This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
More than anything else I have come to see meditation as a radical act of love, an inward gesture of benevolence and kindness toward ourselves and toward others, a gesture of the heart that recognizes our perfection even in our obvious imperfection, with all our shortcomings, our wounds, our attachments, our vexations, and our persistent habits of unawareness.
Benevolence | Heart | Kindness | Meditation | Perfection |
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
There are four major stages of spiritual unfolding: belief, faith, direct experience, and permanent adaptation: you can believe in Spirit, you can have faith in Spirit, you can directly experience Spirit, you can become Spirit… Meditation is not primarily uncovering the repressed unconscious, but allowing the emergence of higher domains--which usually leaves the lower, repressed domains still lower, and still repressed… Well, the point, of course, is to take up integral practice as the only sound and balanced way to proceed…If you are interested in genuine transformative spirituality, find an authentic spiritual teacher and begin practice. Without practice, you will never move beyond the phases of belief, faith, and random peak experiences. You will never evolve into plateau experiences, nor from there into permanent adaptation. You will remain, at best, a brief visitor in the territory of your own higher estate, a tourist of you own true Self.
Experience | Faith | Meditation | Practice | Sound | Will | Teacher |
L. P. Jacks, fully Lawrence Pearsall Jacks
The human mind loves the bondage of words and is apt, when freed from one form of their tyranny, to set up another more oppressive than the last. The highest function of philosophy is to enforce the attitude of meditation and therewithall restrain the excessive volubility of the tongue. To us it seems that the reflective thinker wins his greatest victories when by what he says he compels us to recognise the relative insignificance of anything he can say. His task is not to capture Reality, but to free it from captivity.
Insignificance | Meditation | Mind | Philosophy | Words |
When you contemplate the body by being within the body, you should not engage in all sorts of ideas about it; the same when you contemplate feelings by being within feelings, you should enter in without ideas; the same applies to contemplating the mind by being within the mind and contemplating thoughts by being within thoughts. The thoughts should be just the objects of mind and you should not apply yourself to any train of ideas connected with them. In this way, by putting ideas aside, your mind will become tranquil and fixed on one point. It will then enter into a meditation that is without discursive thought and is rapturous and joyful.
Body | Feelings | Ideas | Meditation | Mind | Thought | Will | Thought |
Mary Pipher, aka Mary Elizabeth Pipher or Mary Bray Pipher
With meditation I found a ledge above the waterfall of my thoughts.
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do.
Meditation | Prayer |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
The meditation of time resting in the eternity, of our life flowing over God’s eternal life, is something to shake the roots of our soul.
Eternal | Life | Life | Meditation | Time |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
These examples suggest what one needs to learn to control attention. In principle any skill or discipline one can master on one’s own will serve: meditation and prayer if one is so inclined; exercise, aerobics, martial arts for those who prefer concentrating on physical skills. Any specialization or expertise that one finds enjoyable and where one can improve one’s knowledge over time. The important thing, however, is the attitude toward these disciplines. If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one’s attention.
Control | Discipline | Important | Knowledge | Meditation | Order | Prayer | Skill | Will | Learn |
By two ways one may go to God, the first by Meditation and Discourse or Reasoning; the second by pure Faith and Contemplation. There are two ways of going to God, the one by Consideration and Mental Discourse, and the other by the Purity of Faith, an indistinct, general and confused knowledge. The first is called Meditation, the second Internal Recollection, or acquir’d Contemplation. The first is of Beginners, the second of Proficients. The first is sensible and material, the second more naked, pure and internal
Consideration | Faith | Meditation | Purity |
Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL
Your own body is a sanctuary and celestial mansion... in the monastery of your heart and body, you have a temple where all buddhas unite... the very basis of his [marpa's] teaching is that this meditation be practiced in solitude... for a life that leads to enlightenment is more precious than a billion worlds filled with gold... having embraced the spirit rather than the letter, I forgot how to play with words... measuring the infinitude of non-duality, he will loose his arrows throughout the world. Those whom he will strike are the faithful ones. that which he will kill is their clinging to self.
Body | Enlightenment | Heart | Kill | Life | Life | Meditation | Play | Spirit | Will |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Life is purposeless. Don’t be shocked. The whole idea of purpose is wrong — it comes out of greed. Life is a sheer joy, a playfulness, a fun, a laughter, to no purpose at all. Life is its own end, it has no other end. The moment you understand it you have understood what meditation is all about. It is living your life joyously, playfully, totally, and with no purpose at the end, with no purpose in view, no purpose there at all. Just like small children playing on the sea beach, collecting seashells and coloured stones — for what purpose? There is no purpose at all.
Children | Life | Life | Meditation | Purpose | Purpose | Wrong | Understand |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
The art of life begins with meditation. And by meditation I mean silence of the mind, silence of the heart, reaching to the very center of your being and finding the treasure that is your reality. Once you have known it, you can radiate love, you can radiate life, you can radiate creativity. Your words will become poetic, your gestures will have grace; even your silence will have a song to it. Even if you are sitting unmoving, you will be in a dance. Each breath coming in, going out, will be a joy, each heartbeat so precious because it is the heart beat of the universe itself — you are part of it.
Art | Heart | Life | Life | Meditation | Silence | Universe | Will | Words | Art |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
The idea of enlightenment is to remain in the present moment. I call it meditation — not to go into the past, which is no more, not to go into the future, which is not yet — because if you go into past and future, you are going to miss the present moment, which is the only reality. Just be here, now. And if you are here and now, enlightenment comes of its own accord. It is not a goal that you have to reach. It is not somewhere far away, so that you have to travel a path to it. It comes to you, you never go to it. It is not your doing, it is a happening.
Enlightenment | Meditation | Past | Present |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
If one can attain enlightenment through love it is one of the most beautiful experiences, far more beautiful than to attain enlightenment through meditation because meditation is a single note, solo, there is no orchestra in it. Love is an orchestra, two beings playing together. It is far richer.
Enlightenment | Love | Meditation |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Death is the point at which knowledge fails, and when knowledge fails, mind fails. And when mind fails, there is a possibility of truth penetrating you. But people don’t know. When somebody dies you don’t know what to do, you are very embarrassed. When somebody dies it is a great moment to meditate. I always think that each city needs a Death Center. When somebody is dying and his death is very, very imminent he should be moved to the Death Center. It should be a small temple where people who can go deep in meditation should sit around him, should help him to die, and should participate in his being when he disappears into nothing. If you are identified with anything, you will suffer death. Life has to be a joy, a dance, a celebration. And when death comes, it has to be welcomed with silence, with serenity — wholeheartedly, not holding anything back. This is a way to kill death itself.
Death | Kill | Knowledge | Meditation | Mind | People | Serenity | Truth | Will | Think |
The foundation behind the practice of Yoga, or meditation proper, is the resolution of conflicts and fulfilment of all longings to the utmost extent until one reaches infinity itself. What a grand thing is Yoga! Now we realise! We will be surprised that our very life is there only for that goal. Now we will be able to appreciate that Yoga is not a religion. It is not Hinduism. It is not Buddhism. It is not Christian mysticism. It is not anything of that sort.
Life | Life | Meditation | Practice | Resolution | Will |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
First practice the presence of God in daily life by making your meditation very deep. It is better to meditate a little bit with depth than to mediate long with the mind running here and there. If you do not make an effort to control the mind it will go on doing as it pleases, no matter how long you sit to meditate.
Better | Control | Effort | God | Life | Life | Little | Meditation | Mind | Practice | Will | God |
Progress in meditation comes swiftly for those who try their hardest.
The eight means of yoga are self-restraint, faithful observance, right posture, intentional breathing, sense withdrawal, concentration, meditation and awareness.
Means | Meditation | Right | Sense |
In deep meditation the flow of concentration is continuous like the flow of oil.