“No one can listen to your body for you. To grow and heal, you have to take responsibility for listening to it yourself.”

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention, on purpose and non-judgmentally, to what goes on in the present moment in your body, mind and the world around you.

See for yourself whether letting go when a part of you really wants to hold on doesn’t bring a deeper satisfaction than clinging.

Paying attention and awareness are universal capacities of human beings.

Meditation is really a non-doing. It is the only human endeavor I know of being where you already are.

When you’re walking, just walk. When you’re eating, just eat. Not in front of the TV, not with the newspaper. It turns out, that’s huge.

The only time that any of us have to grow or change or feel or learn anything is in the present moment. But we’re continually missing our present moments, almost willfully, by not paying attention.

Dying without actually fully living, without waking up to our lives while we have the chance, is an ongoing and significant risk.

But you cannot have harmony without a commitment to ethical behavior. It’s the fence that keeps out the goats that will eat all the young shoots in your garden.

You could think of mindfulness as wise and affectionate attention.

He who dies before he dies does not die when he dies.

We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now.

Note that this journey is uniquely yours, no one else’s. So the path has to be your own. You cannot imitate somebody else’s journey and still be true to yourself. Are you prepared to honor your uniqueness in this way?

Just watch this moment, without trying to change it at all. What is happening? What do you feel? What do you see? What do you hear?

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.

One way to look at meditation is as a kind of intrapsychic technology that’s been developed over thousands of years by traditions that know a lot about the mind/body connection.

We cannot give our hearts to God and keep our bodies for ourselves.

Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don’t know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.

The life of the body is the soul, the life of the soul is Christ.

Life without limbs? Or life without limits?

My body is the shape I live in and it shapes the way I live.

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.

The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

The body says what words cannot.