Author: Karl Duffy

This is a Mindfulness Practice Blog written in Laois, Ireland, containing reflections on meditation practice, psychological growth, spirituality and wellness which hopefully may encourage and benefit others as they reflect on their lives and seek to develop a more balanced, mindful and conscious approach to it.

mundane miracles

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Today is Candlemas, another ancient feast, this one dating from the 4th Century in the Christian tradition, reflecting a need to mark this moment – halfway between the winter and the spring solstices – by bringing light into the darkness. 

Spirit, use me today, not in some miracle that

would make others marvel, and would make me proud.

Not in the word of wisdom, that would stay in the mind

and make me remembered.

Not in the heroic act, that would change the world for the better

and me for the worse.

But in the mundane miracles, of honesty and truth,

that keep the sky from falling.

In the unremembered quiet words, that keep a soul on the path.

And in the unnoticed acts, that keep the world moving

slowly closer to the light.

Grahame Davis, Prayer

Free medicine

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The first day of Spring in the Celtic Calendar, the important feast of Imbolc, halfway between solstices, with themes of light and fertility, hidden seeds and new life.

Lord, the air smells good today, straight from the mysteries
within the inner courts of God.

A grace like new clothes thrown across the garden,
free medicine for everybody.
The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise.

Rumi

Peace

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Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth, it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.

Pema Chodron

Step back

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Whenever we step away from emotional reactivity, a confining narrative or our filtering concepts, and relate directly to what is present in the here and now, we are taking the backward step.

Give up a practice based on intellectual understanding – searching for phrases and chasing after words.

Take the backward step and turn the light inward.

Your body-mind of itself will drop away, and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.

Dogen, 1200 – 1253, Fukanzazengi

As we are

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When Zen Master Joshu was a young monk he asked his teacher Nansen, “What is the Way?” His teacher replied “Your Ordinary Mind is the Way”. By “ordinary” Nansen meant the mind Joshu already had; he didn’t need to turn it, or himself, into something else. He didn’t need to put, as the Zen saying goes, another head on top of the one he already had.

Unfortunately, these days, when we hear the word ordinary, we are inclined to think it means “average or typical” or even “mediocre”. We contrast ordinary with special, and decide, given the choice, we rather be special. But our practice wont make us special; it will keep bringing us back to who we already are.

Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

Sunday Quote: Veiled

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Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.

Haruki Murakami