Month: May 2012

What we think we need for happiness

Karl Duffy4 Comments

On one of the few sunny days recently, I was walking  along the lanes near our house and took this photograph of the cows happily eating in the farm next door. It reminded me of the old Buddhist tale which I have posted about before, but because it follows some of the themes of the last few days I will return to it again here. Mindfulness practice helps us see that our sense of wellbeing can be increased if we stop trying to hold onto our idea of what life should be like, and instead move towards what life actually is like. So this leads to another meaning in the words “let go” – letting go what we think we need for happiness and the conditions we feel must be fulfilled in order for happiness to come.

The story is here told by Thich Nhat Hahn, and like all parables can speak to us in different ways at different moments in our lives. Hopefully it may speak to you in some way today:

One day the Buddha was sitting in the forest with some monks when a farmer approached them. The farmer said, “Venerable monks, did you see my cows come by? I have a dozen cows and they all ran away. On top of that I have five acres of sesame plants and this year the insects ate them all up. I think I am going to kill myself. It isn’t possible to live like this”

The Buddha felt a lot of compassion toward the farmer. He said “My friend, I am sorry, we did not see your cows come this way”. When the farmer had gone, the Buddha turned to his monks and said “My friends, Do you know why you are happy? Because you have no cows to lose”

I would like to say the same to you. If you have some cows you have to identify them. You think they are essential to your happiness, but if you practice deep looking, you will see that it is not these cows that have brought about your happiness. The secret of happiness is being able to let go of your cows.

Stress is in the mind

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We are living in a very stressful time with all the successes of Western civilization, Western education and technology, the miracles that the West has performed! And it continues — there is no end to it. Yet people have not become more peaceful and contented. In fact they feel even more stressed by it all. So the problems of modern society in the West are coming not from a lack of anything, from tyrannical governments or from anything terribly wrong, but just from the level of stress in the mind — the speed, the nervousness, the tension, the tendency to get caught up in things and having no way of letting go, no understanding of the nature of things. So people end up taking drugs, drinking a lot, seeking sensory deprivation, trying to bury their heads in the sand; they go off to remote islands in the Pacific or do anything they think will help them find some inner peace…..[However] The silence, the cessation of suffering, is now; it is here and now, in the mind; we don’t have to go anywhere to get it. One can bear with conditions because the silence is not from denying or rejecting, but from understanding, from letting go, and from realizing that all is subject to arising and ceasing. In that movement is a stillness and peacefulness that all of us can experience and know directly for ourselves.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Still Silence

Seeing the depths in time

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Experience has its own secret structuring. Endings are natural. Often what alarms us as an ending can in fact be the opening of a new journey – a new beginning that we could never have anticipated; one that engages forgotten parts of the heart. Due to the current overlay of therapy terminology in our language, everyone now seems to wish for “closure.” This word is unfortunate: it is not faithful to the open-ended rhythm of experience. Creatures made of clay with porous skins and porous minds are quite incapable of the hermetic sealing that the strategy of “closure” seems to imply. The word completion is a truer word. Each experience has within it a dynamic of unfolding and a narrative of emergence. Oscar Wilde once said, “The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is right.” When a person manages to trust experience and be open to it, the experience finds its own way to realization.

The nature of calendar time is linear; it is made up of durations that begin and end. The Celtic imagination always sensed that beneath time there was eternal depth. This offers us a completely different way of relating to time. It relieves time of the finality of ending. While something may come to an ending on the surface of time, its presence, meaning, and effect continue to be held into the eternal. This is how spirit unfolds and deepens. In this sense, eternal time is intimate; it is where the unfolding narrative of individual life is gathered and woven.

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

Sunday Quote: Simplify

Karl Duffy1 Comment

 

In the pursuit of learning,

every day something is acquired.

In the pursuit of wisdom,

every day something is let go of.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Distilling life down to three actions

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Every year, everything
I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods

Surprising things which we hold on to

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Eckhart Tolle believes we create and maintain problems because they give us a sense of identity. Perhaps this explains why we often hold onto our pain far beyond its ability to serve us. We replay past mistakes over and over again in our head, allowing feelings of shame and regret to shape our actions in the present. We cling to frustration and worry about the future, as if the act of fixation somehow gives us power. We hold stress in our minds and bodies, potentially creating serious health issues, and accept that state of tension as the norm.

Though it may sound simple, Ajahn Chah’s advice speaks volumes: “If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.” There will never be a time when life is simple. There will always be time to practice accepting that. Every moment is a chance to let go and feel peaceful.

Lori Deschene, 40 Ways to Let Go and Feel Less Pain, Tiny Buddha Blog