A Quote by Stephen Levine
The saddest part about being human is not paying attention. Presence is the gift of life.
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People didn't know much about Rajiv because unfortunately, he wasn't successful and that's the saddest part. He was a wonderful human being - warm and affectionate.
Gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us.
But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn't begin when you sit down to write. It's a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.
The saddest thing is when a guy is paying so much attention to the world and everything going by that he can't take the time for his own mother.
Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention...the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
Being a dancer is my metaphor for life because you have to know your body. Being a dancer and paying attention to fitness is all about moving in balance.
There's no certainty to the next couple of years, but people are paying attention now. And I want to put out a record when people are paying attention, because that's when it has the best chance of being heard.
Your presence is the most precious gift you can give to another human being.
After a while, you just want transportation, and things like cool cars or motorcycles are all about getting attention. I get all the attention I could ever need, so I kind of like being in a minivan and people not paying so much attention to me.
It all stems from the same thing - which is that when we are face to face - and this is what I think is so ironic about Facebook being called Facebook, because we are not face to face on Facebook ... when we are face to face, we are inhibited by the presence of the other. We are inhibited from aggression by the presence of another face, another person. We're aware that we're with a human being. On the Internet, we are disinhibited from taking into full account that we are in the presence of another human being.
The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
Living an awakened life [...] is just a matter of where our attention is being placed. It is possible for our human-beingness and our true nature or presence to exist wonderfully well together, enriching each other through their closeness. It is through the power of our attention that we experience one or the other or both.
When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself... That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitiude for the gift of life.
Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and allow myself a momentary "paying-attention." This paying-attention gives meaning to my life. I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention paid to anything is a window into the universe. Pausing to think this way, even for a brief moment, is very important. It gives quality to my day.
The love of husband and wife, which is creative of new human life, is a marvellously personal sharing in the creative love of God who brings into being the eternal soul that comes to every human being with the gift of human life.
... success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
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