with such spirits, must not he come to see how great the greatness and what a reality the goodness which those souls so shine with?
JAMES VILA BLAKE
"Of Meditation", Essays