Category: Be fully present

Sunday Quote: wonder

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Ideas create idols,

only wonder leads to knowing

Gregory of Nyssa

Let it fall

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Fear not the pain.

Let its weight fall back into the earth;

for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown

too heavy. You cannot bring them along.

Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

Rilke

natural cycles

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We are often deeply moved by ruins. We respond to the crumbling wall of an old farmhouse, the rusting hull of a battleship, or the remains of a medieval abbey. These objects move us because they suggest the inevitable victory of time over human ambition. They humble us. They make our own worries seem smaller. They help us to accept decay and mortality as natural parts of life rather than as enemies to be resisted at all costs.

Art can perform a similar function. A painting of a wilting flower, a fading sunset, or an aging face can—if we let it—teach us to accept the inevitable with grace rather than rage. It can help us see that impermanence is not a flaw in existence but its very essence

Alain de Botton and John Armstrong, Art as Therapy

endless chatter

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Meditation is not something apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a butterfly being carried by the wind – that is the moment when meditation can take place, if you are aware, if you are attentive, if your mind is not occupied with endless chatter.

J. Krishnamurti

Loose ends

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it’s sweet, and sometimes it’s bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy.

From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience.


Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape

already whole

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We do not search for love because it is absent

it seems to be absent because we search for it

Rupert Spira, Transparent Body, Luminous World.