1. At daybreak, change the water and light the incense. It’s all about the ordinary things of the everyday world. —Lianhua Kedu (tr. Beata Grant)

2. If you seek direct understanding, don’t hold on to any appearance whatsoever, and you’ll succeed. I have no other advice. —Bodhidharma (tr. Red Pine)

3. The true Buddha is in the home. The true Dao is in everyday functions. If you maintain an honest heart, a harmonious manner, a pleasant countenance, and graceful words with your father, mother, brothers, and sisters, and flow with them, each in turn, in wholehearted accord of body and spirit, then isn’t this ten thousand times better than breath control and introspection?
—Hong Zicheng, Caigentan 21 (tr. Aitken and Kwok)

4. … we see that in meditation we should not look for a “method” or “system,” but cultivate an “attitude,” an “outlook”: faith, openness, attention, reverence, expectation, supplication, trust, joy. All these finally permeate our being with love in so far as our living faith tells us we are in the presence of God, that we live in Christ, that in the Spirit of God we “see” God our Father without “seeing.” —Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer

5. I think of the practice of Lectio Divina (divine reading), a form of meditation and prayer using the Bible to come closer to the word of God.

But then in Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road, when the man is reflecting on his son: “If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.”

6. All of the above quotes are not to say that meditation means isolating oneself in one’s house and living out one’s days in blissful ignorance. On the contrary, one cannot meditate without feeling and acting on a strong desire to reduce the suffering of others.

Consider Thich Nhat Hanh (Fragrant Palm Leaves, entry 12 July 1965): It does not make sense for students of the Buddha to isolate themselves inside a temple, or they are not his true students. Buddhas are to be found in places of suffering.

And Ecclesiastes offers a wonderful synthesis (3:12-13 NIV, emphasis mine): I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.