Tag: Awareness

An observing heart

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The noise of the wind and the rain continued all through yesterday and overnight, arising, passing away and returning.

Eyes see only light, ears hear only sound, but a listening heart perceives meaning.

Everything is a gift.

Grateful living is a celebration of the universal give-and-take of life, a limitless yes to belonging. A lifetime may not be long enough to attune ourselves fully to the harmony of the universe. But just to become aware that we can resonate with it – that alone can be like waking up from a dream.

David Steindal-Rast

Wind warnings

Karl Duffy2 Comments

A storm is predicted for today with very high winds on the West coast of Ireland. We live in an inner and outer world that is always changing, but give a lot of importance to the things which pass through each day. We can be blown out of control, ceaselessly worrying about the past (which cannot be changed) or the future (which exists only in our imagination).  Our practice to find a still place: the mind that knows movement does not, in itself, move.

One windy day two monks were arguing about a flapping banner. The first said, “I say the banner is moving, not the wind.” The second said, “I say the wind is moving, not the banner.” A third monk passed by and said, “The wind is not moving. The banner is not moving. Your minds are moving.”

Raymond Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near

Be here now

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When you sit in a café, with a lot of music in the background and a lot of projects in your head, you’re not really drinking your coffee or your tea. You’re drinking your projects, you’re drinking your worries. You are not real, and the coffee is not real either. Your coffee can only reveal itself to you as a reality when you go back to your self and produce your true presence, freeing yourself from the past, the future, and from your worries. When you are real, the tea also becomes real and the encounter between you and the tea is real. This is genuine tea drinking.

Thich Nhat Hahn

The heart

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If I make a metaphor of my body,
it’s a desert. One part longing,

one part need, the rest withstanding. Of course
I would prefer to be thirsty

for nothing.

Kayleb Rae Candrilli, American poet

Seeking real treasure

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I have just three things to teach

Simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures:

Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 67

A rush to consume

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In the second Noble Truth, the Buddha identified taṇhā – the urge to become, to have or consume more – as a main cause of our subtle discontent and ongoing stress.  However, this underlying drive to consume can be observed and then its power diminishes. This is one meaning of “waking up”: becoming free by cutting off the momentum towards unhappiness at its source

If you sleep, restless craving (taṇhā) grows in you like a vine in the forest. Like a monkey in the forest you jump from tree to tree, never finding the fruit – from life to life, never finding peace. If you are filled with this restless craving, your sorrows will multiply like the grass growing after rain. But if you let craving go, your sorrows fall from you like drops of water from a lotus flower. This is good advice and it is for everyone: as the grass is cleared for fresh planting, let go of grasping lest death after death crush you as a river crushes helpless reeds. For if the roots hold firm, the felled tree grows up again. And if restless craving is not uprooted, sorrows will grow again in you.

Dhammapada