Stillness Quotes

“The sage is still not because he takes stillness to be good and therefore is still. The ten thousand things are insufficient to distract his mind - that is the reason he is still.”

“Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen - that stillness becomes a radiance.”

“... a man sitting still is alone, often, with the memory of all he doesn't have. And what he does have can look very much like nothing.”

“Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words 'Be still'. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that 'I am so and so'. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?”

“I understand that for beginners it isn't that easy to sit down, close your eyes, and settle into stillness. Your thoughts have gotten used to making SO MUCH NOISE! They have enjoyed too much influence over you to simply fade the first time you try.”

“Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast... Viscosity and Velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination; velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled, or because inner life is transfixingly busy.”

“There is a presence, a silence, a stillness which is here by itself. There is no doer of it, no creator of this stillness. It is simply here in you, with you. It is the fragrance of your own self. There is nothing to do about this, it is naturally present. This fragrance of peace, this spaciousness, it is the fragrance of your own being.”

“Stillness was most natural. To go on scrabbling and running and grasping after some kind of life was aberration”

“There are seasons when to be still demands immeasurably higher strength than to act.”

“A calm water is like a still soul.”