36 Quotes by Noah Levine

Happiness is closer to the experience of acceptance and contentment than it is to pleasure. True happiness exists as the spacious and compassionate heart’s willingness to feel whatever is present.

It’s easy to hate and point out everything that is wrong with the world; it is the hardest and most important work in one’s life to free oneself from the bonds of fear and attachment.

We come to understand the law of casuality – that is, we see that all beings are experiencing what they’re experiencing based on their own actions and not by what we wish for them – and therefore we relax in a deep understanding and acceptance of the way things are.

We mistakenly bind ourselves to be content only when life is feeling pleasurable.

We could search the whole world and never find another being more worthy of our love than ourselves.

We commit to the daily disciplined practices of meditation, yoga, exercise, wise actions, kindness, forgiveness, generosity, compassion, appreciation, and moment-to-moment mindfulness of feelings, emotions, thoughts, and sensations. We are developing the skillful means of knowing how to apply the appropriate meditation or action to the given circumstance.

The body breathes by itself. The mind thinks by itself. Awareness simply observes the process without getting lost in the content.

The more I practiced kindness and humility, the more the world seemed to appear friendly and manageable.

To recover we must understand and accept impermanence. We must replace the reactive survival instinct of clinging, grasping, and attachment with the wise response of nonclinging, nonattachment, and compassion. In a world where everything is constantly being pulled beyond our grasp, clinging and grasping always result in the rope burns and unnecessary suffering that accompanies it.