Year: 2013

…. being and doing

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling in the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have not silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have not rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

photo : jon rawlinson

Balance…

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Happiness is not a matter of intensity,

but balance

Thomas Merton

photo Stephanie de Nadai

Our changing mind

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What could be more unpredictable than our thoughts and emotions: do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? Our mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. Look at a thought: It comes, it stays, and it goes. The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past.

The only thing we really have is nowness, is now.

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Whatever the weather

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Appreciation is a relaxing and peaceful state of mind. It creates a space in which we can accommodate the vicissitudes of life. Complaint, on the other hand, is frustrating and painful. There’s an element of anger and fixation involved. We are believing our thoughts, taking them to be real. Our attachment to the concept of how we want things to be is stressful, because that concept is always disintegrating. What we wanted to happen is not happening. We think complaining is going to get the world back on our track, but really it results in our being deaf, dumb and blind to the present moment. When we complain, we’re saying that the world needs to change in order for us to be okay. If only our parent or partner would behave differently, if only the food were better, if only there were less traffic, if only the service were quicker—then we’d be happy.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, No Complaints

What makes the journey light

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My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.  

When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,  

when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,  

He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—

otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,  

difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.“

Naomi Shihab Nye, The Words Under the Words

Back to Basics

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The present moment, the only moment we have to feel or to think, is a hidden dimension for most of us. We are so absorbed with planning for the future or blaming people for what is over and done with that we lose the lives we are living. We die a thousand deaths wasting our energy on what was or what will be. We need to wake up a little more and liberate ourselves from our self-destructive habits — greed, hatred, racism and selfishness.  There is no reason to starve for well-being.

Jon Kabat Zinn