Transitions

Karl Duffy2 Comments

It has been a very slow transition this year….

One of the beautiful transitions in nature is the transition from winter to springtime. An old Zen mystic said, when one flower blooms it is spring everywhere. When the first innocent, infant-like flower appears on the earth, one senses nature stirring beneath the frozen surface. There is a lovely phrase in Gaelic, ‘ag borradh’, meaning that there is a quivering life about to break forth. The wonderful colours and the new life the earth receives makes spring a time of great exuberance and hope. In a certain sense, spring is the youngest season. Winter is the oldest season. Winter was there form the very beginning. It reigned amidst the silence and bleakness of nature for hundreds of millions of years before vegetation. Spring is a youthful season; it comes forth in a rush of life and promise, hope and possibility. At the heart of the spring there is a great inner longing. It is the time when desire and memory stir towards each other. Consequently, springtime in your soul is a wonderful time to undertake some new adventure, some new project, or to make some important changes in your life. If you undertake this, when it is springtime in your soul, then the rhythm, the energy and the hidden light of your own clay works with you. You are in the flow of your own growth and potential. Springtime in the soul can be beautiful, hopeful and strenghtening. You can make difficult transitions very naturally in an unforced and spontaneous way.

John O’Donohue,  Anam Cara

Distractions

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A lot of modern society is driven by the distraction industry – advertising, shopping, surfing the net. It is not a new phenomenon. Nietzsche wrote in 1874 that “haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself”,  but modern technologies of escape, like the smartphone or the tablet, make it even more pervasive and difficult to develop the silence within which is necessary for good health.

All mystics – Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion  – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep.

People don’t really want to be cured. What they want is relief;  a cure is painful.

Anthony de Mello sj, Spirituality means waking up.

Beneath all the effort

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What are we when there is no one doing anything, no one attaining anything, no place to go?

There “is” no place to go.

The whole foundation is already here in each one of us.

It is the same in all of us.

There is only one foundation, which is presence, wholeness, boundless love.

Toni Packer, The Wonder of Presence: And the Way of Meditative Inquiry

 

The wisest choice

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Yesterday’s clarity is today’s stupidity
The universe has dark and light,  

Entrust oneself to change.

Ikkyu, 1394 -1481, Japanese Zen Buddhist priest

Why awareness is good

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Watching the show, without getting swept up in it, leads to greater peace of mind

Life does not consist mainly  – or even largely – of facts and happenings.

It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.

Mark Twain

Knowing in a new way

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Wisdom is not the gathering of more facts and information, as if that would eventually coalesce into truth.

Wisdom is precisely a different way of seeing and knowing the “ten thousand things” in a new way.

I suggest that wisdom is precisely the freedom to be truly present to what is right in front of you. Presence is wisdom! People who are fully present know how to see fully, rightly, and truthfully. Presence is the one thing necessary for wisdom, and in many ways, it is the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep 1) your heart space open, 2) your mind without division or resistance, and 3) your body not somewhere else — and all at the same time!

Most religions just decided it was easier to believe doctrines and obey often-arbitrary laws than the truly converting work of being present. Those who can be present will know what they need to know, and in a wisdom way.

Richard Rohr, The Naked Now, Learning to See as the Mystics See