A Quote by Pema Chodron

The still lake without ripples is an image of our minds at ease, so full of unlimited friendliness for all the junk at the bottom of the lake that we don't feel the need to churn up the waters just to avoid looking at what's there.

Pema Chodron

Quote Topics

Avoid Bottom Ease Feel Friendliness Full Image Junk Just Lake Looking Minds Need Our Ripples Still Unlimited Up Waters Without

Quote Author

Pema Chodron
American - Priest
Born: July 14, 1936

When the waters of a lake are absolutely still, the lake reflects the trees, the sky, and everything around it perfectly. At the slightest breeze, with the smallest ripple in the waters, the lake reflects nothing but itself. To see another with clarity and objectivity, one first must master stillness. The slightest breeze of judgment or interpretation from the rational mind will create a ripple that shatters Awareness and returns us to ordinary perception.

Alberto Villoldo

Early in life, when I first saw waterlilies on the ripples of a lake, I didn't think they were flowers which grew from the water, but rather flowers which were mirrored from the shore into the lake. So many flowers grow in the silent waters of our souls, and they unfold their petals over the glaze of our consciousness: they grow from within us, but we think them reflections from the external world.

Lucian Blaga

Imagine that your mind is like a calm, clear lake or a vast empty sky: Ripples appear on the surface of the lake and clouds pass across the sky, but they soon disappear without altering the natural stillness.

Kathleen McDonald

All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

Jean Rhys

Perhaps one of the most meaningful ways to sense the impact of the environmental crisis is to confront the question which is always asked about Lake Erie: how can we restore it? I believe the only valid answer is that no one knows. For it should be clear that even if overnight all of the pollutants now pouring into Lake Erie were stopped, there would still remain the problem of the accumulated mass of pollutants in the lake bottom.

Barry Commoner

As a breeze ruffles the surface of a lake and distorts the images reflected therein, so also the chitta vrtti (fluctuations of mind) disturb the peace of the mind. The still waters of a lake reflect the beauty around it. When the mind is still, the beauty of the Self is seen reflected in it.

B.K.S. Iyengar

It is a fact that scientists have deposited dye in certain lakes around Orlando and tracked the effluent to Florida Bay. There is a lake near Everglades City, Deep Lake, and large tarpon show up in that lake, 30 miles from the sea.

Randy Wayne White

We went to a small lake, Bass Lake. It was beautiful. It was perfectly still when we got there in the morning. The fog was lifting off the water. It was just magical. And we did catch some fish, 13 fish.

Jennifer Granholm

Wise man is a lake full with fishes; clever man is a fisherman who often visits this lake!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

'Swan Lake' can be a nightmare. To make a 'Swan Lake' that is worth it, every single movement and breath has to be perfect. When you have an idea of 'Swan Lake' that is as high as that, it's almost impossible.

Sylvie Guillem

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

John Keats

Once allow your soul to be disturbed by any violent emotion and, like the waters of a tempest-tossed lake, it can no longer reflect the divine Image.

Monica Baldwin

Most mystics do not want to read religious wisdom; they want to be it. A postcard of a beautiful lake is not a beautiful lake, and Sufis may be defined as those who dance in the lake.

Huston Smith

The power of the river is to flow wildly! The power of the lake is to think calmly! Wise man both flows like a river and thinks lake a lake!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Every great decision creates ripples. Like a huge boulder dropping in a lake. The ripples merge and rebound off the banks in unforseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain the consequences.