Month: October 2013

Uncertain and not knowing

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Black River

The core of all navigation is probably uncertainty: tolerating not knowing makes it possible to find your way. Not knowing means embracing what is not known rather than fighting with yourself over it. Since the mind always strives to know, not knowing is disorienting in a useful way. Uncertainty and not knowing teach you not to believe the stories your mind feeds you day in and day out. If you allow your own course to be mysterious, then even the hard things can become easy. This is the beginning of awakening.

John Tarrant, Surprises on the Way

Sunday Quote: Meeting our limits

Karl Duffy1 Comment

shadow333

The basic experience of everyone is the experience of human limitation.

Flannery O’Connor

Times when we learn most

Karl Duffy3 Comments

bubbles

There comes a time when the bubble of ego is popped and you can’t get the ground back for an extended period of time. Those times, when you absolutely cannot get it back together, are the most rich and powerful times in our lives.

Pema Chodron

The experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego

Jung

Accepting, letting go, insight

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:AutumnLeaf2.JPG

In the deepest forms of insight we see that things change so quickly that we can’t hold onto anything,

and eventually the mind lets go of clinging.

Letting go brings equanimity. The greater the letting go, the deeper the equanimity.

In practice we work to expand the range of life experiences in which we are free.

U Pandita

photo brookie

Waiting for us to make time

Karl Duffy1 Comment

quiet_place

When I was a child in New York City in the 1940s there were laws that attempted to legislate the Biblical injunction “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Businesses were closed. Shopping stopped. There were no convenience stores. People needed to remember, in advance of the Sabbath, to provide for the upcoming day of rest and spiritual reflection so that, on that day, they could rest. The community collectively caught its breath. Family members spent time with each other. They renewed connections. They visited neighbors.  I like to imagine that, whether or not people went to religious services, there was the possibility in that period of a pause for reflection. “What am I doing with my life?” “Is what I am doing good for me?” “Is it good for other people?” “Does my life make a difference in the world?” “Could my life make more of a difference in the world?”

All of the important fundamental questions in life seem to be waiting, so to speak, next on-line at the top of the mind’s agenda, if only we give them the time and the space to present themselves.

Sylvia Boorstein

Like working with a committee

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Senate budget committee.JPG

There are many different ideas of “you” in your mind, each with its own agenda. Each of these “you’s” is a member of the committee of the mind. This is why the mind is less like a single mind and more like an unruly throng of people: lots of different voices, with lots of different opinions about what you should do. Some members of the committee are open and honest about the assumptions underlying their central desires. Others are more obscure and devious. …One of the purposes of meditation is to bring these dealings out into the open, so that you can bring more order to the committee — so that your desires for happiness work less at cross purposes, and more in harmony as you realize that they don’t always have to be in conflict.

Thanissaro Bhikku