Meditation and Mindfulness
Meditation is stopping, calming, and looking deeply.
-Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
Thus any feeling whatsoever - past, future or present; internal or eternal; blatant or subtle, common or sublime, far or near; every feeling - is to be seen as it actually is with right understanding: "this is not mine. This is not myself. This is not what I am."
- The Buddha
In dealing with pain and negative experience, meditation helps us also. When it comes to fear, for example, I recommend people talking to fear as if it were a being (which it can be). Ask it questions: "Mister Fear, why are you here today? What are you here to teach me?" If we don't befriend fear (Jesus said, "love your enemies"), fear might take us over. It might become a demon or a boogie man in our psyche. Chodron recommends approaching what you find repulsive, help the one thing you cannot help, and go to the places that scare you. This begins when we sit down to meditate and practice not struggling with our own mind.
- Matthew Fox, quoting and expanding on Pema Chodron, Buddhist Nun
The heart is said to be in the midst of the person. Since God dwells in our hearts, God is said to be in the midst.
- St. Thomas Aquinas
When all the images of the soul are taken away and the soul can see only the single One, then the pure being of the soul finds passively resting in itself the pure, form-free being of divine unity, when the being of the soul can bear nothing else than the pure unity of God.
- Meister Eckhart
Meditation is about returning home, returning home and finding the greatness that was thee all along. As Eckhart put it: God is at home; it is we who have gone out for a walk.
- Matthew Fox
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