Month: December 2018

Let the mind be

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Living in a world focused on what is outside us, and not looking within, we are taught from a young age that we need to become something more than we are right now. We are encouraged to always be doing: we must learn; we must buy; we must acquire and achieve. And for absolute certain we must become better than we are right now just sitting here doing nothing. The Buddha taught the opposite. He said that by learning to let the mind be, just as it is right now, all our good qualities can unfold from within.

Heidi Koppl, Be like a Goldsmith

Believing our thoughts

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When you are identified with your mind,  you cannot be very intelligent because you become identified with an instrument, you become confined by the instrument and its limitations. So, use the mind, but don’t become it . . . The mind is a beautiful machine. If you can use it, it will serve you; if you cannot use it and it starts using you, it is destructive, it is dangerous. It is bound to take you . . . into some suffering and misery . . . Mind cannot see; it can only go on repeating that which has been fed into it. It is like a computer…Remain the master so that you can use it; otherwise it starts directing you.

Osho, New Man for the New Millennium

Imaginary importance

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Humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Instructions

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Show up – Choose to be present; Follow what has heart and meaning

Tell the truth without blame or judgment; Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome

Angeles Arrien, The Four Fold Way

Sunday Quote: Life

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Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

Anais Nin

You are more than your emotions.

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Yesterday morning driving across country…Hailstones, winds, blue skies. Afternoon ….annoyances that pass though as we work with unexpected requests…

It is essential to understand that an emotion is merely something that arises, remains and then goes away. A storm comes, it stays a while, and then it moves away. At the critical moment remember you are much more than your emotions. This is a simple thing that everyone knows, but you may need to be reminded of it: you are more than your emotions.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Healing Pain and Dressing Wounds