All Quotes By Tag: Attention

“Love imposes obligations and these are constant. An intermittent lover is no use to a person of dignity and courage.”

“When students come in to see me, I hear complaint after complaint: about the schedule of the retreat, about the food, about the service, about me, on and on. But the issues that people bring to me are no more relevant or important than a “trivial” event such as stubbing a toe. How do we place our cushions? How do we brush our teeth? How do we sweep the floor, or slice a carrot? We think we’re here to deal with “more important” issues, such as our problems with our partner, our jobs, our health, and the like. We don’t want to bother with the “little” things, like how we hold our chopsticks, or where we place our spoon. Yet these acts are the stuff of our life, moment to moment. It’s not a question of importance, it’s a question of paying attention, being aware.Why? Because every moment in life is absolute in itself. That’s all there is. There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future; there is nothing but this. So when we don’t pay attention to each little this, we miss the whole thing. And the contents of this can be anything. This can be straightening our sitting mats, chopping an onion, visiting someone we don’t want to visit. It doesn’t matter what the contents of the moment are; each moment is absolute. That’s all there is, and all there ever will be. If we could totally pay attention, we would never be upset. If we’re upset, it’s axiomatic that we’re not paying attention. If we miss not just one moment, but one moment after another, we’re in trouble.”

“When you first suspect that your girlfriend or boyfriend does not love you, you feel nervous and anxious. When you find out that he or she really does not love you, you feel sick and nauseated. Dismantling beliefs about what we are and how we function is not threatening at the level of the body, but it is profoundly threatening to our feeling and conception of what we are and our relations with others. Nervousness arises when we begin to suspect or anticipate that things are not as we had thought. Nausea is a reaction to the realization that we have been emotionally attached to a fiction, the fiction of an autonomous volitional self.Later you will feel ighter and clearer and emotionally alive. What you once resisted you now accept, often with a tinge of sadness because a cherished illusion has been shattered. Intellectual understanding does not have the same effects. While you may have a feeling of confidence in your comprehension, the emotional vitality is not present.The intention of formal meditation practice is to develop sufficient attention to see into the operation of patterns and take them apart, but this is only half of the practice. The other half is to exercise attention in your daily life so that your actions arise from presence rather than from reactive patterns.”

“Don’t ever stop believing in your own transformation. It is still happening even on days you may not realize it or feel like it.”

“Everything that you wish to know, or desire for life, exists in you. All you have to do is take your attention inward and begin your search within.”

“Perfect understanding of the infinite requires limitless intellectual capacity; our undivided attention is better suited for humbler aspirations.”

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. … An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.”

“It is essential, then, to keep one’s attention focused on the present; to guard against any complacency creeping in on account of what one may have achieved in the past.”

“The secret to hygge lies in paying attention to the rhythm of our daily lives, the people we choose to spend time with, the things we use and the activities we undertake that give life value and meaning.”

“At the heart of hygge is a willingness to set aside time for simply being with people, and, ideally, having all the time in the world for them. Hygge is a vehicle for showing that we care. It’s a way of paying attention to our children or partners and friends in the messy reality of the here and now, and putting down the distractions that pull us in different directions. So many of us are drawn to a virtual world of connectivity. Hygge isn’t about a life without technology, but it asks us to balance our commitments and remember the value of human interaction, conversation and physical intimacy. It liberates us to fully inhabit the moment without feeling compelled to record it.”

“Your dreams are never lost, they are merely waiting for your attention, passion, and action to return to them.”

“the scarcest resource of all: senior managers’ time and attention.”

“Put a little soul in everything you say, in everything you do.”

“Where your attention goes, your time goes”

“We can learn to pay attention, concentrate, devote ourselves to authors. We can slow down so we can hear the voice of texts, feel the movement of sentences, experience the pleasure of words–and own passages that speak to us. (p. 41)”