Category: Mindfulness

When things are dark in our lives

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Candle burning.jpg

In Buddhism, a definition of faith is the ability to keep our hearts open in the darkness of the unknown. The root of the word patience is a Latin verb for “suffer,” which in the ancient sense meant to hold, not to grasp but to bear, to tolerate without pushing away. Being patient doesn’t mean being passive. It means being attentive, willing to be available to what is happening, going on seeing, noticing how things change. When we aren’t wishing for something to be over, or when we aren’t freezing around an idea about what it is we are seeing, we see and hear more. We notice that nature has cycles, that each day is not the same length and quality, and that darkness passes. The meaning of life, the real purpose of our presence here, is being attentive, being willing to go on seeing and keeping our hearts open — not just for our sake but for the sake of others. We make ourselves available to life, opening our hearts to the passing flow of it, knowing we will blunder and get it wrong but sometimes right.

Tracy Cochran (with thanks to make believe boutique) 

photo NCCo

Don’t let passing things get under your skin

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We cannot always control what happens in a day, but we can control how it affects us:

Just like a drop of water on a lotus leaf,

or in the same way as water on a red lily does not stick,

so too a wise person does not get hooked by

the seen, the heard, the sensed

The Buddha, Jara Sutra: Old Age

photo H.Zell

Shhhhh…..Give up words and go deeper

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:La mer à Exmouth WA.JPG

Different thoughts come to my mind prompted by these words of Rumi.

One says simply: Give up the worrying chatter of the week and take some rest in silence this weekend. Another says: Words are just inadequate to say what things or people mean to you. A third says: Your heart knows better than your thinking mind. Let go and follow it.

What do they say to you?

Inside me a hundred beings are putting their fingers to their lips and saying,

“That’s enough for now.  Shhhhh.”

Silence is an ocean.   Speech is a river.

When the ocean is searching for you, don’t walk

to the language-river.

Listen to the ocean,

and bring your talky business to an end.

Rumi, Send the Chaperones Away

photo dinkum

Life knows better than we do

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:FlyAnglerEastGallatinRiverMontanaAtDawn.jpg

Life has told me that it knows better plans than we can imagine,

so that I try to submerge my own desires…into a calm willingness

to accept whatever comes,

to make the most of it,

then wait again.

Julia Seton, By a Thousand Fires:

Nature notes and extracts from the life and unpublished journals of Ernest Thompson Seton

What we consider enemies

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:WMUK board meeting November 2011.jpg

In the course of a day, certain events or how people behave can annoy or disturb us, leading us to consider them as “enemies”, working against our happiness. However, as the Buddha reminds us, it is not the things in themselves which are  the problem,  but how we react to them: 

Your worst enemy can not harm you

as much as your own unfiltered thoughts.

Dhammapada, ch. 3

photo mike peel