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.

The leaf falls

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This sublime poem by Ryōkan, written toward the end of his life, sees all of life in the falling maple leaf. Just like the leaf shows both front and back, life is filled with good times and challenging times, moments of happiness and unhappiness, ups and downs. We can learn from Ryōkan who simply observes the naturalness of what’s happening, without adding “it’s sad the leaf is dying. It’s sad it is falling down.”  The existence of the leaf is a series of transformations and it will turn into soil, to support new life.

Showing its front

Showing its back

The maple leaf falls

Ryōkan, 1758 – 1831, Buddhist monk and hermit

Quiet power

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Sorcerers maintain that talking about ourselves makes us accessible and weak, while learning how to be quiet fills us with power.

A principle of the path of knowledge is to turn your own life into something so unpredictable that not even you yourself knows what’s going to happen.

Carlos Castaneda

The key

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The key to our deepest happiness

lies in changing our vision

of where to find it

Sharon Salzberg, Finding your Way

Sunday Quote: Marvelous soul

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Every speck of dust has a marvelous soul,

but to understand it, one must recover one’s religious and magical sense of things.

Joan Miró, 1993 – 1983, Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramicist 

What happiness is

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I have come to see that our problem is that we don’t know what happiness is. We confuse it with a life uncluttered by feelings of anxiety, rage, doubt, and sadness. But happiness is something entirely different. It’s the ability to receive the pleasant without grasping and the unpleasant without condemning.

Mark Epstein

Go with the flow

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Get out of the construction business!

Stop building bridges across the raging waters of samsaric existence, attempting to reach the “far shore,” nirvana.

Better to simply relax, at ease and carefree, in total naturalness, and just go with the primordial flow, however it occurs and happens.

And remember this: whether or not you go with the flow, it always goes with you.

Nyoshül Khenpo Rinpoche, 1932 – 1999 , Tibetan lama