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awareness
- awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 4
mindfulness
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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
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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 |
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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
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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 |
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Empiricists. .
. . think they believe only what they see,
but they are much better at believing than at seeing.
George Santayana |
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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
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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
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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 |
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awareness
- awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 4
mindfulness
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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 |
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The
ultimate value of life depends upon awareness
and the
power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
Aristotle
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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
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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
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Too many people miss
the silver lining because they're expecting gold.
Maurice Setter
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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
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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
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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 |
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The fact that we are aware of ourselves is both
our greatest curse and also our greatest blessing.
Leonard Jacobson
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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
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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 |
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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 |
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awareness
- awareness 2
awareness 3 - awareness 4
mindfulness
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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 |
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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 |
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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. .
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The offerings of creation. . . our glimpses of truth.
Madeleine L'Engle
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