Month: June 2024

Rest

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Resting in the openness of mind.

Sometimes it’s called not knowing. Why would we have to know everything all the time? Why do we have to be so knowledgeable, so smart, so in control? We don’t! There’s no need to figure everything out. We can just be alive. We can breathe in and breathe out and let go and just trust our life, trust our body. Our body and our life know what to do. The problem is to let them do it, to relax and let them guide us.

Of course life is complicated and we have many things to work out.. But also we can find a place of refuge sometimes – in our own life, in our own breath, in our own presence. We don’t have to search for a powerful guru or a major meditation center or find the best book or method. We can just return right now to ourselves. To our actual concrete presence, in the body, in the breath, in the mind and heart. If we had the confidence that this were possible at any moment, then we would feel much more at ease with our lives and it would be easier and happier to take care of all our complicated problems. We could do it with far less anxiety and stress. We would trust our life.

The practice of resting in the openness of mind at any time during the day can be quite powerful. “Rest in the openness of mind”. Getting used to this phrase and its meaning so that it can be an inspiration for you, so that you can bring it up at any time during the day, is a powerful advantage.

Norman Fischer, Training in Compassion: Zen teachings on the Practice of Lojong

Just this is enough

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Renunciation is “Just this is enough”. I really like that as a description of renunciation. Can you meet your life just as it is and say “Just this is enough”? Or are you always asking for something more? That’s where suffering comes in: “This isn’t enough. I need something more”. Then it always feels as if something is lacking. How can we meet our life as it is wholeheartedly, just like this? This is what our practice is: that is finding your home in the midst of homelessness, right here.

Zenkei Blanche Hartman, Seeds for a Boundless Life

taking the light within

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The Summer Solstice

Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible.

Awakening and surrender: they  frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty.

John O’Donohue.

photo of the Grianán of Aileach in County Donegal by Mark McGaughey on Wikipedia

Like walking down a road

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Just try to keep your mind in the present. Whatever arises in the mind, just watch it and let go of it. Don’t even wish to be rid of thoughts. Then the mind will return to its natural state. No discriminating between good and bad, hot and cold, fast and slow. No me and no you, no self at all – just what there is. When you walk there is no need to do anything special. Simply walk and see what is there. No need to cling to isolation or seclusion. Wherever you are, know yourself by being natural and watching. If doubts arise, watch them come and go. It’s very simple. Hold on to nothing.

It’s as though you are walking down a road. Periodically you will run into obstacles. Don’t think about the obstacles you’ve already passed; don’t worry about those you have not yet seen. Stick to the present.

Don’t be concerned about the length of the road or the destination. Everything is changing. Whatever you pass, don’t cling to it. Eventually the mind will reach its natural balance where practice is automatic. All things will come and go of themselves.

Ajahn Chah

Keep on trying

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At the time you’re living it, you can sometimes think your life is nothing much. It’s ordinary and everyday and should be and could be in this or that way better. It is without the perspective by which any meaning can be derived because it’s too sensual and urgent and immediate, which is the way life is to be lived. We’re all, all the time, striving, and though that means there’s a more-or-less constant supply of failure, it’s not such a terrible thing if you think that we keep on trying. There’s something to consider for that.

Niall Williams, 1958 – Irish writer, This Is Happiness

They come and they go

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When energies inside start to move, you do not have to go there. For instance, when your thoughts start, you do not have to go with them.

Let’s say you’re outside taking a walk and a car drives by. Your thoughts say, ‘Boy, I wish I had that car.’ You could just keep on walking, but instead you start getting upset. You want a car like that, but your salary isn’t high enough. So you begin thinking about how you can get a raise or a different job. You didn’t have to do all that. It could have just been – here comes the car and there it goes, and here comes the thought and there it goes.

They’re both gone together because you didn’t go with them.

Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul