Watching our “add-on’s”

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kids cooking partyNo, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

A famous Zen haiku 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

The wave and the water

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Waves1A wave may seem to have a beginning and end. A wave might be seen as high or low, big or small, different or not different from other waves. These terms  – beginning, ending, high, low, more or less beautiful – they belong to the dimension called historical, but the wave is at the same time the water. Water transcends the form of the wave, the idea of beginning, ending, high, or low. These notions apply to the wave but not to the water. The moment when the wave realizes that she is water, she loses all her fear and she enjoys much more being a wave. She is free from birth and death, being and non-being, high or low, because when we are able to touch our ultimate dimension, we are no longer subjected to fear –  fear of being; fear of non-being; fear of birth; fear of death.

Thich Nhat Hahn

The present and the story about the present

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During a long retreat, I had what seemed to me the earthshaking revelation that we cannot be in the present and run our story lines at the same time! It sounds pretty obvious, I know, but when you discover something like this for yourself, it changes you.

Pema Chodron, When Things fall Apart

You will only grab hold of concepts if you follow the storyline.  

Sayadaw U Tejaniya

 

Being true to the possibilities

Karl Duffy1 Comment

And from a more recent Irish writer:

All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time.

John O’Donohue, Anam Chara

Photo: Flickr User Amerune

Sunday: A wish for the day

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Because of the day that is in it….

Dia dar gcoimead agus Dia  dar dteagasc,  Dia dar seoladh ar bhothar ar leasa

(May God keep us and teach us

and lead us on the right way)

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig :   Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

Whatever you think you are, that’s not what you are

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2881368710_small_1When we emphasise our personality we create problems, because the personal qualities are different for each one of us. We have our common human problems: old age, sickness and death; but there are attitudes, cultural expectations and assumptions wherein we differ, and these are conditioned into the mind after we are born. Because of this, I often say to people, ‘Whatever you think you are, that’s not what you are.’ The personality, the self-consciousness, the fears and the desires of the mind are what they are. In practice, we are not trying to dismiss them or add to them, or make any problems or difficulties around them. We are willing to let them be what they are. They feel this way, they have this quality; they arise and cease. And in that cessation, there’s the realisation of the peace, the bliss and the serenity of just being — and there’s no self in it.

Ajahn Sumedho, True but not right, right but not true