Category: Be fully present

Deep silence

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Cove-lake-fork-mountain-tn1.jpg

In different traditions and at different times there were many attempts to express the value of setting aside some time for silence or creating some space to listen and yet they all agree on its benefits. What was true in the 12th century is even more true today. When we get caught up in relentless activity we are in danger of not hearing what our deep needs are, or indeed what are those of others close to us. Finding some time for quiet in our lives is not a luxury but rather is essential for protecting our health.

Let all my world be silent in your presence so that I may hear what you may say in my heart. Your words are so softly spoken  that no one can hear them except in a deep silence. But to hear them lifts the person who sits alone and in silence completely above their natural powers, because those who humble themselves will be lifted up. Those who sit alone and listen will be raised above themselves.

Guigo II, Carthusian monk, died 1188, Ladder of Monks and Twelve Meditations

photo brian stansberry

Where to start

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Kindness jar.jpg

Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself.
You may not be perfect, but you are all you’ve got to work with.

The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the
total acceptance of who you are.

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

photo hunterdt

Lost in our moods

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

 

File:Leaf on tree in Yosemite park.jpg

This mind of ours is naturally peaceful. It’s still and calm like a leaf that is not being blown about by the wind…

Why the mind doesn’t feel peaceful right now is because it gets lost in its own moods. There’s nothing to mind itself. It simply abides in its natural state, that’s all. That sometimes the mind feels peaceful and other times not peaceful is because it has been tricked by moods. The untrained mind lacks wisdom.  Moods come and trick it into feeling pleasure one minute and suffering the next. Happiness then sadness. But the natural state of a person’s mind isn’t one of happiness or sadness. This experience of happiness and sadness is not the actual mind itself, but just these moods which have tricked it. The mind gets lost, carried away by these moods with no idea what’s happening.  It still isn’t very clever. And we go on thinking that it’s our mind which is suffering or our mind which is happy, when actually it’s just lost in its various moods.

Ajahn Chah, Training this Mind

 

A new loveliness.

Karl Duffy4 Comments
File:Mist on Blessington Lake - geograph.org.uk - 1615577.jpg
You cannot live without dying. 
You cannot live if you do not die psychologically every minute. 
This is not an intellectual paradox. To live completely, 
wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness,
 there must be dying to everything of yesterday, 
otherwise you live mechanically, 
and a mechanical mind can never know what 
love is or what freedom is.
Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
photo: early morning mist on Blessington Lake, Co Wicklow, by IrishFlyfisher

The origin of suffering

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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Be attentive and notice that whatever arises passes away; that whatever condition of your mind or body – whether it is a sensation of pleasure or pain, feeling or memory, sight, sound, smell, taste or touch, inside or outside – is just a condition. It’s important to reflect on what ‘ignorance’ really means when .. called … the origin of all suffering. ‘Being ignorant’ means that we identify with these conditions, by regarding them as ‘me’ or ‘mine’, or as something that we don’t want to be ‘me’ or ‘mine’. We’ve got the idea that we’ve got to find some permanent pleasant condition, we have to achieve something, get something we don’t have. But you can notice that desire in your mind is a moving thing, looking for something, so it’s a changing condition that arises and passes away – it’s not-self.

Ajahn Sumedho, Everything that arises passes away

photo sean p bender

 

What glorious things today

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Red geranium 3.jpeg

Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life: a frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, a loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home: it’s impossible to think at first how this all will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living.

In my own worst seasons I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again.

Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again

Barbara Kingsolver  High Tide in Tucson