“In my view, the realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst of whatever is happening. If you can do that, you have already solved most of the problems you will encounter in life.”
Sam Harris, Waking Up (Page 49)
“The literature on [the] psychological benefits [of mindfulness] is now substantial. There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply the state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.”
Sam Harris, Waking Up (Page 35)
“The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world.”
Sam Harris, Waking Up (Page 34)
“History is concerned with the past. It is concerned with the dead. It is concerned with that which is no more. The whole concern should be with that which is right now, this very moment. Don’t only forget history, but forget your biography also, and each morning start your day as if it were completely new, as if you have never existed before. That’s what meditation is all about: to start each moment anew, fresh like dew, not knowing anything of the past. When you don’t know anything of the past and you don’t carry anything of it, you don’t project any future. You have nothing to project. When the past disappears, the future also disappears. They are joined together. Then pure present is lift. that is pure eternity.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 298)
“Every day is different, and if sometimes you cannot see the difference between one day and another, that simply means that you are not seeing rightly. Nothing is ever repeated. Repetition does not exist. Existence is always fresh, utterly fresh. But if we look through the past, accumulated thoughts, the mind, then it can appear like repetition. And that’s why the mind is the only source of boredom. It makes you bored, because it never allows the freshness of life to be revealed to you. It goes on seeing things in the same pattern.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 261)
“A friend comes and holds your hand. Don’t miss this opportunity—because God has come in the form of the hand, in the form of the friend. A small child passes by and laughs. Don’t miss this, laugh with the child—because God has laughed through the child. You pass through the street and a fragrance comes from the fields. Stand there a moment, feel grateful—because God has come as a fragrance. If one can celebrate moment to moment, life becomes religious—and there is no other religion, there is no need to go to any temple. Then wherever you are is the temple, and whatever you are doing is religion.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 220)
“Bliss has no counterpart. It is not a duality of pleasure and pain, day and night. It is nondual, it knows no opposite. It is a transcendence. Try to be more and more in the present. Don’t move too much in imagination and memory. Whenever you find yourself wandering into memory, into imagination, bring yourself back to the present, to what you are doing, to where you are, to who you are. Pull yourself back again and again to the present. Buddha has called it recollecting oneself; in that recollection by and by you will understand what eternity is.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 191)
“One of the best secrets of a happy life is the art of extracting comfort and sweetness from every circumstance… People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or power to seek and find. If we are to cultivate the art of living, we should cultivate the art of extracting sweetness and comfort out of everything, as the bee goes from flower to flower in search of honey.”
Thomas Mitchell