Month: February 2014

The seeds within

Karl Duffy4 Comments

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Mindfulness involves paying attention to and nurturing what is helpful, as well as evaluating,  and not allowing a footing to, those seeds which will cause confusion and distress:

If we take good care of everything in us, without discrimination, we prevent our negative energies from dominating. We reduce the strength of our negative seeds so that they won’t overwhelm us. Mindfulness means to be present, to be aware of what is going on. This energy is very crucial for the practice. The energy of mindfulness is like a big brother or big sister, holding a young one in her arms, taking good care of the suffering child, which is our anger, despair, or jealousy. So mindfulness recognizes, embraces, and revives. Mindfulness helps us look deeply in order to gain insight. Insight is the liberating factor. It is what frees us and allows transformation to happen. 

Thich Nhat Hahn, Taming the Tiger Within

photo Ude

How not to get swept away in reactions

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Mindfulness practice is not just paying attention, but involves a certain evaluation. In reality this involves paying attention to whatever enters through the senses and seeing what arises and passes away in each moment. One of the reasons we do this is to ensure that what arises is held lightly, and does not trigger off unskilful patterns of thinking based on our history and our emotional schemas. For example, if we see a certain reaction on a persons face it can easily trigger memories of the same reaction  in the past and that lead to us feeling less appreciated or judged. The simple contact today can lead to a proliferation of thoughts from the past. Thus we are mindful of each thing as a separate moment, without turning it into a story about how good or bad our lives are.

A person who has clarified their real state sees only

each thing,

each thing,

each thing,

and lets go of understanding an underlying nature for each thing.

Dogen, Uji

photo maitreya maitreyen

Taking responsibility

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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The capacity for growth depends on one’s ability to internalize and to take personal responsibility.

If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others,

a problem to be ‘solved,’

then no change will occur.

James Hollis, The Middle Passage

Depth

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When we get anxious, our breathing tends to get shallow and our energy tends to move upwards, making us feel less solid, less grounded. Our thinking process too can speed up or get hooked by conditioned patterns of fear or unworthiness. We are, however, much more than we think we are. Pausing, getting in touch with this depth inside us many times during the day helps us not swept away by the winds that blow.

Our true life

lives at a great depth within us

Rabindranath Tagore

photo till krech

Broken Open

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There is a lot of debris around after the recent storms. Trees broken and uprooted. Most faiths tell us that in its many ways life is the main teacher, and it is by being fully present to what happens in life that we grow, not by moving away from events. This is true even if they are painful. How we do this,  each day,  is to stay open to each moment, see what it has to say to us, training in this way the heart to stay open:

A rabbi always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put the Word of God in their hearts. One of them asked “Why ‘on’ our hearts and not ‘in’ them?” The Rabbi answered “Only God can put his Word within. But reading the sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when the heart breaks open, the holy words will fall inside”

from Joan Chittister, Aspects of the Heart

photo norbert nagel

Notice the little things today

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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We can spend a lot of time each day as if in a trance, missing each moment as we lean into the next.  One way to counteract this,  and enjoy your life more,  is to let yourself notice the little things today with fresh eyes; simple things, like a cup of coffee, a smile from a colleague, the dew on the grass. In this way we pause and refresh the heart.

In the dew of little things

the heart finds its morning

and is refreshed.

Kahlil Gibran