While most streams of Buddhism take a contemplative stance on passion, pleasure, and pain, Sufism encourages us to be open to our passions - to dive into the sea, to become at one with the beauty and power of the waves. - Charlotte Kasl
Why have many saints been so perfectly contemplative? Because they always studied to mortify themselves from worldly desires, that they might freely, with all the power of their heart, tend to our Lord.
I live a very secluded life, a very contemplative life and a very meditative one. That is my ideal life. - Alice Walker
This seems to have been St. Augustine's very notion of "memory," not just nostalgia for some past moment, but connecting past, present, and future in one complete contemplative knowing. - Richard Rohr