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.

Every moment is rich

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With the restriction on movement and activities these days due to the virus and our caring for each other by creating some distance, we renounce some of the things we would normally like to do.  However, this can make space for noticing what we have in our lives, instead of focusing on what we have not.

The ground of renunciation is realizing that we already have exactly what we need,

that what we have already is good.

Every moment of time has enormous energy in it,

and we could connect with that.

Pema Chodron

A spark

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Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.

John O’Donohue, Benedictus, To Bless the Space between Us

Sunday Quote: Wounds

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Challenging situations can bring out defensive behaviours, such as seen in supermarkets recently. But we see each day examples of generosity and dedication, such as the report here of a nurse postponing her retirement to continue her work caring for those in hospital and many doctors coming out of retirement to give support to their colleagues.

If you’re a stranger to your own wound,

then you’re gonna be tempted to despise the wounded

Fr Gregory Boyle, in an interview with Sarah Silverman

It is always unknown territory

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It’s been a unsettling week. The old rhythms which felt known and familiar are challenged. But as yesterdays post said, it’s the unknown which pulls back the veil…

“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” (Plato)…
The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration – how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

An invitation

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Yesterday, I went to my local drug store to purchase a thermometer for a loved one who was spiking a fever at home. Walking down the aisles, bare shelves yawned: small tags whispered of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, gloves, thermometers. Asking the pharmacist, he repeated perhaps for the hundredth time that day, “All gone… I’m sorry”. On the street as I drove home, I noticed these signs: a young man stopped to stuff a dollar bill into the can of a street person. A truck flashed its lights at me, yielding for me to turn. Traffic halted for two geese to waddle slowly across four lanes of parkway. This strange moment in time is eliciting unexpected acts of kindness, even while we feel as if we’re in a dream.

We are sitting with the unknown. The unknown is exactly what pulls back the veil. Illness and death are life’s great equalizers. A fever is a fever. A virus seeks a host. We are all potentially at risk. We are all trying to quell the spread. Together.

The Buddha emphasized that if there is something that can absolutely be counted on, it is that nothing can be counted on. Life has always been so. But I forget, most every moment of every day. Lulled by the predictability of my days, I believe that tomorrow will be just like today. Today just like yesterday. The toilet paper will be there.

Fear is an invitation. It is not an invitation to weigh risks or to adjust the externals. It is an invitation to look deeply within and befriend the animal in oneself.

We are sitting with the unknown. The unknown is exactly what pulls back the veil. It offers a glimpse the truth that nothing has ever been certain. This world with all its beauty and all its vibrancy is just so because it is not fixed, because everything is contingent. Life’s natural cousin is uncertainty. The final gift, the one that I keep returning to in these shadowy days, is kindness. A pandemic is a common (pan) experience. We are in this together. We can face it together and we can help one another get through it. Ironically the “social distancing” we are asked to practice is a call to care. It is not a request made for oneself; it is an act of public good.

In a pandemic, self-isolation is called quarantine. In Buddhism, it is called retreat.

From the cave of our home, like the meditators of ancient times, we can consciously kindle the lamp of compassion and connection.

Lama Willa B Miller, Living in this Strange Moment Together

Keeping the heart open

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It is not easy to keep the heart open in moments of fear and anxiety

The covenant of life is not just to stay alive, but to stay in our aliveness. And staying in aliveness depends on opening the heart and keeping it open. Our dreams, goals, and ambitions are all kindling, fuel for the heart to exercise its aliveness, to bring our gift into the world, to discover what matters.

We drift in and out of knowing our aliveness. Pain, worry, fear, and loss can muffle and confuse us. But finding our gift and working it will bring us back alive. It doesn’t matter if we’re skillful or clumsy, if we play our gift well or awkwardly, or if we make great strides or fail. Aliveness is not a judge in a talent show. Aliveness shows itself in response to wholeheartedness, when we can say yes to life, and work with what we’re given, and stay in relationship – to everything.

Mark Nepo, The One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your Heart