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Quotes about Being Present Minded

    “To understand and live now, there must be dying to everything of yesterday. Die continually to every newly gained experience—be in a state of choiceless awareness of WHAT IS.”

    Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 14)

      “We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENNESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”

      Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 13)

        “[Bashō] prized sincerity and clarity [in poetry] and instructed, ‘Follow nature, return to nature, be nature.’ He had learned to meet each day with fresh eyes. ‘Yesterday’s self is already worn out!'”

        Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 191)

          “wanting always interrupts being.”

          Yung Pueblo, Inward (Page 166)

            “Be attentive to what you do; never consider anything unworthy of your attention.”

            Confucius, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 105)

              “[Rich] has a theory: When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember. ‘The key is to try to keep all three as separate as possible,’ he says. ‘The key is to be present wherever you are right now.'”

              Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 303)

                “All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery. The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.”

                Nisargadatta Maharaj, via Sunbeams (Page 138)

                  “It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest—by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.”

                  Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 250)