Many people see themselves as a problem that needs to be solved. They also habitually see the present moment as an obstacle that they need to overcome or get away from. With awareness, an inner sense of spaciousness arises that enables you to look at your own mind, which is to say the human mind, with a certain degree of detachment.

Loss of meaning is often part of the suffering that comes with physical loss, but it can also happen to people who have gained everything the world has to offer - who have made it in the eyes of the world - and suddenly find that their success or possessions are empty and unfulfilling.

"Going with the flow" is for some people an excuse for not taking action and it refers usually to one's life situation.

Vipassana is fine until it becomes a technique that has many stages and that takes time to develop. That can be okay for people for a while, but then you have to leave the technique behind.

A huge number of people are going through the process of awakening, some in the early stages, some in later stages, and it's wonderful to see.

Some people are called upon to do great things externally in this world by creating some new structure that reflects their awakening consciousness. Other people are not called to go out into the world and create great big things externally. Their purpose is to let consciousness flow into whatever they do - to do everything in a sacred manner.

For some people, it's the beginning of an awakening when they hear or read, "You have a voice in your head that never stops talking. Have you noticed that?" And suddenly they become aware that the thoughts go through their heads, whereas before they were so identified with them that they were those thoughts.

Whatever you do, whatever you're working with, whether it's manual work or talking to people or buying or selling, every little thing encompasses the power and simplicity of presence.

Before I wrote The Power of Now, I had a vision that I had already written the book and that it was affecting the world. I had a sense there was already a book somehow in existence. I drew a circle on a piece of paper and it said "book." Then I wrote something about the effect the book had on the world, how it influenced my life and other people's lives, and how it came to be translated into many languages affecting hundreds of thousands of people.

My main life interest and purpose is to bring spiritual awakening into this world, to be a vehicle for the flowering of consciousness, to help people to live more consciously with less unnecessary suffering and self-generated unhappiness.

Everything flows with much greater ease when people live as one with the present moment.

Some people when I speak of awareness of the "inner body" call it a technique. I would not call it a technique because it is too simple for that. When the oak tree feels its roots in the earth, its connectedness with the earth, it is not practicing a technique.

Transcending the world does not mean to withdraw from the world, to no longer take action, or to stop interacting with people. Transcendence of the world is to act and to interact without any self-seeking.

Some people thought I was crazy to have let go of all the worldly things I had "achieved." They didn't understand that I didn't want or need any of that anymore.

It's a wonderful thing to perceive the world and to interact with it and with other people and nature from that deep place of utter stillness, where the compulsion to immediately label and interpret whatever arises around you is no longer there.

There is another side to death. Whether death happens through an act of violence to a large number of people or to an individual, whether death comes prematurely through illness or accident, or whether death comes through old age, death is always an opening. So a great opportunity comes whenever we face death.

Some form of suffering often brings about a readiness. One can say it cracks open the shell of the egoic mind with which many people identify as "me." Life cracks open that shell, and once that crack is there, then we are reached more easily by spiritual teaching.

Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for them. They might say, 'What a pretty flower,' but that's just a mechanical mental labeling. Because they are not still, not present, they don't truly see the flower, don't feel it's essence, it's holiness-just as they don't know themselves, don't feel their own essence, their own holiness.

Some people say, the world can be so alive! It always is, you just do not know it because of the screen of your thinking. You notice it as you become more awake.

Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past.

Most people want to get what they want, whereas the secret is to want what you get at this moment.

Whenever you interact with people,don't be there primarily as a function or a role,But as a Field of conscious Presence

Many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment, and imagine living your whole live like that. Always, this moment is not quite good enough because you need to get to the next one.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don't let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately... you usually don't use it at all. It uses you.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not 'yours,' not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

Waiting is a state of mind that says we want what we don't have. Therefore, with every kind of waiting we produce an inner conflict between now and the projected future. This greatly reduces the quality of our life. Are you a 'habitual waiter'?

You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection - you cannot cope with the future.

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that's a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind.

As soon as the mind and mind identification return; you're no longer yourself but a mental image of yourself, and you start playing games and roles again to get your ego needs met.

As soon as the mind and mind identification return; you're no longer yourself but a mental image of yourself, and you start playing games and roles again to get your ego needs met.

We get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating - lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems. Nature can show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.

The ego is a false sense based on mental concepts. It is identification with the body and the mind-primarily identification with thought form.

Attention is the vital thing and there is no tension in attention. It just happens to be a similar word. It's not concentration or straining. Attention has the openness of a young child not yet dominated by the conceptual mind.

The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind.

An emotion is your body's reaction to your mind.

In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that give life to the physical body.

every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.

Until presence becomes your predominant state, you may find yourself moving back and forth for a while between the old consciousness and the new, between mind identification and presence.

Worry means the mind is controlling you. Worry is always pointless. A solution never comes out of worry.

Resistance keeps you stuck. Surrender immediately opens you to the greater intelligence that is vaster than the human mind, and it can then express itself through you. So through surrender often you find circumstances changing.

As you go about your life, don't give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and your mind. Keep some within.

Be present as the watcher of your mind - of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react.

The predominance of mind is no more than a stage in the evolution of consciousness. We need to go on to the next stage now as a matter of urgency; otherwise, we will be destroyed by the mind, which has grown into a monster.

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship.

Just as the sun is infinitely brighter than a candle flame, there is infinitely more intelligence in Being than in your mind

You can't think about presence, and the mind can't understand it. Understanding presence is being present.

We can learn not to keep situations or events alive in our minds, but to return our attention continuously to the pristine, timeless present moment rather than be caught up in mental movie making.

Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from the circumstances of your life but from the conditioning of your mind.