The way to live in the present
is to understand that it is all that we have
Joseph Goldstein
Fully
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.
Recognize this
The mind is naturally spacious.
It can hold anything – joy, sorrow, fear, excitement—without being destroyed or overwhelmed. The trouble begins when we forget this capacity and start to believe that our thoughts and emotions are solid, permanent, or bigger than the mind itself. We contract around them, tightening our mental grip, as if holding on could somehow make life more secure. But the truth is, the mind is like the sky—vast, open, and inherently calm. Clouds (thoughts, worries, pleasures) pass through, but the sky remains unchanged.
Meditation is the practice of remembering this.…This spaciousness isn’t something we need to create; it’s already here. Our practice is to recognize it. When we do, life becomes lighter. Difficult emotions don’t disappear, but they no longer define us.
Sylvia Boorstein, It’s Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness
losing today
The greatest obstacle to living fully is expectancy,
which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today.
You are arranging what lies in the control of fortune and abandoning what lies in yours.
Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius Letter CI
Sunday Quote: not the difficulty
The boundary to our freedom is not the reality we face,
but our refusal to face it.
David Richo
The weekend: unplug
A lot of our day is spent going around in a drama where we are the main protagonist.
All we need to do is unplug.
Then a sweet shift can happen in our sitting. We go from sitting there plugged into “our life” to a state where we can notice what that actually means
We might have seen images in the mind – of people, of a city, a room, whatever. We might have been hearing a kind of running commentary, like a sports reporter commenting on the action.
Henry Shukman
Promised freedom
One evening, I sat on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean, watching the waves roll in. Each one rose, peaked, and dissolved back into the sea—countless waves, never the same, yet always the ocean. It struck me then: this is how life is. Our bodies, our thoughts, the world itself – all are like those waves, rising and passing in endless flux.
We often live as if we’re solid, permanent beings navigating a stable world. But the truth is closer to that ocean: a flow of changing conditions, with no fixed ‘self’ at the center.
The heart that understands impermanence becomes like the sky: things pass through it – joy, sorrow, gain, loss -but the sky isn’t harmed. This is the freedom the Buddha promised
Ajahn Amaro, Small Boat, Great Mountain
Mindfulbalance 