Thinking we make the moves

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Chess-king.JPG

Maybe something to remember when something bothers us today, and we take it very seriously….

What is the difference
Between your experience of life
And that of a saint?

The saint knows that the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved has just made such a Fantastic Move

that the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I’m afraid you still think

You have a thousand serious moves.

 Hafiz, Tripping Over Joy

Sunday Quote: Slow down

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Glendasan River, Wicklow Mountains.jpg

All this hurrying soon will be over.

Only when we slow down do we touch the holy. 

Rainer Maria Rilke, In Praise of Mortality.

photo of Glendasan river in Wicklow by Joe King

What is passing and what remains

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
File:Geese flying near mount scott vertical.JPG
In Sung China, 
two monks friends for sixty years watch the geese pass.
Where are they going?
one tested the other, who couldn’t say.

That moment’s silence continues.

No one will study their friendship
in the koan-books of insight.
No one will remember their names.

I think of them sometimes, standing, perplexed by sadness,
goose-down sewn into their quilted autumn robes.

Almost swallowed by the vastness of the mountains,
but not yet.

As the barely audible
geese are not yet swallowed;
as even we, my love, will not entirely be lost.
Jane Hirshfield, Lives of the Heart
photo schyler at english wipipedia

More learnings from autumn

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Acorns falling onto the ground.jpg

Everything is meant to be let go of,  so that the person may stand in unhampered nothingness

Meister Eckhard

Just as a snake sheds its skin,

so we should shed our past, over and over again

The Buddha

photo muffet

A motto for the new month

Karl Duffy4 Comments
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Awareness is your refuge:

Awareness of the changingness of feelings, of moods, of material change and emotional change:

Stay with that, because it’s a refuge that is indestructible.

It’s not something that changes. It’s a refuge you can trust in.

This refuge is not something that you create. It’s not a creation. It’s not an ideal.

It’s very practical and very simple, but easily overlooked or not noticed.

When you’re mindful, you’re beginning to notice: 

It’s like this

Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of Silence

Getting a glimpse in a moment

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Migrating Sandhills departing Barr Lake (1579868329).jpg

When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash – at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

A famous Zen poem reads: “The old Pond. A frog jumps in. Plop”  This is a wonderful description of bare attention. The poet, Basho, goes directly to the essence of his experience: the pond, frog, plop. We can say that in meditation we are developing “plop mind”. We are stripping away everything that is extraneous to our immediate experience and simply being present with what is happening. This is bare attention: direct, essential, non-interfering.

Joseph Goldstein, Bare Attention

photo Louis