All I can experience and work with
is what my life is right now.
That’s all I can do.
The rest is the dream of ego.
Charlotte Joko Beck
right now
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.
We could meet
The way to dissolve our resistance to life is to meet it face to face.
When we feel resentment that the room is too hot, we could meet the heat and feel its fieriness and heaviness.
When we feel resentment that the room is too cold, we could meet the cold and feel its iciness and bite.
When we want to complain about the rain, we could feel its wetness instead
When we worry because the wind is shaking the windows, we could meet the wind and hear the sound.
Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can give ourselves.
There is no cure for hot and cold. They will go on for ever.
Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Sunday Quote: Deep Life, Not Long Life
An old French sentence says, “God works in moments,”
– En peu d’heure Dieu labeure.
We ask for long life,
but it is deep life, or grand moments, that signify.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Works and Days
Thinking is not the only way
Both the poetic and the literal translations have something to provoke reflection
Can you step back from your own mind, and understand all things?
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 10 (Mitchell translation)
[literally Can you comprehend everything without depending on knowing]
The Timeless Present
Time flows in many streams.
Like a river, an inner stream of time will flow rapidly at some places and sluggishly at others, or perhaps even stand hopelessly stagnant.
Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.
Yasunari Kawabata, Japanese novelist and short story writer, 1968 Nobel Prize winner, Beauty and Sadness
Life as a mystery
“Truth waits for the eye unclouded by longing”
What does it mean to have an eye unclouded by longing. Its the place in your being, in your awareness, which is not totally identified with your desire system.
As long as you want something, you see only the outward container and our desire to keep the game going makes it very hard for us to see what in fact is happening.
And I really feel much more that my life is at play as a mystery. Rather than something where I know how it comes out, I mean, I find “I dont know” is the best response I have to most of the profound questions people ask me. It keeps me open, right at the edge of something I don’t really understand, and yet I dont actually have to.
Ram Das
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