When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.

Meditation is the comfort in Life.

Whatever forms of meditation you practice, the most important point is to apply mindfulness continuously, and make a sustained effort. It is unrealistic to expect results from meditation within a short period of time. What is required is continuous sustained effort.

If a person's basic state of mind is serene and calm, then it is possible for this inner peace to overwhelm a painful physical experience. On the other hand, if someone is suffering from depression, anxiety, or any form of emotional distress, then even if he or she happens to be enjoying physical comforts, he will not really be able to experience the happiness that these could bring.

In the Buddha's life story we see the three stages of practice: Morality comes first, then concentrated meditation, and then wisdom. And we see that the path takes time.

Is there some time for yourself today - just for you, to sit quietly and refresh and renew. Not escaping into the TV, or thrashing around a squash court. Just time to sit quietly, focus your thoughts, check your priorities, make sure there is nothing negative pushing you down in your own mind. Take some time and be ...with yourself. If you don't, you may miss meeting the most important person in your life

The real sign of serenity is not seen so much in the face, as found in the depth and stillness of the eyes.

Behind all creation is silence. Silence is the essential condition, the vital ingredient for all creation and all that is created. It is a power in its own right. The artist starts with a blank canvas - silence. The composer places it between and behind the notes. The very ground of your being, out of which comes all your thoughts, is silence. The way to silence is through meditation. When you arrive in your own silence you will know true freedom and real power. Stop, take a minute, and listen to the silence within you today. Then be aware of what disturbs your inner silence. It could be negative thoughts, memories, sensations. And when you are aware, you will know what is draining your creative power, and you will know what needs to change...on the inside!

A racing mind that reacts sensitively to little things indicates thinking that has lost its spiritual strength. Meditation restores that power.

It is extroversion that wastes our energy and makes us feel weak. In a state of introversion we think less and speak less. We then have the power to put into action whatever we think and whatever we need to do.

In prayer you communicate with God, in meditation God communicates with you.

The flowering of love is meditation.

If you can become a mirror you have become a meditator. Meditation is nothing but skill in mirroring. And now, no word moves inside you so there is no distraction.

In silence lies the ability to listen; to listen to ourselves, to others and to God. Listening is a lost art. Without it we cannot communicate, we cannot relate to each other and so we cannot live life meaningfully. We need to learn to listen. Sitting in silence allows us to listen to ourselves and to understand. This silence can heal. The worries, the pain can be healed when we listen. Spiritual medicine is ever-present in the soul. Whenever we need it, to whatever extent we need it, we can find it within.

Practice meditation regularly. Meditation leads to eternal bliss. Therefore meditate, meditate.

Meditation is painful in the beginning but it bestows immortal Bliss and supreme joy in the end.

Don't give your mind permission to get disturbed. A disturbed mind is easily influenced. This will cost you your peace. Learn to maintain your peace by freeing yourself from attachments. Competing or comparing yourself with others will not allow you to focus inwards. An inner focus allows you to keep your eye on your higher self. Remember your original nature. It allows you to forge a link with the Divine. Then it becomes easy to recognise useless thoughts and replace them with a spiritual perspective. A calm mind is not just peaceful, it is focused, self-directing and Divine.

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.

The biggest disease of the mind is over-thinking, especially too much thinking about others. Thinking too much is like eating too much. The heaviness makes it impossible to remain light and flexible.

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.

Those who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. But those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation.

The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation.

Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace.

If one's life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements. And finally, there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation.

Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.

Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.

Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God.

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

First you try to meditate and after a while you become meditative.

Enjoy doing nothing without falling asleep - meditation

In the beginning you will fall into the gaps in between thoughts - after practicing for years, you become the gap.

Every moment there is a possibility to be total. Whatsoever you are doing, be absorbed in it so utterly that the mind thinks nothing, is just there, is just a presence. And more and more totality will be coming. And the taste of totality will make you more and more capable of being total. And try to see when you are not total. Those are the moments which have to be dropped slowly, slowly. When you are not total, whenever you are in the head--thinking, brooding, calculating, cunning, clever--you are not total. Slowly, slowly slip out of those moments. It is just an old habit. Habits die hard. But they die certainly--if one persists, they die.

First meditate, be blissful, then much love will happen of its own accord. Then being with others is beautiful and being alone is also beautiful. Then it is simple, too. You dont depend on others and you dont make others dependent on you. Then it is always a friendship, a friendliness. It never becomes a relationship, it is always a relatedness. You relate, but you dont create a marriage. Marriage is out of fear, relatedness is out of love. You relate; as long as things are moving beautifully, you share. And if you see that the moment has come to depart because your paths separate at this crossroad, you say good-bye with great gratitude for all that the other has been to you, for all the joys and all the pleasures and all the beautiful moments that you have shared with the other. With no misery, with no pain, you simply separate.

Meditation is a kind of medicine - its use is only for the time being. Once you have learned the quality, then you need not do any particular meditation; then the meditation has to spread all over your life. Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen. Then what will be the quality? Watchfully, alert, joyously, unmotivated, centered, loving, flowing, one walks. And the walking is sauntering. Loving, alert, watchful, one sits, unmotivated - not sitting for anything in particular, just enjoying how beautiful just sitting doing nothing is, how relaxing, how restful..... After a long walk, you sit under a tree and the breeze comes and cools you. Each moment one has to be at ease with oneself - not trying to improve, not cultivating anything, not practicing anything. Walking is Zen, sitting is Zen. Talking or silent, moving, unmoving, the essence is at ease. The essence is at ease: that is the key word. The essence is at ease: that is the key statement. Do whatsoever you are doing, but at the deepest core remain at ease, cool, calm, centered.

The child can become conscious only if in his past life he has meditated enough, has created enough meditative energy to fight with the darkness that death brings. One simply is lost in an oblivion and then suddenly finds a new womb and forgets completely about the old body. There is a discontinuity. This darkness, this unconsciousness creates the discontinuity. The East has been working hard to penetrate these barriers. And ten thousand years' work has not been in vain. Everybody can penetrate to the past life, or many past lives. But for that you have to go deeper into your meditation, for two reasons: unless you go deeper, you cannot find the door to another life; secondly, you have to be deeper in meditation because if you find the door of another life, a flood of events will come into the mind. It is hard enough even to carry one life....

What meditation does slowly, slowly, a good shout of the master, unexpectedly, in the situation where the disciple was asking some question, and the master jumps and shouts, or hits him, or throws him out of the door, or jumps over him.... These methods were never known. It was purely the very creative genius of Ma Tzu, and he made many people enlightened. Sometimes it looks so hilarious: he threw a man from the window, from a two-storey house, and the man had come to ask on what to meditate. And Ma Tzu not only threw him, he jumped after him, fell on him, sat on his chest, and he said, "Got it?!" And the poor fellow said, "Yes" - because if you say "No," he may beat you or do something else! It is enough - his body is fractured, and Ma Tzu, sitting on his chest, says, "Got it?!" And in fact he got it, because it was so sudden, out of the blue - he could never have conceived it.