Month: December 2012

Different worlds within

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If we become addicted to the externals our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of your inner world. This wholesomeness  is natural; to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you.

John O’Donohue, Anam Chara.

Fully present

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Focus1Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative.

Osho, A Sudden clash of Thunder

Under the snow

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DSCN0239Since we have our first snow and our first hard frost, and the seeds within the hardened earth lie and wait:

In fall the cricket beneath the rose bush
watches as the roses fall to the very ground that is his kingdom also.

So they’re neighbors, one full of fragrance,
the other the harper of a single dry song.

 We call this time of the year
the beginning of the end of another circle,

a convenience and nothing more.

For the cricket’s song
is surely a prayer,
and a prayer, when it is given, is given forever.

This is a truth I’m sure of, for I’m older than I used to be,

and therefore I understand things
nobody would think of
who’s young and in a hurry.

The snow is very beautiful. Under it are the lingering
petals of fragrance, and the timeless body of prayer.

Mary Oliver, The Cricket and the Rose

Staying connected with an underlying joy

Karl Duffy2 Comments
Before one’s individual ability-to-be, there goes an unshakable joy in this possibility.  Heidegger, Being and Time

There are two things, to be and to do. Don’t think too much about to do – to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. And then to do joy, to do happiness – on the basis of being. Being fresh. Being peaceful. Being compassionate. This is the basic practice. It’s like a person sitting at the foot of a tree. The tree does not have to do anything, but the tree is fresh and alive. When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm down the suffering in the other person.

Thich Nhat Hahn

 

Patient waiting

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The first snow of the winter fell here this morning, covering the garden and making life harder for the birds as they search for feed.  It will accelerate the movement towards Nature’s resting and waiting,  which this year has been postponed due to the mild autumn. We can learn from this cyclical process, which reminds us of necessary elements in our lives also, especially when we pass through moments of difficulty or transition. Sometimes resting and not knowing is natural and waiting is the wisest thing  we can do.

I am a book of snow,
a spacious hand, an open meadow,
a circle that waits,
I belong to the earth and its winter.

Paolo Neruda

Sunday Quote: Fully alive

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Most think that living a “full life” means living into old age.

But if you are not alive this moment, what makes you think you’ll be alive then?

Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Embracing the Beloved