Mediation is an exercise in inner discipline

during which you focus your consciousness, your attention,

in a particular way to achieve a particular beneficial effect.

-Martin Brofman

Some people might meditate to achieve a quieter mind 

or to use their consciousness as a tool to achieve a goal.

Some use it to restore harmony to the body,

to know the different spiritual dimensions of their own being,

to know God, to experience God Consciousness,

to achieve illumination, 

to know and experience transcendental love or realization,

or to understand the nature of physical reality.

Some use it to achieve mastery of their consciousness

by being able to maintain attention on a single thing,

whether it's a word, an idea , a symbol or or breath - or nothing at all.

Of course, there are more reasons than this....

-Martin Brofman

Meditation is the inexpressible longing of the inner man 

for the Infinite.
-Helena P. Blavatsky

Meditation is an effort to make a breakthrough
and fuse with a new level of consciousness.
-Torkom Saraydarian

Fundamentally every kind of mediation
is intended to recall the consciousness,
and thereby the whole being, to its true center.
-Hugh l'Anson Fausset

Pure meditation is one where all one's vehicles...
are drawn toward the core of the being
without any division in that state.
-B. K. S. Iyengar

In meditation you are learning to develop the senses of the soul,
so that you become aware, through these senses,
of the inner life of the soul.
-Grace Cooke

Meditation is just a gentle shift in your attention
away from the physical world and into a world of infinite possibilities.
-Denise Jarvie

Meditation will not carry you to another world,

but it will reveal the most profound and awesome dimensions 

of the world in which you already live.

-Hsing Yun

The act of meditation is being spacious.
-Sogyal Rinpoche

Meditation is not concentration.
It is not attention.
Meditation is awareness.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

Meditation is a practice which develops
a steady stream of uninterrupted awareness.
-Stephen Wolinsky

[Meditation] is a tool to develop clarity,
and awareness and acceptance of the flow of events
whatever they may be.
-Jack Kornfield

Meditation is not just a rest or retreat 

from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world.

It is a way of being the stream,

so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies.

Meditation may take one out of the world,

but it also puts one totally into it.

-Gary Snyder

Mediation is a dynamic balance
of intellectual and intuitive consciousness.
-B. K. S. Iyengar

Meditation is the soul's perspective glass.
-Owen Feltham

Meditation serves many purposes but is also an end in itself.

-Anodea Judith

The purpose of meditation is personal transformation.
-Henepola Gunaratana

Meditation,
which is the art of intensifying inward consciousness,
has several methods.
-Haridas Chadhuri

Meditation can be effective when there is present in the mind
a truth towards which there is a natural attraction,
an inner response born out of the beauty of that truth.
-Nilakantha Sri Ram

Music is the easiest method of meditation.
Whoever can let himself dissolve into music
has no need to seek anything else to dissolve into.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

I have practiced and experienced myself
the use of music in meditation,
and I have understood that it is the best means of meditation,
the quickest means of freeing consciousness.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

I meditate by underlining sentences.
-Joseph Campbell

The alert mind itself is meditation.
-Venkatesananda Saraswati

If you have time to breathe,
you have time to meditate.
-Ajahn Chah

Meditation can take place
when you are sitting in a bus,
or walking in the woods full of light and shadows,
or listening to the singing of the birds,
or looking at the face of your wife or child.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

You've got to practice meditation
when you walk, stand, lie down, sit, and work,
while washing your hands, washing the dishes,
sweeping the floor, drinking tea, talking to friends,
or whatever you are doing.
-Thich Nhat Hahn

Once the habit of meditation is formed,
it should be possible to do it in all circumstances,
lying, sitting, walking alone, in company,
in silence or in the midst of noise etc.
-Aurobindo Ghose

For effective meditation and contemplation,
to enter into communion with truth, to delve into its depths,
there has first to be a state of preparedness in oneself;
the mind has to be denuded of all its contents
and brought to a state of rest, complete openness and sensitivity.
-Nilakantha Sri Ram

Meditation could be said to be the Art of Simplicity -

simply sitting,

simply breathing,

and simply being.

-Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The art of meditation is the art
of shifting the focus of attention to ever subtler levels,
without losing one's grip on the levels left behind...
One begins with the lowest levels:
social circumstances, customs and habits;
physical surroundings, the posture and breathing of the body;
the senses, their sensations and perceptions;
the mind, its thoughts and feelings,
until the mechanism of personality is grasped and firmly held.
-Nisargadatta

Meditation consists in conducting consciousness
beyond the point where it is the consciousness
of a finite body or a finite mind,
transferring the focus from level to level
without losing continuity or form.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

The ultimate meditation is "Who am I?"

-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

If you wish to meditate,
do so on the 'I' that is within you.
It is the atman.
-Ramana Maharshi

Seated in a solitary place,
free from desires and with senses controlled,
one should meditate free of thought on that one infinite Self.
-Shankara

The best object of meditation is the inner Self.
-Muktananda

Constantly in meditation
by whatever form, technique or method,
we find we are opening ourselves toward the Light.
-George Trevelyan

Meditation increasingly develops self-awareness.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

Meditation is a state of mind
which looks at everything with complete attention -
totally, not just parts of it.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

In meditation,
we become the witness of all our states.
-Muktananda

Meditate with the awareness
that you are witness of the mind.
-Muktananda

Our goal is to notice thoughts
rather than be caught by them.
-David A. Cooper

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling,
never to say it right or wrong,
but just to watch it and move with it.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

To meditate is to observe simultaneously
the formation of thought and breath,
and then let it go, without complicating it,
without formalizing it,without identifying it,
without rejecting it, letting it follow its own way.
-Allen Ginsberg

Real meditation is not about mastering a technique;

it's about letting go of control.

-Stephen Gray, "Adyashanti"

Meditation is a skillful letting go:
gently but with resolution.
-Ajahn Sumedho

Meditation is the seeing of "what is"
and going beyond it.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Of the outer world, we know a lot.
Of the inner world, we know very little.
Anything that you do not know about, you are slave of;
anything you know about, you can be free of.
Therefore we meditate to know and be free of
the unknown material in our consciousness.
-Nisargadatta

Meditation involves far more
than sitting  with your eyes closed in concentration...
it demands rigorous introspection
and an overhauling of one's personality, life patterns and values.
-Vishnudevananada

Meditation is hard work.
It demands the highest form of discipline -
not conformity, not imitation, not obedience -
but a discipline which comes through constant awareness
not only of the things about you outwardly, but also inwardly.
-Jiddu Krishnamuri

Meditation develops will:
the ability and desire to hold to one-pointedness and discrimination
in the face of confusions and distractions.
-Joseph Chilton Pearce

Meditation is an exercise,
a discipline to teach you to think pure thoughts.
-Torkom Saraydarian

By regulating the quality, quantity,
and the direction of the flow of thoughts,
the meditator tries to change the very pattern of the mind.
-Chinmayananda

Meditation helps keep us from identifying
with the "movies of the mind."
-Joan Borysenko

Meditation applies the brakes to the mind.
-Ramana Maharshi

Part of meditation is to eliminate totally, all conflict,
inwardly and therefore outwardly.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation helps in getting rid of emotional conflicts,
inner self-discrepancies, and psychic tensions.
It is a kind of psychological house-cleaning, a mental catharsis,
which knocks out all unconscious obstructions
to the full functioning of the human personality.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

It [meditation] desires to, and must,
attack the very roots of these wrong attitudes
and, in order to bar new eruptions,
it must prepare the ground
on which weeds cannot even start to grow
because there is no food for them.
-Hans-Ulrich Rieker

Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve
ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquillity,
nor is it attempting to become a better person.
It is simply the creation of a space
in which we are able to expose and undo
our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes.
-Chogyam Trungpa

The spirit of meditation
is the combating of self-willed thinking.
-Hakuin

Meditation implies a mind that is so astonishingly clear
that every form of self-deception comes to an end.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is the art of suspending
verbal and symbolic thinking for a time,
somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking
when a concert is about to begin.
-Alan Watts

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet.
It's a way of entering into the quiet that's already there -
buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day.
-Deepak Chopra

Meditation is the emptying of mind of all thought,
for thought and feeling dissipate energy.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is the freeing of the mind
from all symbols, images and remembrances.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is emptying of the mind of the known.
The known is the past.
-Jiddu Krishnamruti

True meditation
is to become free of mentation.
-Muktananda

Meditation is freeing the mind
of its own thoughts at all levels.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is a practice of emptying the mind

so that it becomes clear and still.

-Anodea Judith

Meditation is the mind turned inward,
resting in its own true nature.
-Sogyal Rinpoche

Meditation is the emptying of consciousness
of its content, the known, the "me."
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation really is a complete emptying of the mind.
Then there is only the functioning of the body;
there is only the activity of the organism and nothing else;
then thought functions without identification
as the "me" and the "not me."
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no meditator in meditation.
If there is, it is not meditation.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

The complete elimination
of the meditator, the experiencer, the thinker,
is the very essence of meditation.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

To meditate is to find the meditator...
to find the meditator is to end it...
the total silencing of the intellect
is the ending of the meditator and also of meditation.
The ending of meditation is the flowering of love.
-R. P. Kaushik

In the ancient meditation instructions, it is said
at the beginning thoughts will arrive one on top of another, uninterrupted,
like a steep mountain waterfall.
Gradually, as you perfect meditation,
thoughts become like the water in a deep narrow gorge,
then a great river slowly winding its way down to the sea,
and finally the mind becomes like a still and placid ocean,
ruffled by only the occasional ripple or wave.
-Sogyal Rinpoche

It [meditation] is the absolute stillness of the mind,
the absolute quietness of the brain.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

A meditative mind is silent.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

The highest meditation
is the state of complete inner stillness.
-Muktananda

Meditation is nothing but skill in mirroring.
And now, no word moves inside you so there is no distraction.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

Meditation is the action of silence.
-Jiddu Krishnmarti

Meditation is the art of hearing the soundless sound,
the art of hearing the music of the silence.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

Meditation is the freedom from thought,
and a movement in the ecstasy of truth.
-Jiddu Krishnamruti

Meditation is not a means to an end.
It is both the means and the end.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

The essence of meditation is nowness.
-Chogyam Trungpa

To meditate is to transcend time.
-Jiddu Krishanmurti

Meditation is very simple.

It means to surrender the mind, the body, and the world, 

from moment to moment, 

to the silence presence in which they appear.

That's all.

-Francis Lucille

True meditation requires not dwelling in the present moment,
but dwelling in presence.
-David Frawley

Intensity consists in making today's meditation deeper than yesterday's
and every tomorrow's meditation deeper than today's.
-Paramahansa Yogananda

Like the mountains,
Meditate, unmoving and unshakeable.
Like the ocean,
Mediate, deep and unfathomable.
Like space,
Meditate without center or limit.
Like the sun and the moon,
Meditate in brightness and clarity.
-Milarepa

Meditation...is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula,
and therefore total freedom...
Meditation is the movement of the mind in this total freedom.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is to find out if there is a field,
which is not already contaminated by the known.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

We are inquiring together,
as to whether you and I, on the instant,
can completely change into a totally different dimension -
and that involves meditation.
-Jiddu Krishanmurti

True meditation gives us, as it were,
wings for flight to a higher realm
and thus detaches us from terrestrial fetters.
-Paramananda

Through meditation we travel to different inner worlds
and have innumerable inner experiences.
-Muktananda

The final stage of meditation is reached
when the sense of identity goes beyond the 'I-am-so-and-so',
beyond 'so-I-am', beyond 'there is',
beyond all ideas into the impersonally personal pure being.
-Nisargadatta

Through meditation we enter into a new dimension of existence
where fulfillment lies in seeing.
-David Frawley

Do not lament if you see no lights or images in meditation...
Seek not a part but the Whole.
-Paramahansa Yogananda

Meditation at the spiritual level
must consist in the action of an unbroken consciousness,
in which the thoughts that arise
do not disturb either its calmness or unity,
while its energies radiate like light,
illuminating all that comes within its field.
-Nilakantha Sri Ram

As we go deeper into meditation,
we reach a place where we see nothing and hear nothing.
Here there is nothing but bliss.
This is the place of the Self,
and true meditation is to become immersed in That.
-Muktananda

Plunging without reservation
Into the ocean of bliss is meditation.
No image, no thoughts, no props.
-Lorin Roche

Meditating deeply...reach the depth of the source.
Branching streams cannot compare to this source.
-Nyogen Senzaki

Objectless awareness, where all objects are eliminated,
is the goal of meditation,
the state of Pure Self, the Infinite Presence.
-Chinmayananda

Meditation is the steady going inwards to discover pure spirit,
the center of all creation.
-Grace Cooke

The higher part of contemplation is wholly caught up in darkness

and in this cloud of unknowing, 

with an outreaching of love 

and a blind groping 

for the naked being of God, himself and him alone.

-from The Cloud of  Unknowing

Meditation is its full fruition brings humans face to face with Being,
the ultimate ground of all existence.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

Meditation in its spiritual essence is joyful communion with Being,
resulting in illumination.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

Meditation is dwelling
in the Oneness.
-Shaun de Warren

In the end, meditation techniques transcend even themselves.
Then, there will be neither meditation or non-meditation.
Just what is.
-Jack Kornfield