My friend who is a Buddhist said once after coming out of a meditation retreat, “The colors were so much more vibrant afterward.” Her meditation teacher said, “When you are present, the world is truly alive.”
—Natalie Goldberg
Be here now.
—Ram Dass
Without mindfulness and presence of mind, nothing can be accomplished.
—Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche
Thoughts of the past and future spoil your time.
—Dipa Ma
These two things must be cut away: fear of the future and the memory of past sufferings. The latter no longer concern me, and the future does not concern me yet.
—Marcus Aurelius
Present moment, wonderful moment.
—Thich Nah Hanh
Developing a one-pointed mind …will enrich your life moment by moment. You will find that your senses are keener, your emotions more stable, your intellect more lucid, your sensitivity to the needs of others heightened. Whatever you do, you will be there more fully.
—Eknath Easwaran
Let the soul be happy in the present, and refuse to worry about what will come later.
— Horace
There are people who do not live their present life; it is as if they were preparing themselves, with all their zeal, to live some other life, but not this one. And while they do this, time goes by and is lost. We cannot put life back into play, as if we were casting another roll of the dice.
—Antiphon
All through high school I felt confined; imprisoned inside my blue uniform, except when I rode my bicycle to and from school, a five mile journey through fields and paddies. whenever I had time I would get off my bike in the middle of a cabbage field and take a deep breath—that was always a moment of liberation.
—Mayumi Oda
Death is not an event of life. It is not experienced. If by ‘eternity’ we mean not an infinite temporal duration but atemporality, then whoever lives in the present lives eternally.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
