Category: Be fully present

Keeping watch

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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More on thoughts as constructive or destructive, this time from an early Christian monk who was remarkable for his insights into processes of the mind or heart. His encouragement to be watchful of what thoughts we dwell on and resist negative,  self-critical,  ones, is very similar to one of the descriptions found in ancient texts of mindfulness as a gatekeeper,  and to exercises used in modern Cognitive Behavioural Therapy:

Be the guardian of your own heart and do not let any thought pass through without checking them! Ask each one of them: “Are you from our side or from that of those against us?“.  If they come from your own house, they will fill you full of peace, but if they come from your enemy they will stir up anger and agitate your emotions.

Evagrius Pontius, 345 – 399.

photo guus van der valk

Disapproving

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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Everyone’s mind likes saying “but.”

Thinking you are doing it wrong, that the conditions of your life stop you from making friends with yourself – these thoughts might get in the way of noticing what it is like to be you. You might disapprove of who you are, but disapproving is just another way of not being here.

In this case, making friends with yourself could mean lowering your standards….

John Tarrant, What’s it Like to be You?

photo Ian Kirk

Welcome

Karl Duffy3 Comments

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Wherever you are, just try being the host.
You will always be at home.

Linji Yixuan, Chan Buddhist,  died 866

Sunday quote: Inner wisdom

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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There is an inner wakefulness…

that will eventually

startle us back

to the truth of

who we are.

Rumi

Everywhere and everything

Karl Duffy5 Comments
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Take a pitcher full of water and set it down in the water
– now it has water inside and water outside.
We mustn’t give it a name,
lest silly people start talking again about the body and the soul.
Kabir

Just like this

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File:Mosul-swimming.jpg

If you ask someone who is swimming in water, ‘What is water like?’, then they simply bring attention to it and say, ‘Well, it feels like this. It’s this way.’ Then you ask, ‘How is it exactly? Is it wet or cold or warm or hot…?’ All of these words can describe it. Water can be cold, warm, hot, pleasant, unpleasant… But it’s just like this. The realm we’re swimming in for a lifetime is this way! It feels like this! You feel it! Sometimes it’s pleasant. Sometimes it’s unpleasant. Most of the time it’s neither pleasant nor unpleasant. But always it’s just this way. Things come and go and change, and there’s nothing that you can depend on as being totally stable. [It’s] all energy and change and movement; all flux and flow.

Now we’re not judging it; we’re not saying it’s good or it’s bad, or you should like it, or you shouldn’t; we’re just bringing attention to it –  like the water.

Ajahn Sumedho