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Meditation is about resting in awareness …

• Meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation.  Osho
• Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration. Thich Nhat Hanh
• In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside. As you gently relax into awareness, into listening, the mind’s compulsive contraction around objects will fade. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing. Adyashanti
• Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Meditation is to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world. Thich Nhat Hanh
• Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us. Jon Kabat Zin
• In meditation you are not unconscious, you are conscious—more conscious than ever. Rajneesh
• When I say, ‘Meditate on the Self’ I am asking you to be the Self, not think about it. Be aware of what remains when thoughts stop. Be aware of the consciousness that is the origin of all your thoughts. Be that consciousness. Annamalai Swami
• As you meditate, you will find that consciousness itself will move you beyond time and space and condition into a larger, vaster, more beautiful state of awareness. Frederick Lenz
• How to do meditation, many people ask. Don’t do anything, just go into thoughtless awareness. Try to go to the thoughtless awareness. If you can get into that condition of thoughtless awareness, you’ve done your job because that’s the point where you are with the truth, with the reality, with the joy, with everything that is so fundamental. Nirmala Srivastava
• Meditation is the art of awareness. Rajneesh
• Meditation is a practice of detaching and then stopping ourselves from thinking; our thoughts are interruptions in the flow of awareness. Consciousness, in its highest aspect, is perfect and formless. Frederick Lenz
• Meditation is a way to take us to a deeper level of awareness. Tenzin Palmo
• Meditation is neither an activity nor the cessation of an activity. It is to abide knowingly as the empty, open, allowing presence of Awareness, in which all experience appears, with which it is known and, ultimately, out of which it is made. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is the only way you can grow. Because when you meditate, you are in silence, you are in thoughtless awareness. Then the growth of awareness takes place. Nirmala Srivastava
• Meditation is the progressive quieting of our mind, until we reach the source of thought, which in wisdom traditions are the realm of our soul and spirit. In this domain of awareness there is infinite creativity, synchronicity, the power of intention, and freedom from limitations. Deepak Chopra
• What is meditation? Meditation is our conscious awareness of something vast and infinite within us. Meditation grants us Peace, Light and Bliss. Sri Chinmoy
• When we meditate, we go beyond the swirl of thoughts, memories and emotions that tend to keep us stuck in our ego’s story of who we are. We enter an expanded state of awareness and discover our own inner fountain of joy, a source of happiness that isn’t dependent on anyone or anything. Deepak Chopra

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… watching the mind …

• Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Meditation, witnessing, silently sitting and looking at the mind, will be of much help. Not forcing, simply sitting and looking. Not doing much, just watching as one watches birds flying in the sky. Just Lying down on the ground and watching, nothing to do, indifferent. Not your concern really, where they are going; they are going on their own. Osho
• Don’t follow past thoughts, don’t anticipate the future, and don’t follow illusory thoughts that arise in the present, but turning within, observe your own true nature and maintain awareness of your natural mind, just as it is. Garab Dorje
• Meditation simply means a discipline that makes you capable of being aloof and detached from your mind. So even if the mind is sick, your consciousness is never sick. Even if your mind is going crazy, you are just witnessing it. Mind is only a machine. You are not. Rajneesh
• When you are in deep meditation, you feel a great serenity, a joy that is unknown to you, a watchfulness that is a new guest. Soon this watchfulness will become the host. The day the watchfulness becomes the host, it remains twenty-four hours with you. And out of this watchfulness, whatever you do has a wisdom in it. Whatever you do shows a clarity, a purity, a spontaneity, a grace. Rajneesh
• In meditation, you are not supposed to “concentrate” on the things that arise in the mind. Rather, you are supposed to “bear witness” to the things that arise in the mind. Now bearing witness means what? It means to stand aside and observe, become aware, and examine: “Yes this is there. That is there. This is happening. That is going on.” This is very important because it lays the foundation for the actual inner spiritual work that the meditation will provoke. Meditation is the foundation for deeper spiritual evolution. Swami Sai Premananda
• While meditating we are simply seeing what the mind has been doing all along. Allan Lokos
• Your goal is not to battle with the mind, but to witness the mind. Swami Muktananda
• Meditation means awareness, watchfulness, a silent witnessing of all the processes of the mind. And the magic of watching is that as your watchfulness deepens, the mind starts evaporating. When the watchfulness is absolute mind becomes nil, a zero. And the disappearance of the mind gives you clarity, absolute clarity, transparency; you can see through and through, you become a mirror. And then life is reflected as it is – not according to any doctrine, not according to the Bible or the Koran or the Gita but as it is. And to know life as it is, is to know god. Rajneesh
• Meditation means many things: it means turning inwards; it means quiet observation, reflection and awareness of ourselves; it means to be conscious of consciousness, to become a detached observer of the stream of changing thoughts, feelings, drives and visions, until we recognize their nature and their , origins. Lama Govinda
• When you meditate, what you actually do is to enter into a calm or still, silent mind. We have to be fully aware of the arrival and attack of thoughts. That is to say, we shall not allow any thought, divine or undivine, good or bad, to enter into our mind. Our mind should be absolutely silent. Then we have to go deep within; there we have to observe our real existence. Sri Chinmoy

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… while resting in the body

• When you meditate, don’t think about what is happening. Rather, let your awareness be seated in the tender warmth you feel in your body. If you do this, any meditation practice you do will be fruitful. Gil Fronsdal

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During meditation, attention sinks back into its source …

• The highest form of meditation is not an activity that is undertaken by the mind. It is a relaxing, falling back or sinking of the mind into its source or essence of pure awareness, from which it has arisen. Rupert Spira

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… sinking into the space between thoughts …

• The purpose of meditation is discovering inner space and realising you are it. Eckhart Tolle
• In the beginning you will fall into the gaps in between thoughts – after practicing for years, you become the gap. J.Kleykamp
• You draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation. Eckhart Tolle
• Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self- deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. Pema Chodron
• The act of meditation is being spacious. Sogyal Rinpoche
• That is the true function of meditation: to create a space in you where you can be rich, infinitely rich, utterly peaceful, absolutely ecstatic. Rajneesh
• Meditation is nothing but coming to terms with your inner emptiness: recognizing it, not escaping; living through it, not escaping; being through it, not escaping. Then suddenly the emptiness becomes the fullness of life. Rajneesh
• People are scared to empty their minds fearing that they will be engulfed by the void. What they don’t realize is that their own mind is the void. Huang Po
• Instead of ‘watching the thinker,’ you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation. Eckhart Tolle
• When one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen, in that gap, in between, isn’t there a consciousness of the present moment; fresh, virgin, unaltered by even a hair’s breadth of a concept, a luminous, naked awareness? Well, that’s what naturally peaceful awareness is. Sogyal Rinpoche

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… and all objects of awareness are relinquished

• Most forms of meditation involve directing the mind towards some kind of object, such as a mantra, a flame, a deity, a guru, the breath or the pause between breaths. In the case of conventional prayer our love is directed away from ourself towards God, who is conceived to exist at an infinite distance from ourself. All these forms of meditation or prayer require directing the mind towards more or less subtle objects and, as such, they all maintain the subject–object relationship. Whilst these are entirely legitimate and, in many cases, necessary preludes to the ultimate meditation or prayer, they must at some point be abandoned. Rupert Spira
• For those on a path of devotion, to relinquish the object of devotion is the ultimate surrender. For those on a path of knowledge, to relax the focusing of attention or the controlling of the mind is the final test. Rupert Spira
• The ground of Being is not an object, and that is why it is sometimes described as zero. When you focus your attention upon zero, or no-thing whatsoever, you realize that it is immeasurable, unquantifiable, and ever- ungraspable by your linear, rational mind. The mind is accustomed to focusing on objects—that’s what its function is. So when you try to focus on something that is not an object, the mind doesn’t know what to do. But if you make a decision to contemplate zero, you can begin to penetrate beyond the dualistic perspective that defines most of your experience. When you focus upon zero—when something meditates upon nothing—a flip can occur that throws you beyond the mind and beyond time.  Andrew Cohen
• When you give up thinking of outward objects and prevent your mind from going outwards by turning it inwards and fixing it in the Self, the Self alone remains. Ramana Maharshi

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In meditation, there is a resting in the awareness of being aware

• In true meditation all objects are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to manipulate or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness (consciousness) is the source in which all objects arise and subside. Adyashanti
• The whole art of meditation is becoming conscious of consciousness itself. Osho
• This returning of awareness to itself, its remembrance of itself – being aware of being aware – is the essence of meditation and prayer, and the direct path to lasting peace and happiness. Rupert Spira
• Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation. It is the only form of meditation that does not require the directing, focusing or controlling of the mind. Rupert Spira
• Being aware of being aware is the highest meditation. Rupert Spira
• To begin with, awareness may seem to find it difficult to remain with itself, that is, to stay with the non-objective experience of simply being aware, so accustomed is it to assuming the form of mind and, as such, directing itself towards objective experience. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is between awareness and itself. It is simply awareness being itself, resting in itself, knowing itself alone: being aware of being aware. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is very simple. It means to surrender the mind, the body and the world, from moment to moment, to the silent presence in which they appear. That’s all.  Francis Lucille
• Being aware of being aware – abiding in and as the self, resting in the ‘I am’, practising the presence of God – is the only form of meditation or prayer in which the ego, the apparently separate subject of experience, is not maintained. It is, as such, the highest form of meditation or prayer. It is the meditation or prayer for which all other meditations and prayers are preparations. Rupert Spira
• The meditation I am talking about is not a meditation on something. If you light a lamp and remove all the objects surrounding it, the lamp will still go on giving light. In the same way, if you remove all objects from your consciousness, all thoughts, all imagination, what will happen? – only consciousness will remain. Osho
• But you are not aware of your consciousness – You are not conscious of your consciousness – And that is the whole art of meditation; Becoming conscious of consciousness itself. Rajneesh
• To understand what is right meditation there must be an awareness of the operation of one’s own consciousness, and then there is complete attention. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• We are not really separate beings of light. That’s a dream we are having, the dream of multiplicity. Meditation takes us beyond the moment to eternal awareness. Frederick Lenz

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By resting in the awareness of being aware, we abide knowingly as what we are

• Meditation is what we are, not what we do. The separate self or finite mind is what we do, not what we are.  Rupert Spira
• Meditation is to abide as awareness, knowingly. Rupert Spira
• Consciousness is the primary and most intimate fact of experience. Every experience that we ever have, that we ever could or will have, is experienced by this Consciousness. Meditation is simply to abide knowingly as this presence of Consciousness.  Rupert Spira
• Space seems broken and diverse because of the many forms in it. Remove the forms and pure space remains. So, too with the Omnipresent Self. Adi Shankara
• Meditation is the subsidence of the activity of mind and the subsequent revelation of the very essence of the mind – pure knowing or awareness – to itself. Rupert Spira
• There is no purpose to meditation. The purpose is already accomplished. We are already what we are. We are already what we seek. We just abide as that. Rupert Spira
• Seek the source of the mind, and you find the mind does not exist at all. The mind, turned outwards, results in thoughts and objects. Turned inwards, it becomes itself, the Self. Ramana Maharshi
• The `I` in its purity is experienced in intervals between the two states or two thoughts. Ramana Maharshi
• Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away or become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. Pema Chodron
• When you give up thinking of outward objects and prevent your mind from going outwards by turning it inwards and fixing it in the Self, the Self alone remains. Ramana Maharshi

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In this state of meditation, awareness looks at itself and rests in itself

• Awareness must see itself clearly, and to see itself clearly it must ‘look at’ itself. Rupert Spira
• Awareness must relax the focus of its attention, or disentangle itself from the objects of experience, thereby allowing its attention to return to or come to rest in itself. Rupert Spira
• In meditation the simple experience of being aware is extricated from everything that we are aware of. Rupert Spira
• The whole art of meditation is becoming conscious of consciousness itself. Osho
• The contemplation of consciousness—which is the contemplation of no-thing whatsoever—is endlessly fascinating. It’s like staring at a candle in a dark night—you find yourself mesmerized by something that is unchanging yet infinitely compelling. You feel drawn into something you don’t understand rationally but that your heart or soul grasps completely. You are drawn into it, and as you are drawn into it, the only thing you experience as real is the eternal or timeless nature of Being itself.  You find yourself in a state of rapture, because the deepest part of yourself has been released from your ego’s endless fears and concerns, and drawn out of the time process altogether.  Andrew Cohen
• When the Indian sage Atmananda Krishna Menon was asked how to know when one is established in one’s true nature, he is said to have replied, ‘When thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions can no longer take you away’. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is a delight in your own being. Osho

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In meditation, awareness is allowed to flow where it wants to go

• The invitation for you as a meditator is to become very engaged with where awareness wants to go, with what it wants to experience, with what it wants to look at. Adyashanti
• True meditation is not a ‘doing’, not a task to accomplish or a process leading towards some future goal or state for the hungry seeker – it is pure, child-like fascination. Fascination with thoughts, with sensations, with feelings, with sounds, with fascination itself – with what is, right now. It is radically being here, and noticing in fascination the desire to get ‘there’ arising and dissolving. Noticing all the ingenious attempts of thought to escape this moment; noticing that even these desires are radically welcome in the silent open space that you are; and noticing that even ‘I am the one who notices’ or ‘I am the controller’ are more thoughts, which, like everything else, are deeply allowed to arise in you, and deeply allowed to dissolve. This is meditation without a meditator, and it is the light that never goes out. Jeff Foster
• In meditation we simply allow this thinking/ sensing/ perceiving to be whatever it is from moment to moment. This thinking/ sensing/ perceiving is always moving, always changing. We simply allow it to flow through us, to appear, to remain and to disappear. In fact, that is all that is happening anyway. That in which the thinking/ sensing/ perceiving appears is what we call ‘I’. It is the conscious, witnessing Presence which experiences whatever it is that is being experienced from moment to moment. There is no need to make this witnessing Presence conscious. It is already so. There is no need to make it peaceful. It is already so. There is no need to wake it up. It is always already awake. There is no need to make it unlimited and impersonal. It is already so. Rupert Spira
• Real meditation is spontaneous. It is pure welcoming, because there is no choosing of whatever appears in the field of consciousness. There is no selection. There is only choiceless allowing, be it of external perceptions, feelings, bodily sensations, thoughts, or their absence. Everything is equally allowed to come into existence, not as a practice, but because the mind has understood its own limitations. That is all the truth- seeker needs to do. No further spiritual practice needs to be undertaken. Francis Lucille
• Perhaps if we are friendly with the mind, if we watch the mind, if we understand the mind, if we let it wander, let it roam about wherever it wants, let it exhaust its momentum by wandering, without scolding, without praising, without condemning it might exhaust its momentum and arrive at the simple innocent silence. Vimala Thakar

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In meditation, everything is allowed to be as it is, without manipulating the experience in any way

• Meditation is simply to abide as oneself. We remain as we are and allow the mind, the body and the world to appear and disappear without interference. If there is interference, then that is understood to be part of the mind’s activity and is allowed to be exactly as it is.  Rupert Spira
• True meditation is letting go of manipulating our experience. Adyashanti
• In meditation we just remain as we are, as we always have been, and we allow the mind, the body and the world to be just as they are. Rupert Spira
• We simply allow everything to be as it is. As we allow everything to be as it is, we are, unknowingly at first, taking our stand in our true nature. Rupert Spira
• In meditation the mind is allowed to be exactly as it is, without the need to change it. There is no need to make it peaceful, no need to stop the thoughts, no need to make them positive. We just remain as we are, allowing our experience to be whatever it is from moment to moment.  Rupert Spira
• Experience is allowed to flow. It is allowed to move and change. If we find ourself trying to manipulate it, that is fine. That is also part of the current experience. It is allowed to be. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is to abide as awareness knowingly, not trying to manipulate the experience in any way. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is nothing about escaping or transforming present experience. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Consciousness, or your true nature, is allowing everything to be as it is. Adyashanti
• Like most people, when I sat, I sometimes felt good and peaceful. Other times I would be agitated, upset, or anxious. Sometimes I would be sad, and sometimes I would be happy. I felt all the various human emotions while I was sitting. What I realized was that when I allowed my experience to be as it was, and made no effort to change it, an underlying natural state of being started to rise into consciousness. Adyashanti
• Awareness or spirit simply means a beingness, a sense of aliveness which transcends all of our form. This awareness is totally inclusive. It is a state of being where everything is okay simply the way it is. Adyashanti
• Not going anywhere is meditation, just being where you are; there is no other “where” – just being there where you are, just occupying only that space where you are. Osho
• I viewed the thinking mind as an ‘enemy’ that I needed to subdue. But I don’t approach meditation like that these days. Now I’m much kinder to myself. I simply allow things to be as they are. If my mind is agitated, I let it rage until it’s spent. When my mind becomes still, I treasure the calm. Tim Freke

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Meditation is relinquishing of all effort

• There can be no effort in this non-practice. Any effort would involve directing the mind towards an object or trying to control the focus of attention.  Rupert Spira
• Meditation is not something we do; it is something we cease to do.
• Being aware of being aware – awareness’s awareness of itself – is the only truly effortless experience there is. Rupert Spira
• We cannot make an effort to be or know our self – we can only make an effort to be or know something apparently other than our self. Rupert Spira
• Once our true nature of pure awareness has become apparent, we realise that no effort is required either to return to it or to remain there. Rupert Spira
• Willpower in meditation is the famous “lid on the boiling kettle.” You are holding it down, forcing yourself to be still, instead of surrendering into the present moment so that stillness arises naturally.  Eckhart Tolle
• A meditative mind is at ease because it’s not trying to acquire anything. Adyashanti

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… a letting go rather than a doing …

• Meditation is not an activity. It is the cessation of an activity. Rupert Spira
• It’s not so much about doing as about being. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• In order to understand that meditation is not an activity, we can use the example of a clenched fist. If someone now asks us to open our hand, we feel that the opening of the hand requires an effort. At some stage, as we open our hand, we will become aware of the fact that we are not applying a new effort in order to open the hand, but rather that we are relaxing a previous effort, of which we were no longer even aware.  Rupert Spira
• The separate self or ego is like the clenching of the fist. It is a contraction of infinite awareness into an apparently finite mind. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is the relaxation of the tension in attention and the subsequent return of awareness to itself. It is a dissolving of the mind in the heart of awareness, not a directing of the mind towards any kind of objective experience. Rupert Spira
• It is only because the clenched fist seems to be the natural condition of the hand that an effort seems to be required to open it. Rupert Spira
• Meditation is one of the rare occasions when we’re not doing anything. Otherwise, we’re always doing something, we’re always thinking something, we’re always occupied. We get lost in millions of obsessions and fixations. But by meditating—by not doing anything–all these fixations are revealed and our obsessions will naturally undo themselves like a snake uncoiling itself. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
• Do not try to become anything. Do not make yourself into anything. Do not be a meditator. Do not become enlightened. When you sit, let it be. When you walk, let it be. Grasp at nothing. Resist nothing.  Ajahn Chah

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… a letting go of all control …

• The foundation of True Meditation is that we are letting go of control. Adyashanti
• If you try to win the war with your mind, you’ll be at war forever. Adyashanti
• Whether you try to influence the mind through ideas and concepts, or through discipline and vows, or through drugs, you are trying to stimulate artificially a state of silence.
• We carry out our meditation with an attitude of control and manipulation, and that is the very reason our meditation leads us to what feels like a dead end. The awakened state of being, the enlightened state of being, can also be called the natural state of being. How can control and manipulation possibly lead us to our natural state? Adyashanti
• What happens when you allow your experience to be exactly as it is without trying to change it. Instead of a technique, True Meditation is actually a means of investigation. What happens when we actually let go of control and manipulation? Adyashanti
• Meditation is the ultimate act of faith. Because to sit down and let everything be as it already is—to let go of control, to let go of manipulation—is itself a very deep act of faith. It’s also a deep act of investigation. Adyashanti
• Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. Jack Kornfield
• Meditation is simplicity itself. One is to just let go, nothing special is supposed to happen.
• What if you let go of every bit of control and every urge that you have, right down to the most infinitesimal urge to control anything, anywhere, including anything that may be happening with you at this moment? If you were able to give up control absolutely, totally, and completely, then you would be a spiritually free being. Adyashanti
• In true meditation all objects are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to manipulate or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness (consciousness) is the source in which all objects arise and subside. Adyashanti
• Meditation provides a way of learning how to let go. As we sit, the self we’ve been trying to construct and make into a nice, neat package continues to unravel. John Welwood
• The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Real meditation is not about mastering a technique; it’s about letting go of control. Adyashanti

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One of the ultimate aims of meditation is to bring deeper awareness into daily life

• Meditation is not a technique; meditation is life. Swami Daynanda
• Meditation is the process by which we go about deepening our attention and awareness, refining them, and putting them to greater practical use in our lives. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here and now. Sharon Salzberg
• Meditation, then, is not so much a part of this or that particular religion, but rather part of the universal spiritual culture of all humankind–an effort to bring awareness to bear on all aspects of life. It is, in other words, part of what has been called the perennial philosophy. Ken Wilber
• Meditation is the most extraordinary thing if you know how to do it, and you cannot possibly learn from anybody; and that’s the beauty of it. It isn’t something you learn, a technique, and therefore there is no authority. Therefore, if you will learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, the way you talk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy. If you are aware of it without any choice, all that is part of meditation, and as you go, as you journey, as that movement goes, all that movement is meditation. Then that movement is endless, timeless. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• We find ourselves wishing for the day when our every waking moment can become a meditation. David Michie
• We tend to think of meditation in only one way. But life itself is a meditation. Raul Julia
• Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• Formal meditation, however, is no substitute for bringing space consciousness into everyday life. Eckhart Tolle
• Meditation in some sense is like tuning your instrument before you take it out on the road. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• The real meditiation is your life- and your life is now. Eckhart Tolle
• Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives. Sharon Salzberg
• Meditation allows us to directly participate in our lives instead of living life as an afterthought. Stephen Levine
• Meditation has to become your heartbeat; even when you are asleep the meditation continues like an undercurrent Rajneesh
• Meditation is a valuable exercise, but eventually you have to open up your eyes and look around. Dan Millman
• Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively. Sharon Salzberg
• Meditation does not imply only the development of single-pointed concentration, sitting in some corner doing nothing. Meditation is an alert state of mind, the opposite of sluggishness; meditation is wisdom. You should remain aware every moment of your daily life, fully conscious of what you are doing and how you are doing it. Lama Yeshe
• The task of constant and unrelenting fixity of focus—allowing not even a moment of distraction from meditation—continued while doing ordinary activities. At first, this seemed very difficult, but as time went on, it became habitual, automatic, and effortless. The process is like a rocket leaving Earth: At first, it requires enormous power, then less and less as it leaves the earth’s gravitational field; and finally, it moves through space under its own momentum. Suddenly, without warning, a shift in awareness occurred, and the Presence was there, unmistakable, all-encompassing. David R. Hawkins
• Meditation is really quite simple. All we have to do is embrace each experience with awareness and open our hearts fully to the present moment. When we are completely at ease with our own being, the ripples of awareness naturally spread out in all directions, touching the lives of everyone we meet. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

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Life in a state of awareness becomes a meditation …

• Meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation.  Osho
• Remember one thing: meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. Osho
• I have found that one of the keys to really being free is to live in the same way as you meditate. Adyashanti
• Meditation has to be a part of our every activity. It’s not sufficient to meditate for one hour and be unaware for twenty- three hours. It must become the inner thread of all our actions. Dr. Douglas J. Taber
• Meditation is not something that should be done in a particular position at a particular time. It is an awareness and an attitude that must persist throughout the day. Annamalai Swami

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… and in so doing, everything becomes sacred

• From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• If you ask Zen people, they will say; tea is not something that you pour with unawareness and drink like any other drink. It is not a drink, it is meditation; it is prayer. So they listen to the kettle creating a melody, and in that listening they become more silent, more alert. Rajneesh

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Everyday awareness brings a kind of alchemy to life …

• Awareness is the greatest alchemy there is. Just go on becoming more and more aware you will find your life changing for the better in every possible dimension. It will bring great fulfilment. Osho
• Meditation makes you innocent, it makes you childlike. In that state, miracles are possible. That state is pure magic. Rajneesh
• When you meditate, you will care more for those around you and you will be able to do more for them, as your own awareness advances. Everyone who comes into your field of energy is positively influenced. Frederick Lenz

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… including greater aliveness and energy …

• A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self- awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self- awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without effort on your part. Nisargadatta Maharaj

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… a great sense of peace and stillness amidst the hustle and bustle …

• In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you. By Deepak Chopra
• Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there is in silence. Max Ehrmann
• Someone once inquired of a Far Eastern Zen master, who had a great serenity and peace about him no matter what pressures he faced, “How do you maintain that serenity and peace?”He replied, “I never leave my place of meditation.” He meditated early in the morning and for the rest of the day, he carried the peace of those moments with him in his mind and heart. Stephen Covey
• When you’re with stillness, you merge on some level with everything around you. You can’t pin- point where it’s coming from. From inside? From outside? Where? It just is. It is just this moment of peace and stillness. This is what you should be experiencing in your meditation. When you become very good at it, you will have the stillness with you all the time. It doesn’t leave. It never leaves. It is constantly with you—a sense of being. A sense of completion. And a sense of silence. A level of peace is with you at all times. Swami Sai Premananda
• Experience yourself in silence. Erich Schiffmann
• Meditation calms the mind, and when the mind is in a state of restful awareness, the body relaxes too. Deepak Chopra

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… and the rewards of greater self-awareness

• Meditation is the way to individuality. It makes you a light unto yourself. Rajneesh
• Meditation is simply seeing reality and acknowledging it with bare honesty. Bo Lozoff
• What’s encouraging about meditation is that even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we’re closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance. Pema Chodron
• I have learned over the years that the most creative and trustworthy actions come from meditative awareness. Eric Klein
• Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self- control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self- People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self- awareness. Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.
• The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self- awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain. It may seem incredible that our brains can reshape themselves so quickly, but meditation increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, in much the same way that lifting weights increases blood flow to your muscles. The brain appears to adapt to exercise in the same way that muscles do, getting both bigger and faster in order to get better at what you ask of it. Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.

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Meditation provides a powerful vehicle for spiritual enquiry and self-discovery.…

• The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation. Ken Wilber
• I have found two elements to be the most helpful and most powerful when it comes to awakening. The first is developing a meditative attitude, in which we let go of control on a very deep level and allow everything to be as it is. The second is a serious engagement with our own inherent curiosity and intelligence through meditative self-inquiry. Adyashanti
• The invitation for you as a meditator is to become very engaged with where awareness wants to go, with what it wants to experience, with what it wants to look at. Adyashanti
• Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are. Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Embrace silence since meditation is the only way to truly come to know your Source. Wayne Dyer
• The most powerful question we can ask is simply, “What am I? Who is the meditator?” Adyashanti
• Meditative self-inquiry is the art of asking a spiritually powerful question. And a question that is spiritually powerful always points us back to ourselves. Because the most important thing that leads to spiritual awakening is to discover who and what we are—to wake up from this dream state, this trance state of identification with ego. And a question that is spiritually powerful always points us back to ourselves. Adyashanti
• Since pure awareness of nowness is real Enlightenment, in openness and contentment I found the Truth in my heart. By simply relaxing in this uncontrived, open, and natural state, we obtain the quality of effortless freedom of whatever arises. Dudjom Rinpoche

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and can lead to self-realization

• The ignorant know me as the gross universe, whereas the wise feel me as their own pure being eternally glowing as ‘I-I’ within. This realization is possible only in the deep stillness of thought-free consciousness similar to that of the deep sea free from waves. Vidya Gita
• Meditation was invented as a way for the soul to venture inward, there ultimately to find supreme identity with Godhead. Whatever else it does, and it does many beneficial things, meditation is first and foremost a search for the God within. Ken Wilber
• Meditation means conscious self-expansion. Meditation means one’s conscious awareness of the transcendental Reality. Meditation means the recognition or the discovery of one’s own true self. It is through meditation that we transcend limitation, bondage and imperfection. Sri Chinmoy
• Seek the source of the mind, and you find the mind does not exist at all. The mind, turned outwards, results in thoughts and objects. Turned inwards, it becomes itself, the Self. Ramana Maharshi
• The ultimate meditation is: surrender to reality. The more you fight, the more you are in conflict with it, the more you will be a loser. In deep surrender, the ego disappears. And when the ego is not there, for the first time you become aware of that which has always been there. Osho

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As awareness in meditation deepens …

• Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity. Swami Sivananda
• As you rest into stillness more profoundly, awareness becomes free of the mind’s compulsive control, contractions, and identifications. Awareness naturally returns to its non-state of absolute unmanifest potential, the silent abyss beyond all knowing. Adyashanti
• In order to find out for yourself what the timeless ideal of enlightenment is all about, the first step you need to take is a very big one. You have to be willing, at least temporarily, to let absolutely everything go. You have to take an inner journey beyond everything you are and everything you know, beyond time, form, thought, and memory, all the way back to before the beginning, before anything ever happened, before the universe was born. When you sink below the surface of the manifest world and awaken to the timeless depth of that empty ground, you find yourself contemplating consciousness in its primordial state, free from all content, before it entered the stream of time.  In this dimension, nothing has ever happened. The universe has not yet emerged; you have not been born; even time itself has not yet begun.  Andrew Cohen

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… even the sense of being an experiencer falls away …

• Even the sense “I am” is an object in awareness. Mooji
• Experiences are projected from your presence. When the experiencer and experiences dissolve, there you are.  Shri Ramakant
• That envelope cannot be removed by any amount of will; the “I” cannot erase itself. Yet, abruptly, it does vanish. In the climax of meditation the barrier of individuality disappears, dissolving in a sea of pure, undifferentiated awareness. Eknath Easwaran
• The seeming separation between the witness and the observer disappears. One ‘becomes’ the phenomenon sans a localized observer. David R. Hawkins

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… and only pure awareness remains …

• By letting go of even the thought ‘I,’ and ‘me’ what is left? There is nowhere to stand and no one to stand there.  No separation anywhere.  Pure awareness.  Neither this, nor that.  Just clarity and being.  Ram Dass

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… that which you discover yourself to be

• The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the sky-like nature of mind, and to introduce us to that which we really are, our unchanging pure awareness, which underlies the whole of life and death. Sogyal Rinpoche
• You realize then that all along there was something tremendous within you and you did not know it. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Meditation is an adventure in finding out who you are. Kabat-Zinn

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In this way, the presence of God within is illuminated

• If you want to find God, hang out in the space between your thoughts. Alan Cohen
• By and by… there are more and more gaps of silence. Through those gaps, windows will open to the divine. Rajneesh
• The kingdom of God is just behind the darkness of closed eyes, and the first gate that opens to it is your peace. Paramahansa Yogananda
• God dwells in you, as you, and you don’t have to ‘do’ anything to be God-realized or Self-realized, it is already your true and natural state. Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your ego mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being. For this to be your own presently lived experience, Self-Inquiry Meditation is a direct and immediate way. Ramana Maharshi
• Spiritual meditation is the pathway to Divinity. It is a mystic ladder which reaches from earth to heaven, from error to Truth, from pain to peace. James Allen
• When you meditate, the silence of the senses illumines the presence of God within. Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
• The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation. In meditation we divest ourselves of all material condition and feel our divine nature. Swami Vivekananda
• Through meditation, the Higher Self is seen. Bhagavad Gita
• When you meditate the glory of the Divine shines forth.
• Honor your self. Worship your self. Meditate on your self. God dwells within you as you. Swami Muktananda

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Meditations thus allows you to connect to God within and source great spiritual power

• Meditation is listening to the Divine within. Edgar Cayce
• Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God. Diana Robinson
• In meditation, you are calm and receptive. You are like an open door providing a kind of cross ventilation so that the air of divinity can move through you. Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu
• We spend a great deal of time telling God what we think should be done, and not enough time waiting in the stillness for God to tell us what to do. Peace Pilgrim
• I deepen my experience of God through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness. Marianne Williamson
• Meditation – the true action of a quiet mind – is not the path to the divine; it is the action of the divine reflecting upon itself. Guy Finley
• Stand aside and watch the working of the divine power in yourself. Sri Aurobindo
• Wisdom leads to unity, but ignorance to separation. So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance. But when God is realised within, that is true knowledge. Sri Ramakrishna
• This is precisely why meditation on the divine play of an incarnation of God or a great saint can be beneficial. It allows a person to keep his focus on a single point, just as in the yogic type of meditation. However, that single point has many aspects to it, like a gem. And when the mind wanders away from one aspect, rather than getting lost altogether, it can simply rest on another one of the infinite divine aspects. So the tendency of the mind to wander no longer represents a liability for the devotee, but instead becomes a positive aid in this kind of meditation. One divine association to lead the mind to another, so that it always remains within the circle of the divine presence, just as the tether of a cow allows it to graze within a certain area defined by the length of the rope. Swami Atmajanananda

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