Rehearsing and evaluating

Karl Duffy3 Comments

It’s interesting to notice that we spend so much of our time rehearsing what we are going to say or do… we construct our reality by the stories we tell about it.

The evaluation I have in mind is ego centered: “Is this next episode in my life going to bring me something I like, or not? Is it going to hurt, or isn’t it? Is it pleasant or unpleasant? Does it make me important or unimportant? Does it give me something material?” It’s our nature to evaluate in this way. To the extent that we give ourselves over to evaluation of this kind, joy will be missing from our lives. 

Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special, Living Zen 

You don’t have to drown

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In fully allowing conditions to be what they are, we stabilize our hearts and find peace. It’s like putting a boat into water. We make an ark of truth: ‘Conditions are like this,’ and in that truth, we don’t adopt the conditions as our own. This is important: you can’t drain the sea, but you don’t have to drown.

Why we feel overwhelmed, as if we’re drowning, is because the heart is‘leaky.’ When it isn’t secure, perceptions and feelings flood in and cause it to sink

Ajahn Sucitto, Parami

Gifts each day

Karl Duffy1 Comment

A habit is a sure cell of predictability; it can close you off from the unknown, the new, and the unexpected. You were sent to the earth to become a receiver of the unknown. From ancient times, these gifts were prepared for you; now they come towards you across eternal distances. Their destination is the altar of your heart.

John O Donohue, Eternal Echoes

Where you are

Karl Duffy2 Comments

 

We can only be where we are: Right here, right now.

Zen practice is to accept that place with calm.

We cannot always be master of the situation, but we can always be master of ourselves.

Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen 24/7: All Zen All the TIme

 

Bursting

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When we dare to show up and be fully present, grace and wonder and mystery start to appear, even in the midst of pain.  Not as planned dreams, or as images of lovers, or as scripts of success designed by our fantasies of ourselves.  But as oddly shaped pods of vitality bursting to multiply and bring us further into the mystery of living.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk.

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Of and from

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Our modern Western culture only recognizes the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constitutions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people’s freedom to realize their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires.

Ajahn Brahm, Opening the Door of Your Heart