Month: December 2016

That place within

Karl Duffy3 Comments

temple

Meister Eckhart said, “There is a place in the soul — there is a place in the soul that neither time, nor space, nor no created thing can touch.” And I really thought that was amazing, and what it means is that your identity is not equivalent to your biography. And that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there’s still a sureness in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.

John O’Donoghue, Interview with Krista Tippett, On Being

Take refuge in small things today

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Nanzenji green tea.jpg

And the heart, unscrolled,

is comforted by such small things:

a cup of green tea rescues us,

grows deep and large,

a lake

Jane Hirshfield, Recalling a Sung Dynasty Landscape

chris gladis

Sunday Quote: Wholeness

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

leaf-blurWe can sometimes feel fragmented in our inner life, sucked into a crisis,  pulled in all directions, but…

There is not a “fragment” in all nature,

for every relative fragment of one thing

is a full harmonious unit in itself.

John Muir, A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf

Not taken in

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File:Котёнок у окна.jpg

There is  great psychological wisdom in the ancient texts as to how to deal with the strong emotions stirred up by challenges we face every day. Being able to see, without making it a story about ourselves:

You shouldn’t chase after the past, and don’t place expectations on the future.
The past no longer is. The future has not yet come.

Whatever is present in life as it is in the very here and now
you clearly see, right there, right there.
Not taken in.  You dwell in stability and freedom

That’s how you develop the heart.

The Buddha, Bhaddekaratta Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya No.131.

Complete

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File:Buseireann VWL175.jpg

We do not have to have everything sorted out in our lives for them to be complete and us to be happy.

A lot of disappointed people have been left

standing on the street corner

waiting for the bus marked Perfection

Donald Kennedy

photo kai hendry

Every day is a good day

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File:Fog.jpg

In Zen practice a koan is a phrase, a conversation, or a saying that a mediator reflects on in order to point to a way of being in the world. The phrase in held in mind –  sometimes for months or years at a time –  to unravel an openness in practitioners, allowing them to enter into inner regions beyond knowing.

I like keeping this one in mind, which is presented here in a commentary on a saying of Ummon, an 8th Century Zen Master. It challenges my normal commentary and takes me out of the thoughts I buy into every day. Maybe I already have everything I need right now: 

Ummon introduced the subject by saying:

I do not ask you about fifteen days ago. But what about in fifteen days time? Come, say a word about this.

He himself replied for them: Every day is a good day.

Commentary by Suzuki : Today does not become yesterday, and Dōgen states that today does not become tomorrow.

Each day is its own past and future and has its own absolute value.

From  a transcript of a talk by Suzuki-roshi,  Thursday, November 1st, 1962