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.

Round and round

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There is a whole drama department in our head, and the casting director indiscriminately handing out the roles of inner dictators and judges, adventurers and prodigal sons, inner entitlement and inner impoverishment. ….When we see how compulsively these thoughts repeat themselves, we being to understand the psychological truth of samsara, the Sanskrit word for circular, repetitive existence…..Samsara also describes the unhealthy repetitions in our daily life. On a moment-to-moment level, we can see our samsaric thought patters re-arise, in unconscious and limited ways. For example, we see how frequently our thoughts include fear, judgment, or grasping. Our thoughts try to justify our point of view. As an Indian saying points out: “He who cannot dance claims the floor is uneven.”

Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology

Where the attention is

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If you are doing something to avoid pain, then pain is running your life. All of your thoughts and feelings will be affected by your fears.

Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul

of ordinary things

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It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Pat Schneider, 1934 – 2020, American writer, poet, writing teacher and editor

Just enjoy

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When a ray of sunshine comes, open out, absorb it to the depths of your being. Never think that an hour earlier you were cold and that an hour later you will be cold again. Just enjoy. Latch on to the passing minute. Shut off the workings of memory and hope… Take away from suffering its double drumbeat of resonance, memory and fear. Suffering may persist, but already it is relieved by half. Throw yourself into each moment as if it were the only one that really existed.

Jacques Lusseyran, 1924–1971, And there was Light.

Lusseyran became blind after a childhood accident, worked with the Resistance in World War Two and survived the Concentration Camp at Buchenwald.

Thanks to Maura Parolini for the quote suggestion. It is taken from the beautiful site The Marginalian

You might actually be quite free

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Buddha nature refers to our deeper inner wholeness

Your buddha nature is always with you. It’s just that you haven’t noticed yet….

Thinking it’s not here is one of the things that keeps you from noticing it.

You might not be deluded in this moment at all. You might be quite free. You might feel the joy that’s the natural joy of being human.

John Tarrant

Sunday Quote: Flow

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A very Taoist viewpoint, seeing that whatever is arising in our lives is already arising, and some element of wisdom comes from accepting that

Let go of all your assumptions

And the world will make perfect sense.

Chuang-Tzu, Second Book of the Tao