309 Quotes About Contemplation

Seek to be alone much to commune with Nature and be thus inspired by her mighty whisperings within your consciousness. Nature is a most jealous god, for she will not whisper her inspiring revelations to you unless you are absolutely alone with her. (p. 9)

[Zuzuki-roshi] I don’t know anything about consciousness. I just try to teach my students how to hear the birds sing.

Life has to be freed and lived, instead of being known.

The practice of extending love towards all living creatures brings on ecstatic states of cosmic joy. In this intently concentrated state he (the meditator) has the power to send beneficent thoughts over land or sea to a distant person and let them penetrate his mind.

If we search into the innermost part of our self, we come in the end to an utter void where nothing from the outside world can reflect itself, to a divine stillness where no image and no form can be active. This is the essence of our being. This is the true Spirit.

When the mind enters into this imageless and thoughtless state, there is nothing in it to resist the union with divine consciousness.

Experience shows that if a sufficiently deep level--not necessarily the deepest level but one that corresponds to what the yogis call savikalpa samadhi, which is not as deep as nirvikalpa--if that can be attained and then prolonged sufficiently in time, an artist or a writer can draw from the experience creative power for his work.

1. Do all meditation work with open eyes, with the Buddhic smile. 2. Keep attention inside on the No-thought state and refrain from unnecessary talk. 3. When residual impressions from the last incarnation come in, ignore them. 4. Kill out the mind. Be free from its activity. Stay in the Void.

Not by adding more information, or more learning, or more study, can we now enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but rather by letting go, by ceasing this continual mental movement, and finding out what lies behind the movement.