Month: February 2014

Its own terms

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Flickr - don macauley - A lamb in the mists.png

More wind and rain passing over Ireland this afternoon. Most conversations about the weather tend to judge it in terms of “normal” and “predictable”, when in fact it keeps surprising us in its variety and extremes. We often fall into the trap of thinking that it should fall in with our plans and in doing so we risk missing the richness of what actually happens.

It’s not all that hard to get enlightened; what is difficult is to keep giving up our sense of the world so that the world can come to us on its own terms, with its vast, pitiless, loving intelligence…we return to the simplest things with an immense recognition and gratitude.

Stephen Mitchell

photo don macauley

Pushing

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Statue representing the portrait of Buddha in meditation. Copy space.

There is a quick-fix mentality in Ireland and elsewhere today, which even apply to ways of working on ourselves – like the latest surefire diet, or radio interviews which imply that an instant mindfulness session will cure all ills. At the heart of these is a vision of quick change which encourages us to strive and push to achieve.  We think that we need to control everything and impose ourselves upon it. While useful at times, this  sometimes can mean that we are never happy with anything, including ourselves. Meditation practice encourages a different way, of letting things come to us instead.  We sit in meditation and create space, allowing things unfold in their own time.

To push your self forward to experience and illuminate the millions of things, that is delusion. 

When the millions of things come forward and illuminate themselves, that is freedom

Dogen, GenjoKoan