16 quotes found
"Meditation is the soul's perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God, as if He were nearer at hand."
"Avoid all refined speculation; confine yourself to simple reflections, and recur to them frequently. Those who pass too rapidly from one truth to another feed their curiosity and restlessness; they even distract their intellect with too great a multiplicity of views. Give every truth time to send down deep root into the heart."
"Thy thoughts to nobler meditations give, And study how to die, not how to live."
"It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most on Divine truth, that will prove the choicest, wisest, strongest Christian."
"Happy the heart that keeps its twilight hour, And, in the depths of heavenly peace reclined, Loves to commune with thoughts of tender power,— Thoughts that ascend, like angels beautiful, A shining Jacob's-ladder of the mind!"
"It is an excellent sign, that after the cares and labors of the day, you can return to your pious exercises and meditations with undiminished attention."
"Night by night I will lie down and sleep in the thought of God, and in the thought, too, that my waking may be in the bosom of the Father; and some time it will be, so I trust."
"Man holds an inward talk with his self alone, which it behooves him to regulate well."
"Fixing the consciousness on one point or region is concentration (dhāraṇā). A steady, continuous flow of attention directed towards the same point or region is meditation (dhyāna). When the object of meditation engulfs the meditator, appearing as the subject, self-awareness is lost. This is samādhi."
"For with all our pretension to enlightenment, are we not now a talking, desultory, rather than a meditative generation?"
"He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed, But on his knees at meditation; Not dallying with a brace of courtesans, But meditating with two deep divines."
"Smiling means that we are ourselves, that we have sovereignty over ourselves, that we are not drowned in forgetfulness. This kind of smile can be seen on the faces of Buddhas and bodhisattvas."
"Profound meditation in solitude and silence frequently exalts the mind above its natural tone, fires the imagination, and produces the most refined and sublime conceptions. The soul then tastes the purest and most refined delight, and almost loses the idea of existence in the intellectual pleasure it receives. The mind on every motion darts through space into eternity; and raised, in its free enjoyment of its powers by its own enthusiasm, strengthens itself in the habitude of contemplating the noblest subjects, and of adopting the most heroic pursuits."
"That the Shri Ram Chandra Mission, a highly respected organization in India, has been at all included among the groups accused of “cultic deviances” (and in the infamous French “list of cults” of 1995) is in itself evidence of the arbitrariness of the system of “saisines.” The Sahaj Marg, or Natural Way, is a system derived from with a long tradition in India. It was rediscovered and simplified by Shri Ram Chandra of Fatehgarh (“Lalaji,” 1873–1931), born in Fatehgarh, Uttar Pradesh. From 1914 he established the first regular Satsang, or group meditation, and after 1929, the date of his retirement from his job as a court clerk, he devoted himself totally to spiritual teaching. …The Shri Ram Chandra Mission operates quietly and peacefully in 160 countries. In France, however, a few “saisines” made it into a “cult” whose “cultic deviances” should be controlled in secret."
"Rajneesh did not mince words. He told them that he considered the so-called Transcendental Meditation (TM) of Maharishi as a sleeping pill. It may be calming and good for people who are nervous or cannot sleep. But it is neither transcendental nor meditation. Meditation does not make you sleepy but wakes you —from sleep and dream into reality. It destroys every kind of illusion and reveals that you are god."
"I personally had a very good experience with TM, into which I was initiated when I was just 20. However, I also got influenced and stopped meditating after some two years, influenced not by Osho, but by German media which portrayed TM as dangerous and asked parents to watch out that their children don’t fall for this ‘sect’, as they may go mad. The Church had even appointed special officials to have an eye on sects. I loved those 20 minutes of meditation daily morning and evening, but then, I was young and not sure…"