Patrick Zeis In Balanced Achievement’s Quote 20 series, we explore 20 inspirational quotes about a particular topic or 20 memorable quotes said by a historically significant individual. In this article, we illuminate 20 mindfulness quotes that are sure to inspire you to cultivate mindfulness within yourself and enhance your ability to live each day mindfully.
With an important place in both ancient Buddhism wisdom and modern psychological insights, the practice and skills of mindfulness allow us to live from a place of present-moment awareness while replacing limiting thought patterns with attentive acceptance. It is a path towards inner awakening, which guides us toward a more conscious and fulfilling existence. In the following 20 mindfulness quotes, you’ll discover how the profound words of revered mindfulness figures, such as Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sharon Salzberg, and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, can act as a flame that lights the path of meditation and inspire us to cultivate mindfulness within:
Mindfulness is a way of paying attention moment-to-moment to what’s happening within and around us without judgment. So, said differently, when we attend to the moment-to-moment flow of experience, and recognize what’s happening…fully allowing it, not adding judgment or commentary, then we are cultivating a mindful awareness.” – Tara Brach
Mindfulness is about love and loving life. When you cultivate this love, it gives you clarity and compassion for life, and your actions happen in accordance with that.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
Right mindfulness does not simply mean being aware; it is like creating a work of art. You can therefore trust what you are doing; you are not threatened by anything. You have room to dance in the space, and this makes it a creative situation. The space is open to you.” – Chogyam Trungpa
Mindfulness does not reject experience. It lets experience be the teacher.” – Jack Kornfield
Mindfulness is loving all the details of our lives, and awareness is the natural thing that happens: life begins to open up, and you realize that you’re always standing at the center of the world.” – Pema Chodron
Mindfulness brings us back to the present moment and provides the type of balanced awareness that forms the foundation of self-compassion. Like a clear, still pool without ripples, mindfulness perfectly mirrors what’s occurring without distortion. Rather than becoming lost in our own personal soap opera, mindfulness allows us to view our situation with greater perspective and helps to ensure that we don’t suffer unnecessarily.” – Kristin Neff
Whatever forms of meditation you practice, the most important point is to apply mindfulness continuously, and make a sustained effort. It is unrealistic to expect results from meditation within a short period of time. What is required is continuous sustained effort.” – His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.” – Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.” – Sharon Salzberg
My friends, it is through the establishment of the lovely clarity of mindfulness that you can let go of grasping after past and future, overcome attachment and grief, abandon all clinging and anxiety, and awaken an unshakable freedom of heart, here, now.” — The Buddha
In mindfulness meditation as it’s typically taught, the point of focusing on your breath isn’t just to focus on your breath. It’s to stabilize your mind, to free it of its normal preoccupations so you can observe things that are happening in a clear, unhurried, less reactive way.” – Robert Wright
Mindfulness frees us of forgetfulness and dispersion and makes it possible to live fully each minute of life. Mindfulness enables us to live.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
Mindfulness practice begins to open up everything. We open our mind to memories, to emotions, to different sensations in the body. In meditation this happens in a very organic way, because we are not searching, we are not pulling or probing, we are just sitting and watching.” – Joseph Goldstein
Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.” – Sylvia Boorstein
Simple mediation techniques can be used to alter how we respond to life’s slings and arrows. We can change the way we respond to stressful life events through simple mindfulness meditation.” – Richard Davidson
When you set out on the path of awakening, you begin wherever you are. Then — with time, effort, and skillful means — virtue, mindfulness, and wisdom gradually strengthen and you feel happier and more loving. Some traditions describe this process as an uncovering of the true nature that was always present; others frame it as a transformation of your mind and body. Of course, these two aspects of the path of awakening support each other.” – Rick Hanson
There are some surprising payoffs with only a few minutes’ practice, like eliminating the loss of concentration that multitasking usually brings. Short daily mindfulness practice in beginners also improves memory, to the point that a group of students who volunteered for a study got significantly better scores on their graduate school entrance exams.” – Daniel Goleman
I would encourage you to follow the pathway to enlightenment, to learn to meditate, to practice mindfulness, and not to really care what anybody thinks about you, including yourself.” – Frederick Lenz
Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).” – James Baraz
With mindfulness you can see the real owner of things. Do you think this is your world, your body? It is the world’s world, the body’s body. If you tell it, Don’t get old, does the body listen? Does your stomach ask permission to get sick? We only rent this house; why not find out who really owns it?” – Ajahn Chah
