Month: December 2021

Incarnate

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Even the most transcendent visions of spirituality must shine through the here and now and be brought to life in how we walk, eat, and love one another. This is not easy. The power of our fear, the habits of judgment within us, repeatedly prevent our touching the sacred. Often we will unconsciously draw our spirituality back to the polarity of good and bad, sacred and profane. Where is liberation to be found? The Buddha taught that both human suffering and human enlightenment are found in our own fathom-long body with its senses and mind. If not here and now, where else will we find it?

Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

We think we know

Karl Duffy2 Comments

However great our conceptual knowledge and understanding might be,

in the face of real experience,

concepts are like flakes of snow fallen on a burning fire.

Zenkei Shibayama, 1894 – 1974, Japanese Rinzai Zen priest, head Roshi of Nanzenji Zen Monastery in Kyoto

In the deep mid winter

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life….

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

William Stafford

Radiant

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Let the world be as it is
and learn to rock with the waves.

Remain ‘radiant,’ as Joyce put it,
‘in the filth of the world’.

Joseph Campbell

Our true nature

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The winter solstice, in the northern hemisphere: the shortest, darkest day of the year

In dark times  when we feel even more burdened and insecure, we should be contemplating our true nature more than ever. It can cheer us up on any day. Despite all the ups and downs of our life, we are fundamentally awake individuals who have a natural ability to become compassionate and wise. Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind.  This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness — nothing more, nothing less.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, A Simple Sense of Delight

Dark and bright

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We are the driven ones.
But the pressing on of time,
Takes us as small things
Into the everlasting.

All this rushing
Will soon be over;
For it is in lingering
That we receive insight.

All is in repose:
the darkness and the brightness,
the flower and the book.

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus First Part, 22