Tag: Awareness

Our limited words

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Winter rose.jpg

 All of the wisdom traditions speak of the limitations of the interpretations or labels which we use to guide us through the day, or even through life. We form judgements about events and get strongly attached to those views, when we actually have no way of really knowing how things will turn out in the long run. Oftentimes, all we succeed in doing is raising our own anxiety. What we seek is that in each moment we have a direct experience of our life. The deepest realities about life, love and beauty cannot be put into words. 

The true seeing is when there is no seeing

Heze Shenshsui, Chinese Zen monk, 684 – 758

The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao Tzu’s words ” Those who know do not say. Those who say do not know” When the Master entered they asked him what the words meant. The Master answered “Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose”.  All of them knew.  

Then he said “Put it into words” All of them were silent.

Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom

photo mike plante

Brightness

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dark-river

The only true antidote to always wanting more, as this 8th Century  reminds us, is to be aware of, and rooted in,  our inherent completeness, an awareness which will contradict the arising feeling of never being satisfied.

There is a solitary brightness without fixed shape or form.
It knows how to listen to the teachings,
it knows how to understand the teachings,
it knows how to teach.
That solitary brightness is you.

Linji Yìxuán, Chinese Zen Buddhist monk, died 866

The place where we make meaning

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File:BarrowBagnel.jpg

I had one or two conversations this week which led me to reflect on how to live life where we find ourselves, when there are so many places elsewhere that seem more attractive, more lively, and have more to offer. Sometimes the place where we are can seem so small and limiting. Then I came across these thoughts from the always stimulating Parker Palmer and he sums up what I was thinking, and says them much better than I could ever do. So I simply offer them here for reflection: 

I love this poem, and it needs little commentary from me.

Behind it lies a question many of us ask ourselves from time to time: Given my small, ordinary, un-famous, and fleeting life, what can I do that’s of true worth and value? Then it offers an answer that I find simple, real, moving, and doable.

I re-read this poem occasionally and ask myself, “Using everything I have — including my own ‘costly gifts of hunger,  choice and pain’  — what can I do today to keep raising the ‘modest shrine to meaning’ I’d like to create with my life?”. Maybe it’s planting a tree, maybe it’s a random act of kindness to a stranger, maybe it’s offering comfort to someone who’s hurting, maybe it’s writing a thank-you letter to a mentor who saw your potential and drew it out…

There’s always something meaningful I can do to honor the gift of life in myself, others, and the world around us. Just do it!

Leonard Nathan, So

So…

you aren’t Tolstoy or St. Francis
or even a well-known singer
of popular songs and will never read Greek
or speak French fluently,
will never see something no one else
has seen before through a lens
or with the naked eye.

You’ve been given just the one life
in this world that matters
and upon which every other life
somehow depends as long as you live,
and also given the costly gifts of hunger,
choice, and pain with which to raise
a modest shrine to meaning.

Parker Palmer, Your Life is a Shrine to Meaning

Special moments

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mary-oliver

What will it be for you today?

It could be a meeting, a walk in nature, even just a cup of coffee…

To pay attention and be fully present is the key

Every day has something in
it whose name is forever.

Mary Oliver, Everything That Was Broken

Hearing the song

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river-glendalough

I spent the weekend in Glendalough and was able to walk in nature early in the morning among the trees and rivers. Some say even the rocks there vibrate with life. It was easy to feel grace and see wonder, just as we did as children.  So what we strive for in our working days – in the “chambers of commerce” –  is to remember that beauty and grace are never far from us. They are in the leaf, the stone, the heart.  If we listen,  there is wonder all around, and it sings. Can we hear it today?

What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still

Mary Oliver,  What can I say?

Sunday Quote: Stilling the mind

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File:DUN AONGHASA FORT INIS MOR ARRAN ISLANDS IRELAND JULY 2013 (9212255198).jpg

I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying …

Pablo Neruda, It is Born

photo calflier001