Category: Be fully present

A fresh way of seeing things

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Starting over, being open to all possibilities, not being bound by our familiar conclusions:

To observe anything –  your mind must be free of any conclusion, any previous knowledge, otherwise you cannot possibly see ‘what is’. Isn’t that so? If I want to learn about you  I must observe. I must observe, listen and not come to any conclusion. Conclusion is the image which divides you and me. So to observe, there must be no image, no conclusion, no formula. And in that lies our difficulty, because we live according to formulas, a formula set by another or a conclusion which we have come to according to our conditioning and experience. So can the mind be free of every conclusion, because a conclusion is in the field of time which is the past? You can’t conclude something about the future. You can conclude about the future according to your past conditioning, therefore your conclusion is always based on the past – past knowledge, past experience… various forms of knowledge.

So can the mind, to investigate something which is not of time, be free of conflict so that it can observe completely? This has been the enquiry of man right through the centuries: how is the mind to be so quiet, so still, without any distorting factor in it, so that it is capable of perception without any distortion?

J. Krisnamurti, Fourth Public Talk in New York  7 May 1972

Moving and not moving

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Please clearly understand that when the mind is still, it’s in its natural, normal state.

As soon as the mind moves, it becomes conditioned (sankhāra). When the mind likes something, it becomes conditioned. When not-liking arises, it becomes conditioned. The desire to move here and there arises from conditioning.

If our awareness doesn’t keep pace with these mental proliferations as they occur, the mind will chase after them and be conditioned by them. Whenever the mind moves, at that moment, it becomes a conventional reality.

So the Buddha taught us to contemplate these wavering conditions of the mind.

Ajahn Chah

Stop fighting with your life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

To listen to the soul is to stop fighting with life – to stop fighting when things fall apart, when they don’t go our way, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty, and to wait.

Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open

Sunday Quote: Even in times of difficulty, keep planting

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Faith is hope in the unseen. Often we cannot see the results of the efforts we are putting in …

Even if the Hour of Resurrection comes up,

and one of you is holding a sapling in your hand….

 finish planting it.

The Prophet Mohammed

Mindful of just one cup of tea

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Just look around you and you will see that the world never ceases to churn out more and more of the same thing, and that the result is unremitting pain and unbearable suffering. It’s no surprise, then, that the masters have pointed out, that to maintain mindfulness for as long as it takes to drink a cup of tea accumulates more merit than years of practicing generosity, discipline, and asceticism.

         Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

When thinking doesn’t help

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Think of a problem that has plagued you for a long time — your weight, a loved one’s bad habits, fear of terrorism, whatever. No doubt you’ve tried valiantly to control this issue, but are your efforts working? The answer has to be no; otherwise you would have solved the problem long ago. What if your real trouble isn’t the issue you brood about so compulsively, but the brooding itself.

Martha Beck, Victory by Surrender, Creating your right life