Tag: Awareness

Amazing

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According to the ancient Chinese, one of the main goals in life is to reach the evening of our life without regret. So we can ask: What fears hold us back from fully embracing what is offered now? What preoccupied thoughts hinder us from seeing the beauty that is before us in each moment?

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver, When Death Comes

The address of happiness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment. The present moment is the destination, the point to arrive at. Every time you breathe in and take a step, you arrive: “Breathing in I arrive, breathing out I arrive”. This is the address of happiness, the address of life. The Buddha said “Life is accessible only in the present moment”. Life with all its wonders is accessible now. So we train in coming back to the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh, You are Here

photo kevin higgins

Unhooking

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:US Navy 100324-N-7948C-235 Aviation Ordnanceman Airman Raymond Thomas unhooks a span line from a re-fueling hose during an underway replenishment.jpg

The first step in any letting go is ‘stepping back’– non-involvement. This initiates letting go by unhooking the mind from the topic that is stirring it up. It’s not a matter of avoiding or suppressing the topic, but of seeing it in a clear and spacious way. Non-involvement is about settling back into the present moment, relaxing into the way things are right now; it’s about letting go of the ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts,’ the past, the future and the imaginary, and meeting things as they arise in the present.  Letting go needs to be supported by a steady and focused mindfulness and clear comprehension. These provide the means whereby we can attend to what is happening now without trying to fix it.  In this way, we check the feedback loop between behaviour and awareness, so that the mind finds a calm and steady place in the midst of changing feelings. 

Ajahn Sucitto, Meditation, A Way of Awakening

Sunday Quote: Miracles

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A miracle is often the willingness to see the common

in an uncommon way.

Noah benShea

Gifts, every morning

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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One is never lacking in opportunities each day to be happy,

as the wonderful G.K. Chesterton reminded us in 1908:

The test of all happiness is gratitude.

Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets.

Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he puts in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs?

photo nevit dilmen

An invitation to fullness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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There is really no place to go in this moment. We are already here. Can we be here fully?

There really is nothing to do. Can we let go into non-doing, into pure being? There really is nothing to attain, no special “state” or “feeling” because whatever you are experiencing in this moment is already special, already extraordinary,  by virtue of the fact that it is being experienced.

The paradox of this invitation is that everything you might wish for is already here.

And the only important thing is  – to be the knowing that awareness already is.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners