As long as there is a 'you' doing or not-doing, thinking or not-thinking, 'meditating' or 'not-meditating' you are no closer to home than the day you were born.
Interpretation
True understanding lies beyond the actions and thoughts we associate with mindfulness; it is about the essence of being.
This quote emphasizes that the concepts of doing or not doing, thinking or not thinking, add layers to our experience but do not bring us closer to true awareness or enlightenment. It suggests that despite engaging in practices like meditation, without a genuine understanding of one's true nature and essence, one remains distant from a deeper sense of 'home' or truth, which is inherent since birth.
In practice
In a mindfulness workshop, to remind participants of the deeper purpose of meditation.
A man who is seeking for realization is not only going around searching for his spectacles without realizing that they are on his nose all the time, but also were he not actually looking through them he would not be able to see what he is looking for!
Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and punishments, that I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed inculcated upon our youth than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles.
Talk of mysteries! β Think of our life in nature, β daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, β rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
Most world religions denounced war as a barbaric waste of human life. We treasured the teachings of these religions so dearly that we frequently had to wage war in order to impose them on other people.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.
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