Category: Be fully present

No need to go to China

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Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it? No, we just enjoy it. Each second, each minute of our life can be like this. Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, even the sensation of our breathing. We don’t need to go to China to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to travel into the future to enjoy our breathing. We can be in touch with these things right now. 

Thich Nhat Hanh

Sunday Quote: Running after nonsense

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

It is not up to us to believe in God

but only not to grant our love to false gods

Simone Weil, 1909 – 1943, French philosopher, activist and spiritual writer, described by Camus as the “only great spirit of our times”

Giving thought too much reality

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You say that you are troubled
by your own thoughts. Listen,
even the moth casts a shadow
when it flies before the sun.
Do you think the sun is troubled,
or the ground, or the moth,
for that matter? No, what is
troubled is the shadow thinking
it’s the moth that has fallen
to the ground, where the sun
will never shine again.

Richard Schiffman, Environmental journalist and poet,  Moth Koan (excerpt)

Not trying to fix

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being with, both emotionally and physically. I’m learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies, the strength of love lies in receiving and not negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to change or fix those we love.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

Gently guide yourself

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

If you gently help yourself back to the present moment,

you see how life keep stumbling along

and how you may actually find your way through another ordinary or impossible day

Annie Lamott

External or internal

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Because we are so imbued with this notion that happiness is something to be pursued by the continual transformation of the external, it can sound odd to hear the Buddha talk of uncovering happiness within. He acknowledged the inevitable presence of disequilibrium, which he called dukkha or suffering, but suggested we seek out its internal causes, understand them and solve the problem by means of internal adjustments. According to his analysis, it is not the objective discrepancy between the internal and the external condition that is the source of unhappiness; it is the desire for the external to change (or not to change as the case may be) which is itself an internal state.

Andrew Olwendzki, Unlimiting Mind