Category: Make the most of life

Taking the leap

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Jumping (8) edited

As I sit at my computer in the South of Kildare this morning and look out my window,  I see low clouds, a grey landscape,  somewhat wet and windy. By constrast, yesterday was a lovely sunny day, which I find normally prompts me to see things in an open,  uncomplicated way.  The immediate reactive effects of the low clouds are less positive. It is interesting to notice the effects of these different changing conditions on our mood and our motivation. one opening us up, the other closing things down. When we are not completely open or when we are under pressure we can have negative or doubting chatter in the background of our minds, sometimes without noticing. One of the effects of mindfulness training is to allow us spot our habitual reactions and see them for what they are, types of mental energy that pass through, which we can hook into or not.

Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now.

The conditions are always impossible.

Doris Lessing

Seeing our attachments

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Sand castle, Cannon Beach.jpg

Most practice gets caught in the area of fiddling with our environments or our minds. ” My mind should be quiet”. Our mind doesn’t matter; what matters is non-attachment to the activities of the mind. And our emotions are harmless unless they dominate us – that is, if we are attached to them – then they create dis-harmony for everyone. The first problem in practice is to see that we are attached. As we do consistent, patient practice we begin to know that we are nothing but attachments; they rule our lives. But we never lose an attachment by saying it has to go. Only as we gain true awareness of its true nature does it quietly and imperceptibly wither away; like a sandcastle with waves rolling over, it just smooths out and finally Where is it? What was it? …

Charlotte Joko Beck

photo curt smith

An ocean of fear

Karl Duffy2 Comments

seas

Fear and anxiety evolved to keep us from physical danger. Our brains use the same mechanisms when it comes to emotional danger also, and depending on the upbringing we have, we can find that we expend a lot of energy each day dealing with fear. This underlying fear is not easy to work with; however, acknowledging it and becoming aware of our instinct to run away or cover it up with distractions, relationships and busyness, is a necessary starting point. We practice looking at what scares us and opening to all that life offers. We develop a greater compassion towards ourselves and our confidence can grow.

If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives in an ocean of fear. 

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Holding things and oneself lightly

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Lauma Grīva (2013 World Championships in Athletics) 01.jpg

The practice of mindfulness has as its overall goal the reduction of suffering and an increase in fullness in the totality of our lives. But in order for us to see the actual benefits now, whether here in Ireland or wherever you are reading this,  we need to practice it with the big and small moments of each day. This profound text indicates one way we do this. Mindfulness has a quality of not wobbling in the face of the different winds that blow us, the difficulties and changes which we face in our day-to-day living. Persistent practice allows us to hold ourselves more lightly, and not be as strongly fused with the story we maintain about how our lives should be or how certain moments in the day should go. One way of saying this is that we are not as attached, or not clinging, to outcomes, or to some fixed aspects of our identity. In this way changes and unexpected turnings do not bring the same dismay as once they did:

How do we arrive at non-agitation through non-clinging?

When the instructed person does not regard form with these words: “This is mine, this I am, this is my self.”

The form of his changes and alters,

but with the change and alteration of form,

sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure and despair do not arise.

The Buddha, S 22.8
photo dmitry rozhkov

A mind that is astonished

Karl Duffy3 Comments

IMG_0664

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.

 How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will

never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

 Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

 Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

 Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes

No place to land

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Dandelion seed dispersal.jpg

When the heart is released from clinging,

then consciousness does not land anywhere.

That state, I tell you, is without sorrow, affliction or despair.

The Buddha, Samyutta Nikaya 12.64

photo alex valavanis