Tag: Awareness

Our moods change

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One of the Japanese words for mind is kokoro. The word koro is the onomatopoeia for “rolling along.” Something that rolls like a ball is koro koro koro. So kokoro is something that is always moving and changing, never stopped. There is no object or form that we can identify as mind. It is always changing. Though we are always looking for something to rely on, we cannot find it in something called mind.

From the excellent book I am reading at the moment:

Shodo Harada , 1940 – Rinzai Zen abbot, Not One Single Thing: A Commentary on the Platform Sutra

Making the weather

Karl Duffy5 Comments

It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

Dr. Haim G. Ginott, 1922 – 1973,  School teacher,  Child psychologist and psychotherapist,  Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers. 

Sometimes falsely attributed to Goethe. Thanks to Kim for pointing this out.

Sunday quote: How we work with things

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It’s not the load that breaks you down.

It’s the way you carry it

C.S. Lewis

A new month, a clear mind

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Our news these days has a continual fearful, –  or as we see this week – an angry or resentful tone. We have to work to ensure that it does not become the dominant energy of this day or this new month.

The water of the mind, how clear it is!
Gazing at it, the boundaries are invisible.
But as soon as even a slight thought arises,
ten thousand images crowd it.
Attach to them, and they become real.
Be carried by them, and it will be difficult to return.
How painful to see a person trapped in the ten-fold delusions.

Ryokan, Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk,  1758 – 1831

Pay Attention

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Last Sunday, my friends and I spoke about the gift of learning to observe ourselves impartially. We spoke of using the constantly changing flow of sensory feeling in the body — keeping it simple, just knowing pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral in the body.  Breaking our experience down in this way — sunlight, pleasant, shadow, unpleasant – can help us glimpse the flowing, changing nature of our experience. But turning our attention to the moment-by-moment experience of the life of body can accomplish something much greater. It can help free us from an obsessive identification with a small, embattled self. It can be the key to living a much bigger life — a good life in the deepest sense.

Tracy Cochran, Pay Attention, for Goodness Sake

The recipe

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Of one thing I am pretty sure,’ he resumed, ‘that the same recipe Goethe gave for the enjoyment of life, applies equally to all work: “Do the thing that lies next you.” That is all our business. Hurried results are worse than none. We must force nothing, but be partakers of the divine patience…All haste implies weakness. Time is as cheap as space and matter.

George MacDonald (1824-1905), Scottish poet, novelist, and Minister, Robert Falconer