Thy thoughts to nobler meditations give,
And study how to die, not how to live.

Thy thoughts to nobler meditations give,
And study how to die, not how to live.

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and read more

Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, read more

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

Thus meditating you will no longer strive to build yourself up in your prejudices, but, forgetting self, you will remember read more

Thus meditating you will no longer strive to build yourself up in your prejudices, but, forgetting self, you will remember only that you are seeking the Truth.

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines read more

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the read more

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, read more

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

I still practice Transcendental Meditation and I think it's great. Marharishi only ever did good for us, and although I read more

I still practice Transcendental Meditation and I think it's great. Marharishi only ever did good for us, and although I have not been with him physically, I never left him.

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost read more

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.