Category: Be fully present

Empty

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Very windy these days,  as first the tail end of the tropical storm passed over the country, and this morning Storm Ali shakes things up.

The first of the leaves start to fall.

The Heart Sutra says, “all phenomena in their own-being are empty.” “Own-being” means separate,  independent existence… everything is a tentative expression of one seamless, ever-changing landscape. So no individual person or thing has any permanent, fixed identity. 

Lewis Redmond, Emptiness: The Most Misunderstood Word in Buddhism

It will never be perfect

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen,  Anthem

In 1992 he commented on the lines: 

We’ve forgotten the central myth of our culture which is the expulsion from the garden of Eden. This situation does not admit of solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect.

There is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation with the broken-ness of things.

Never enough

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Everyone wants you to be Atlas,
to shoulder it all. Even the voice in your
head insists you are behind. But I’ve seen
the light in you, the one the gods finger
while we sleep. I’ve seen the blossom open
in your heart, no matter what remains to
be done. There are never enough hours
to satisfy the minions of want. So close
your eyes and lean into the Oneness that
asks nothing of you…. You have never been more
complete than in this incomplete moment.

Mark Nepo, The Myth of Urgency

Sunday Quote: To take the chance

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To dare is to lose one’s footing temporarily;

to not dare,  is to lose one’s life

Søren Kierkegaard

Notice

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Consciously inhabiting our senses is a pathway to the present moment, to feeling truly alive. Tuning in to our senses in nature invites presence and joy, whether we’re smelling the first full bouquets of apple and cherry blossoms in spring, seeing a crystalline carpet of dew on the lawn in the early morning, feeling the warm moisture of a tropical breeze as it softens our bodies and melts our hard edges, or hearing the dawn chorus of birdsong. Living with such a full awareness, we can be present to life’s gifts when they present themselves.

Mark Coleman, Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path to Self Discovery

Using difficulties

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Hard times are not a mistake. You haven’t done something wrong to have hard times….. life is woven with praise and blame and gain, and loss and pleasure, and pain and disrepute for all of us. And those constantly change. 

So the spiritual life is not about avoiding loss and blame and difficulty

but taking those difficulties that come to us and using them to awaken a wise and free and compassionate heart no matter what.

And often it’s in the very difficulties that the greatest freedom comes to us.

Jack Kornfield, Difficult Times and the Crystal of Liberation