Category: Make the most of life

Be Happy

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Abends am Meer.jpg

One of my meditation teachers used to end each of our interviews … and say to me, “Remember, Sylvia, be happy.”  I actually for a long time thought it was a salutation, like “have a good day” or something that you say just in a routine kind of a way, and it took me a long time to realize that it was an instruction, “Be happy.” Not only that it was an instruction but that it was a wisdom transmission –  that happiness was a possibility. I understand that happiness to mean,  the happiness of a mind that’s alert, that’s awake to the amazing potential of being a person in a life, with a mind that’s opened, that sees everything that’s going on, and realizes what an amazing possibility this is, and with a heart that’s open, the heart that responds naturally as hearts do, in compassion, in connection with friendliness, with love, with consolation when it needs to:  That that’s the happiness of life –  a mind that’s awake, a heart that’s engaged.

Sylvia Boorstein, Stanford Keynote Speech, 2005

photo joe sarembe

How we grow

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Rose bud.jpg

How did the rose

ever open his heart

and give to this world all its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light

against its being,

otherwise, we will remain too frightened

Hafiz

photo Amada44

Just dance

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Dancers' feet.jpg

Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right.

Just dance

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life

photo quinn anya

Mind states that pass through

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

looking at clouds

Many people fail to distinguish between their true nature and their personality traits, particularly their less desirable traits. The fact is you are not the worst characteristics of your personality. It is the nature of the untrained mind to want what it perceives as advantageous and to fear or hate what seems painful. Discovering how your heart and mind can work together to use these feelings allows you to move beyond them. You may feel overwhelmed by the circumstances of your present life or bound by past traumatic events. Again, this is a failure in perception. They are just mind-states which can be known. They can be seen as impermanent and not belonging to you and, therefore, they do not ultimately define your true nature.

Philip Moffitt

When Taps leak, and other things go wrong

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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The moment in which the mind acknowledges ‘This isn’t what I wanted, but it’s what I got’,  is the point at which suffering disappears. Sadness might remain present, but the mind … is free to console, free to support the mind’s acceptance of the situation, free to allow space for new possibilities to come into view.

Sylvia Boorstein, Happiness is an Inside Job

Our stories

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Autobiography (1874).djvu

To ask, what is your story? is to be obliged to ask what are your stories, for we are no single narrative.  What is humbling is the acknowledgment through age, repetition and the growth of consciousness that we have less autonomy in the construction of our lives than we had fantasized.  In the end, the chief result of a long-term analysis is not a solution to our dilemma, for life is not a problem, but a progressive unfolding of mystery. The joyful discovery is that our lives become more interesting to us as we discern that we are part of a larger mystery.  This is a proper relocation of the ego from its imperial fantasy to its unique, personal place.  We become amazed witnesses of the great theater wherein we play our part, and are reminded of the progressive incarnation which occurs in even the most modest of moments.

James Hollis, Mythologems.