Category: Be fully present

Giving up the fight

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Buddha-Flowers

I’ve discovered there are only two modes of the heart. We can struggle, or we can surrender. Surrender is a frightening word for some people, because it might be interpreted as passivity, or timidity. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. Getting old, getting sick, dying, losing what is dear to us, what the Buddha taught as the first Noble Truth or life’s unsatisfactoriness –  is beyond our control. I can either be frightened of life and mad at life –  or not. I can be disappointed and still not be mad.  Stopping being mad – when I can – translates, for me as being compassionate – to myself as well as to other people.

Sylvia Boorstein, That’s Funny you don’t look Buddhist

All events equally

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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The most direct way to understand our life situation, who we are and how we operate is to observe it with a mind that simply notices all events equally. This attitude of non-judgmental, direct observation allows all events to occur in a natural way. By keeping attention in the present moment, we can see more and more the true characteristics of our mind and body process

jack Kornfield, Living Buddhist Masters

Simple practice for today

Karl Duffy2 Comments

welcomeMay I meet this moment fully;

May I meet it as a friend.

Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness is an Inside Job

As if we wanted it

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Photographer friend of Jack Wintz

Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it.

It is all we ever have, so we night as well work with it rather than struggling against it.

We might as well make it our friend and teacher rather than our enemy

Pema Chodron

photo: St Francis and the Wolf, Monterosso al Mare, Italy

Keep it simple

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Footprints in sand.JPG

Really we operate on a very small basis. We think we are great, broadly significant, and that we cover a whole large area. We see ourselves as having a history and a future, and here we are in our big-deal present. But if we look at ourselves clearly in this very moment, we see we are just grains of sand — just little people concerned only with this little dot which is called newness.

We can only operate on one dot at a time, and mindfulness of mind approaches our experience in that way. We are there, and we approach ourselves on the very simple basis of that. That does not particularly have many dimensions, many perspectives; it is just a simple thing.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

photo robert lawton

Noticing the process of becoming

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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Becoming, which results from clinging, involves the idea of having or being something more satisfying than at present. We want to become a very good meditator, or we want to become spiritual, or more learned. We have all sorts of ideas but are all bound up with wanting to become, because we are not satisfied with what we are. Often we do not even pay attention to what we are now, but just know that something is lacking. Instead of trying to realize what we are and investigating where the difficulty actually lies, we just dream of becoming something else. 

Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies