Quotes about Being Present
“What makes life worth living? No child asks itself that question. To children life is self-evident. Life goes without saying: whether it is good or bad makes no difference. This is because children don’t see the world, don’t observe the world, don’t contemplate the world, but are so deeply immersed in the world that they don’t distinguish between it and their own selves.”
Karl Ove Knausgard, Autumn
“The reason creativity wilts inside of us like a vase full of snipped wildflowers is the very same reason love fades. Somewhere along the line, we stop noticing. We can never stop noticing. The moment we stop noticing, we might as well be dead. We’re alive and breathing but we feel nothing at all. Creativity and love dies when we feel nothing at all. And so we notice so we we can feel because, in the words of Klinkenborg, noticing means thinking with all your senses.”
Cole Schafer
“Nobody wants to sit with you at dinner while you’re on the phone. This is where we confuse time and energy. You can spend a whole hour with someone, but only give them ten minutes of energy. I’m not able to spend much time with my family, but when I’m with them I’m 100 percent there. I’d rather spend two hours with them, focused and engaged, than give them partial, distracted energy for a whole weekend.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 240)
“To my mind, the idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you aren’t doing them… If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish the quickly so I can go and have dessert or a cup of tea, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert or my tea when I finally have them… Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, via Think Like A Monk (Page 135)
“In the ashram we took the same thirty-minute walk on the same path at least once a day. Every day the monk asked us to keep our eyes open for something different, something we’d never before seen on this walk that we had taken yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Spotting something new every day on our familiar walk was a reminder to keep our focus on that walk, to see the freshness in each ‘routine,’ to be aware. Seeing something is not the same as noticing it.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 132)
“Everything you do in the day from washing to eating breakfast, having meetings, driving to work… watching television or deciding instead to read… everything you do is your spiritual life. It is only a matter of how consciously you do these ordinary things…”
Laurence Freeman, via Think Like A Monk (Page 77)
“A layperson who is consciously aiming to be continuously alive in the Now is a monk.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page Xii)
“Simple pleasures are just as transformative as extravagant experiences—so long as you remember how to enjoy them. I keep going back to this more than anything right now: the power of a dandelion, a blade of grass, a crisp breeze. We have forgotten how necessary these things are, and how important they are to our quality of life. We have forgotten about the very things that are right outside our own window. When you see something long enough, it becomes invisible—but, one of the best things you can do for yourself? Is to remember how to see. And sometimes, being in a small town does exactly that: gives you a more intimate lens with which to see the world around you. And to remind yourself that—no matter how overwhelming your world has gotten? There’s a gentle one waiting for you right here.”
Ash Ambirge
Everyday Osho [Book]
Book Overview: Everyday Osho features 365 short meditations that offer insights into living fully in the here and now. Each brief text is thoughtful and inspiring and the perfect length for starting a daily meditation practice. With topics that range from gratitude to nature to philosophy to love, Everyday Osho contains a full year of meditation and inspiration.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
Letting Your Bow Relax—A Short Story About Not Being So Serious All Of The Time
