Tag: Acceptance

Letting it blow through

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Like everyone I’d rather not experience the undercurrents of life, but the challenge is not to shun them, but to accept that over a lifetime will have our share of them. Avoiding the difficult aspects of living only stunts our fullness. When we do this we are like a tree that never fully opens to the sky. And dwelling on our difficulties only prevents them from going on their way. When we do this, we are like a great tree that nets the storm in its leaves. The storm by its nature wants to move on and the trees’ grace is that it has no hands. Our blessing and curse is to learn and relearn when to reach and to hold, and when to put our hands in our pockets.

Mark Nepo, The Book Of Awakening

Acceptance and peace

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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Pleasant conditions change into unpleasant ones, and unpleasant conditions eventually become pleasant. We should just keep this awareness of impermanence and be at peace with the way things are, not demanding that they be otherwise.  But most of all we should be at peace with ourselves – that is the big lesson to learn in life. It is really hard to be at peace with oneself. I find that most people have a lot of self-aversion. It is much better to be at peace with our own bodies and minds than anything else, and not demand that they be perfect, that we be perfect, or that everything be good. We can be at peace with the good and the bad.

Ajahn Sumedho

Photo Harald Hoyer

Noticing the “buts”

Karl Duffy1 Comment

When the mind is coloured by a dualistic perspective, every experience – even moments of joy and happiness – is bounded by some sense of limitation. There is always a but lurking in the background. One kind of but is the but of difference: “Oh my birthday cake was wonderful but I would have liked chocolate cake instead of carrot cake”. Then there is the but of “better”: “I love my new house,  but my friend John’s place is bigger and has much better light”. And finally there is the but of fear: “I can’t stand my job, but in this market how will I ever find another one”…I’ve begun to recognize..that feelings of limitation, anxiety fear and so on are just so much neuronal gossip. They are in essence, habits. And habits can be unlearned.

Yongey Mingpur Rinpoche, The Joy of Living

Making friends with ourselves

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The ninth Karama, a sixteenth-century meditation master, wrote of a “reverse meditation”, in which we recognize thoughts as they occur and regard them as friends. This “reverses” the tendency to regard thoughts as distractions from the main focus; now the thoughts themselves are the main focus. Mindfulness-of-mind practice is a further step on the path of making friends with ourselves. This is the heart of awareness practice: making friends with our entire being as a stepping stone to embracing our world.

Gaylon Ferguson, Natural Wakefulness

A prayer for the journey

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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I no longer ask you for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware of Your listening.

I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You.

I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship.

Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel, One Generation After

Learning from nature: the seasons cannot be hurried

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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If you cultivate patience, you almost can’t help cultivating mindfulness, and your meditation practice will gradually become richer and more mature. If you really aren’t trying to get anywhere else in this moment,  patience  takes care of itself. It is a remembering that things unfold in their own time. The seasons cannot be hurried. Spring comes, the grass grows by itself. Being in a hurry usually doesn’t help and it can create a great deal of suffering. Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself)  or something for it. From the perspective of patience, things happen because other things happen. Nothing is separate and isolated

Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, There you are

Photo by Donald Macauley