If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.
Wu Men, 1183 – 1260
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.
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Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.
Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance.
photo andre engles
Sitting by the bank
We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for. Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us.
Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, there you are
photo of Old man, Ballyknow Quay, River Corrib, Galway, Ireland by greg o’beirne
Good news
The good news they do not print.
The good news we do print.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
that the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available: hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile, singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head. Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow, of preoccupation,
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it
Thich Nhat Hanh
photo Paul Davidson
Sunday Quote: We pass this way once
If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was.
I would only open my eyes a little more
Jules Renard, 1864 – 1910, French author
Running just to stand still
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
The Red Queen, in Through the Looking Glass
photo trishna datta
