There was something important being overlooked, they argued, in the mainstreaming of meditation - a central plank in the Buddhist platform: compassion.

Make the present moment your friend rather than your enemy. Because 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.

...didn't need to waste so much time envisioning some vague horribleness awaiting me in my future.

All we can do is everything we can do. (David Axelrod)

If you don't waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. (Mark Epstein)

If everything in this world was in constant decay, why expend so much energy gnashing my teeth over work?

Turns out, it's pretty simple to win people over, especially in tense situations, if you're able to take their perspective and validate their feelings.

In fact, when you're mindful, you actually feel irritation more keenly. However, once you unburden yourself from the delusion that people are deliberately trying to screw you, it's easier to stop getting carried away.

Dalai Lama: "If a scientist confirm nonexistence of something we believe, then we have to accept that."Dan Harris: "So if scientists come up with something that contradicts your beliefs, you will change your beliefs?"Dalai Lama: "Oh yes. Yes.

When you lurch from one thing to the next, constantly scheming, or reacting to incoming fire, the mind gets exhausted. You get sloppy and make bad decisions.

A big part of (Janice) Marturano's success in bringing mindfulness to this unlikely venue was that she talked about it not as a "spiritual" exercise but instead as something that made you a "better leader" and "more focused," and that enhanced your "creativity and innovation." She didn't even like the term "stress reduction." "For a lot of us," she said, "we think that having stress in our lives isn't a bad thing. It gives us an edge.

The brain is a pleasure seeking machine. Once you teach it, through meditation, that abiding calmly in the present moment feels better than our habitual state of clinging l, over time, the brain will want more and more mindfulness.

We all have an innate feeling of being separate from the world, peering out at life from behind our own little self. But how can we truly be separate from the same world that created us? You can no more disconnect from the universe and it's inhabitants than a wave can extricate itself from the ocean.

Science experiments have found that people who practice meditation release significantly lower doses of cortisol, known as the stress hormone. This is consequential because frequent release of cortisol can lead to heart disease, diabetes, dementia, cancer, and depression.

Meditation is the best tool for neutralizing the voice in the head. It's a muzzle for the ego. Being mindful is an innate but underused ability we all have, the act of being aware without judging. When you repeatedly go through the cycle of trying to focus on your breath, losing that focus, and noticing and returning to the practice, you are literally building your mindfulness muscle the same way dumbbell curls build your biceps. As this mind-muscle develops, you start being way more aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as what they really are: squirts of chemicals & hormones that enter, peak and then fade completely back to the nothingness of which they arose. In other words, mindfulness provides space between impulse and action, so you're not a slave to whatever pops into your head. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness of them.