Category: Be fully present

90 seconds

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We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.

So the challenge is to notice the emotional tug of shenpa when it arises and to stay with it for one and a half minutes without the storyline. Can you do this once a day, or many times throughout the day, as the feeling arises? This is the challenge. This is the process of unmasking, letting go, opening the mind and heart.


Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change

Allow all to pass

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Just do your best. This is the whole of practice, the whole of our life. All sorts of chatter comes up in the midst of the circumstances of our life. Something breaks, we clean it up or fix it up. Or we can start chattering about, “Why does this happen to me? Oh, I always do this. What am I going to do? What does this mean?” We all know the consequences of that. After speaking with someone, do we continue holding on to the discussion with “internal” chatter, like, “Why did they say that to me? It’s not fair.” If that chatter — habits of reactions, habits of thoughts and emotions—arises, then right there in the noticed chatter is our practice. Just be chatter in the midst of doing, and allow chatter to pass. 

Elihu Genmyo Smith , Zen Buddhist teacher, Do Your Best

Reset your compass

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When you’re overwhelmed by illness or loss, by the conflicts around you, when you feel you are lost in the darkness, sometimes all you can do is to breathe consciously and gently with your pain and anguish and know that with this simple gesture you are resetting the compass of your heart, no matter your circumstances.

By taking that one simple, mindful breath, you will return again to compassion and realize that you are more than your fears and confusions.

Jack Kornfield

What nature teaches

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The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever

Mary Oliver, Dream Work

Empty time

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In-between states, between emptiness and form, teach us there is a wisdom in not naming.

You have been forced to enter empty time.

There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

John O’Donohue, For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing.

The language of descent

Karl Duffy1 Comment

On this Good Friday in these pandemic times….

We seldom go freely into the belly of the beast. Unless we face a major disaster like the death of a friend or spouse or loss of a marriage or job, we usually will not go there. As a culture, we have to be taught the language of descent. That is the great language of religion. It teaches us to enter willingly, trustingly into the dark periods of life. These dark periods are good teachers. Religious energy is in the dark questions, seldom in the answers. Answers are the way out, but that is not what we are here for. But when we look at the questions, we look for the opening to transformation. Fixing something doesn’t usually transform us. We try to change events in order to avoid changing ourselves. We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. 

Richard Rohr