Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

Alone let him constantly meditate in solitude on that which is salutary for his soul, for he who meditates in solitude attains supreme bliss.

One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that's been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.

The key to creating the mental space before responding is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of being present: paying attention to and accepting what is happening in our lives. It helps us to be aware of and step away from our automatic and habitual reactions to our everyday experiences.

Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath.

Just as you wouldn't leave the house without taking a shower, you shouldn't start the day without at least 10 minutes of sacred practice: prayer, meditation, inspirational reading.

I loved science, and when I discovered Buddhist meditative practices and martial arts, I was able to bridge those ways of knowing the world into my own unique way. From that grew the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which became my karmic assignment.

Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don't allow our bodies to heal, and we don't allow our minds and hearts to heal.

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

A daydream is an evasion.

The purpose of meditation is to make our mind calm and peaceful. If our mind is peaceful, we will be free from worries and mental discomfort, and so we will experience true happiness. But if our mind is not peaceful, we will find it very difficult to be happy, even if we are living in the very best conditions.

Gardening is a working meditation for me. It helps me remember process, and it helps me remember patience.

I begin each day with prayer and meditation. Throughout the day, I use affirmations and positive intentions to move through blocks, and each evening, I close the day with self-reflection and an inventory of my growth throughout the day.

It's very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

I deepen my experience of God through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness.

A fully engaged imagination is essential to the spiritual practice of the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana School, whose artistic tradition is in service of consciousness transformation.

Self-reflection is so healthy. Journaling works for me - when I record the details of what I'm going through, whether it's a relationship issue or negative thoughts, I can look back and see how far I've come. It makes me proud to see my progress and how I got through a bad situation.

Meditation is to dive all the way within, beyond thought, to the source of thought and pure consciousness. It enlarges the container, every time you transcend. When you come out, you come out refreshed, filled with energy and enthusiasm for life.

All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must a learn how to be alone - and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly - spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.

An unschooled man who knows how to meditate upon the Lord has learned far more than the man with the highest education who does not know how to meditate.

Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.

Mental fitness is served by consciously redirecting our attention away from the constant bombardment from the media whose reason to be seems to be focused on keeping us in a state of constant alert.

Transcendental meditation is an ancient mental technique that allows any human being to dive within, transcend and experience the source of everything. It's such a blessing for the human being because that eternal field is a field of unbounded intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy and peace.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

Meditation while walking has a long, noble history in ancient spiritual disciplines.

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 meditate an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. Once a year I go away for a long retreat. And overall, I just feel more comfortable in my own skin and less anxious, less sad, less fearful.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

This life that has been given to us as a gift, as such a precious gift. To really try to understand it, really try to recognize it, is the greatest meditation. Through the media of this Knowledge we can tap into our inner sources that are so beautiful.

Sleep is the best meditation.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Just as it is fire's nature to burn, it is meditation's nature to heal, to bring peace and uplift you beyond your worldly environment and transport you to a higher plane.

The seated lotus postures are an amazing way to go into meditation, or simply just to take a moment to ground oneself.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

Like the practice of breath control, meditation on the forms of God, repetition of mantras, food restrictions, etc., are but aids for rendering the mind quiescent.

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

I think we need to do some deep soul searching about what's important in our lives and renew our spirit and our spiritual thinking, whether it's through faith-based religion or just through loving nature or helping your fellow man.

When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind's disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river.

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

Concentration of the mind is in a way common to both Knowledge and Yoga. Yoga aims at union of the individual with the universal, the Reality. This Reality cannot be new. It must exist even now, and it does exist.

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

Morning meditation is important to start every day on a positive note.

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.

Buddhist practices offer a way of saying, 'Hey, come back over here, reconnect.' The only way that you'll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.