awareness - awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 4
mindfulness

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake

 
Half the joy of life is in the little things taken on the run.  Let us run if we must--even the sands do that--but let us keep our hearts young and our eyes open that nothing worth our while shall escape us.

Victor Cherbuliez
  
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.  Those to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, are as good as dead:  their eyes are closed.

Albert Einstein
  
I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books.  It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing.  The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility.

Helen Keller
  
Empiricists. . . . think they believe only what they see, but they are much better at believing than at seeing.

George Santayana

    

When I see someone smile, I know immediately that he or she is dwelling in awareness.
This half-smile, how many artists have labored to bring it to the lips of countless statues
and paintings?  I am sure the same smile must have been on the faces of the sculptors
and painters as they worked.  Can you imagine an angry painter giving birth to such a smile?
Mona Lisa's smile is light, just a hint of a smile.  Yet even a smile like that is enough to relax
all the muscles in our face, to banish all worries and fatigue.  A tiny bud of a smile on our lips
nourishes awareness and calms us miraculously.  It returns us to the peace we thought we had lost.

Thich Nhat Hanh

   

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I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow between the
island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly still and smooth
water in the lee of the island, and two hawks, fish hawks perhaps,
sailing over it. I did not see how it could be improved.  Yet I do
not see what these things can be.  I begin to see such an object
when I cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or
appreciate it before, but I get no further than this.  How adapted
these forms and colors to my eye!  A meadow and an island!
What are these things?  Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so
aloof!  and Nature so reserved!  I am made to love the pond
and the meadow, as the wind is made to ripple the water.

Henry David Thoreau

    

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over
the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child
be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life,
an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later
years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial,
the alienation from the sources of our strength.

Rachel Carson

    

If the things of this world neither delight nor threaten us they are often dismissed,
ignored, or simply missed.  The tree outside our window, made familiar by time,
no longer appears to offer anything to attract our attention.  We fail to notice the
texture of its leaves, its changing colors, its growing and aging, the way the sun
reflects on its leaves.  We believe we need something more stimulating and exciting
for it to be worthy of our attention.  In learning to stay in the present, we discover
that it is the power of our attention that makes all things worthy.

Christina Feldman

   

   

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I who am blind can give one hint to those who see—one admonition
to those who would make full use of the gift of sight:  Use your eyes
as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. . . . Hear the music of
voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you
would be stricken deaf tomorrow.  Touch each object you want to
touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume
of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never
smell and taste again.  Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets
of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you.

Helen Keller
  

awareness - awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 4
mindfulness

Most of the time, if you're not really paying attention, you're someplace
else.  So your child might say, "Daddy, I want this," and you might say,
"Just a minute, I'm busy."  Now that's no big deal--we all get busy, and
kids frequently ask for attention.  But over your child's entire youth, you
may have an enormous number of such moments to be really, fully present,
but because you thought you were busy, you didn't see the opportunities
these moments presented. . . . People carry around an enormous amount
of grief because they missed the little things.

Jon Kabat-Zinn
    

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the
power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Aristotle

  

We must work on our souls, enlarging and expanding them.
We do so by experiencing all of life--the beauty and the
joy as well as the grief and pain.  Soul work requires paying
attention to life, to the laughter and the sorrow, the
enlightening and the frightening, the inspiring and the silly.

Matthew Fox

   

All of us tend to put off living.  We are all dreaming of some magical
rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses
that are blooming outside our windows today.

Dale Carnegie

  

Too many people miss the silver lining because they're expecting gold.

Maurice Setter

   

You do not need to leave your room.  Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait.  Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Franz Kafka

  

   

   

Carefully observe the natural laws in operation in the world around you,
and live by them.  From following them, you will learn the morality
of modesty, moderation, compassion, and consideration (not just
one society’s rules and regulations), the wisdom of seeing things as
they are (not of merely collecting “facts” about them), and the happiness
of being in harmony with the Way (which has nothing to do with
self-righteous “spiritual” obsessions and fanaticism).  And you
will live lightly, spontaneously, and effortlessly.

Benjamin Hoff

    
Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the
birds sing in one's own way and not the way one was taught.

Eric Berne
    

The fact that we are aware of ourselves is both
our greatest curse and also our greatest blessing.

Leonard Jacobson

  

Everything is extraordinarily clear.  I see the whole landscape
before me, I see my hands, my feet, my toes, and I smell the rich
river mud.  I feel a sense of tremendous strangeness
and wonder at being alive.  Wonder of wonders.

the Buddha

  

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I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough
to go in when it rains.  One may keep snug and dry by
such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.

Adeline Knapp
   

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.  Let me learn
from you, love you, bless you before you depart.  Let me not pass
you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.  Let me hold you
while I may, for it may not always be so.  One day I shall dig my nails
into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut,
or raise my hands to the sky and want more than all the world your
return.  And then I will know what I am now guessing:  that you are,
indeed, a common rock and not a jewel, but that a common rock
made of the very mass substance of the earth in all its
strength and plenty puts a gem to shame.

Mary Jean Irion

   

When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't
grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event,
we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

Cynthia Ozick

awareness - awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 4
mindfulness

   
It can be tempting to blame others for our loss of direction.  We get lots of information
about life but little education in life from parents, teachers, and other authority figures,
who should know better from their experience.  Information is about facts.
Education is about wisdom and the knowledge of how to love and survive.
But no matter how much advice you get, you are the one who chooses which train to board.
As you pass through life, pay attention to the signs and stations; if you don't like the scenery,
pull the emergency cord and get off the train.  There is no other conductor in charge.
There is no one who needs to give you permission to transfer.
This is your life.  Your journey.  Your trip to conduct.

Bernie Siegel
  

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when
my life ends.  I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys.  The
bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk;
the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after
midnight; the hour when the family come home; Sunday-evening
tea before the fire!  I have never missed one moment of beauty,
not even taken it for granted.  Spring, summer, autumn, or winter.
I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

Agnes Sligh Turnbull

  

It is an extraordinary and beautiful thing that God, in creation. . . works
with the beauty of matter; the reality of things; the discoveries of
the senses, all five of them; so that we, in turn, may hear the grass
growing; see a face springing to life in love and laughter. . .
The offerings of creation. . . our glimpses of truth.

Madeleine L'Engle

   

           
    

When Walker first steps onto the road, he has no thoughts, no history, no memories, and no clothes. As he travels and meets people and learns from them, he comes to know more about life, living, and becoming the person he's meant to be. Walker is a parable for all of us who wonder what might be the purpose of life, why bad things happen with almost as much regularity as good things, and how we can learn from the bad examples and experiences in our lives as much as we can learn from the good things. Tom Walsh's parable is a story of the ages, a timeless exploration of ideas and thoughts that all of us wonder about, a sincere and heartfelt portrait of a man who has no past and no future, but who learns to make the most of each precious present moment as it comes.