Meditation

Throughout recorded history and in every part of the world, meditation has been practiced by individuals seeking to calm and discipline the mind and perhaps find answers to some of life's deepest mysteries.

You can find out more about meditation by downloading our new


free eBook on Meditation





If you would like to participate in a guided meditation, you can listen to our  


Meditation Podcasts



which allow you to meditate while sitting at your computer or you can download them as MP3 files to listen to elsewhere.


You can choose from a meditation on breathing or a meditation on the Self. Then just click on play, close your eyes, and enjoy!



Some quotes on meditation:
 

"My teaching is simple:  Sit and be."
 
Buddha Maitreya
 
 
 
"Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind...
When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature which is unbounded consciousness."
 
                                                           The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

"To know Tao, meditate and still the mind.  Knowledge comes with perseverance."
 
                         Loy Ching Yuen - Nineteenth Century Buddhist Master

 
 
"A person who does not meditate cannot have wisdom.  He may be able to concentrate, but not for any length of time.  His power of concentration remains weak and cannot be manitained."
 
                                                                              Rabbi Nachman
 

 
"The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen while several people are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great a tranquility as if I were on my knees at the blessed sacrament."
 
                                                                           Brother Lawrence
 

"When, through the practice of yoga, the mind ceases its restless movements and becomes still, one realizes the Self.  It satisfies one entirely.  Then one knows that infinite happiness which can be realized by the purified heart but is beyond the grasp of the senses."
 
"In this quietness falls down the burden of all your sorrows."
 
                                                                          The Bhagavad Gita
 

"When water is still it is like a mirror...and if water thus derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind? 
The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe."
 
                                                                                  Chuang Tzu
 
 

"The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.  Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know."
 
                                                                                    Zen Master
 
 

 "All the teachings and trainings of Buddhism are aimed at that one single point: to look into the nature of mind, and so free us from the fear of death and help us to realise the truth of life.
 
"Looking in will require of us great subtlety and great courage - nothing less than a complete shift in our attitude to life and to the mind.  We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost competely.  We are terrified to look inward, because our culture has given us no idea of what we will find.  We may even think that if we do we will be in danger of madness.  This is one of the last and most resourceful ploys of ego to prevent us discovering our real nature.
 
"So we make our lives so hectic that we eliminate the risk of looking into ourselves.  Even the idea of meditation can scare people.  When they hear the words "egoless" or "emptiness", they think experiencing those states will be like being thrown out of the door of a spaceship to float forever in a dark, chilling void.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  But in a world dedicated to distraction, silence and stillness terrify us; we protect ourselves from them with noise and frantic busyiness.  Looking into the nature of mind is the last thing we would dare to do. 
 
"Sometimes I think we don't want to ask any real questions about who we are, for fear of discovering there is some other reality than this one.  What would this discovery make of how we have lived?  How would our friends and colleagues react to what we now know?  What would we do with the new knowledge?  With knowledge comes responsibility.  Sometimes even when the cell door is flung open, the prisoner chooses not to escape."
 
                          Sogyal Rinpoche - in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying


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