You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Missing the view, now
The chief obstacle to our happiness is our concept of happiness. Above all we tend to think that certain conditions must be present for us to be happy. We think we cannot be happy until we meet certain life goals. All of this future-orientated thinking, instead of making us happy, becomes a reason for us to be unhappy now. And if we aren’t happy now, the postponement of our happiness regresses into an infinitely receding future. We chase the horizon in endless anticipation and continual frustrations. We never get there, because we always hope to arrive there someday. It’s as if we are on a beautiful hiking trail, where there are spectacular mountains, lush meadows, cool streams, quiet lakes and beautiful trees, but we’re unhappy because we’re caught up in the concept that the view around the next corner will be better, while the one surrounding us is nothing at all.
Thomas Bien, The Buddha’s way of Happiness
Sunday Quote: The cure for unhappiness
There are people who are unhappy regardless of the work they do or the relationship they are in, and yet they continuously fool themselves into thinking that an external makeover will affect them internally.
Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment
Made up of moments of choice
If I could live again my life, In the next – I’ll try, – to make more mistakes, I won’t try to be so perfect,
I’ll be more relaxed,
I’ll be more full – than I am now,
In fact, I’ll take fewer things seriously,
I’ll be less hygienic, I’ll take more risks,
I’ll take more trips, I’ll watch more sunsets,
I’ll climb more mountains, I’ll swim more rivers,
I’ll go to more places – I’ve never been,
I’ll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,
I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary
ones,
I was one of those people who live
prudent and prolific lives –
each minute of his life,
Of course that I had moments of joy – but,
if I could go back I’ll try to have only good moments,
If you don’t know – that’s what life is made of,
Don’t lose the now!
I was one of those who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer, without a hot-water bottle,
and without an umbrella and without a parachute,
If I could live again – I will travel light,
If I could live again – I’ll try to work bare feet
at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
I’ll ride more carts,
I’ll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live – but now I am 85,
– and I know that I am dying …
Jorge Luis Borges, Instants
Doing nothing
There are times, then, when in order to keep ourselves in existence at all we simply have to sit back for a while and do nothing. And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than to sit still and rest, doing nothing at all. The very act of resting is the hardest and most courageous act he can perform: and often it is quite beyond his power. We must first recover the possession of our own being before we can act wisely or taste any experience in its human reality.
Thomas Merton
You are all possibilities
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Søren Kierkegaard
… Look back down the path as if seeing your past and then south over the hazy blue coast as if present to a wide future,
recall the way you are all possibilities you can see and how you live best as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not,
admit that once you have got up from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.
David Whyte, Mameen
