Category: Make the most of life

Notice the space, not the furniture

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Entrance hall Sutton Scarsdale Hall 1919.jpg

Consider a room, which is naturally spacious. However we organize the furniture in the room will not affect its intrinsic spaciousness. We can put up walls to divide the room, but they are temporary. And whether we leave the room clean or cluttered and messy, it won’t affect its natural spaciousness. Mind is also intrinsically spacious. Although we can get caught up in our desires and aversions, our true nature is not affected by those vexations. We are inherently free. Once the mind is calm, instead of fixating on the chairs, tables, and so on, you see its spaciousness. Practice is life and all of its “furniture.” Practice helps us see the room and not attach to the furniture.

Guo Gu, You are Already Enlightened

The two wings

Karl Duffy2 Comments
File:Bird in flight wings spread.jpg
The two parts of genuine acceptance — seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion —are as interdependent as the two wings of a great bird. Together, they enable us to fly and be free.The wing of clear seeing is described …..as mindfulness. This is the quality of awareness that recognizes exactly what is happening in our moment-to-moment experience. When we are mindful of fear, for instance, we are aware that our thoughts are racing, that our body feels tight and shaky, that we feel compelled to flee — and we recognize all this without trying to manage our experience in any way, without pulling away. The second wing of Radical Acceptance, compassion, is our capacity to relate in a tender and sympathetic way to what we perceive. Instead of resisting our feelings of fear or grief, we embrace our pain with the kindness of a mother holding her child. Compassion honors our experience; it allows us to be intimate with the life of this moment as it is.
Tara Brach, Unfolding the Wings of Acceptance
photo bengt nyman

A Generous spirit

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

mother duck

When we are stressed we have a tendency to close in on ourselves, to measure our time, fixate on our problems and not notice a lot that is happening around us. We think that this is the best way to protect our energy and our heart. Paradoxically, however, it seems that another strategy is more helpful,  going against the voice within us and turning outwards, noticing small details in the day and reaching out to others. An East African proverb reminds us You can share even if you have a little.  It may be just noticing how good the coffee tastes, a smile, a friendly phone call, a helping hand, making someone welcome.   This quotation from Cormac McCarthy reminds us to create little moments of generosity, of connection, of celebration, even when our life seems barren. There will be innumerable little moments in a day to be kind, even if our hearts do not feel like it.

When you’ve got nothing else, construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

A generous heart is never lonesome. A generous heart has luck. The lonesomeness of contemporary life is partly due to the failure of generosity. Increasingly we complete with each other for  goods, for image, and for status.

John O’Donoghue, Eternal Echoes

Two possible directions for today…..and this week

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Irish Road Sign in Ballyvaughan - geograph.org.uk - 452604.jpg

I’ve discovered there are only two modes of the heart.

We can struggle, or we can surrender. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. Getting old, being sick,  losing what is dear to us,  life’s unsatisfactoriness – all are beyond our control.

I can either be frightened of life and mad at life –  or not.

Sylvia Boorstein

photo mike shinners

Refreshing our energy

Karl Duffy1 Comment

glendalough

Often we can find that our body tenses up at moments of transition, such as Sunday evenings, or  in the anticipation of something which will happen tomorrow or in a few days. This can even affect our sleep as the mind switches into problem-solving mode,  and works on resolving what is perceives as a type of “danger”. We can easily become agitated, and there is a sense in which our spirit gets jittery, or in a type of “flux”.  As the poet does here, this is precisely the time we need to create some space  – maybe in meditation or getting out in nature – which will “hold us”,  allowing us to become calm again. In this way the power of tomorrow over our spirit today is weakened.

It is time now, I said,
For the deepening and quieting of the spirit
Among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon
To the sea
Which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Except that it will be a time, again,
For the deepening and the quieting of the spirit.

Mary Oliver, Swimming, One Day in August

Photo: Glendalough on a soft day, April 5th 2014

Sunday Quote: Staying close to our roots

Karl Duffy1 Comment

fossil

At any moment you have a choice

that either leads you closer to your spirit

or further away from it

Thich Nhat Hanh