Tag: Awareness

Thin spaces

Karl Duffy5 Comments

File:Eichhörnchen Düsseldorf Hofgarten edit.jpg

As I mentioned yesterday, the old Celtic feast of Samhain, celebrated tomorrow, was seen as a liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the spiritual world was felt to be quite thin and it was easier to get glimpses of deeper meaning.

Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. 

Roger Scruton, English philosopher

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity

George Eliot, Middlemarch

photo ray eye

Picking flowers

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:LA Cathedral Mausoleum Jesus and the children detail2.jpg

This is as nice a description of moment-to-moment awareness that I have read in a while, from a non “meditation” source:

There’s actually no such thing as an adult. We never grow up. We’re not supposed to. We’re born and that’s it. We get bigger. We live through great storms. We get soaked to the bone. We realize we’re waterproof. We strive for calm. We discover what makes us feel good. We do those things over and over. We learn what doesn’t feel good. We avoid those things at all cost. Sometimes we come together: huge groups in agreement. Sometimes we clap and dance. Sometimes we look like a migration of birds. We need to remind ourselves — each other — that we’re mere breaths. Like every time you see the low, full moon. We keep on eating: chewing, pretending we know what’s going on. The secret is that we don’t. We don’t, and don’t, and don’t. Each day we’re infants: plucking flower petals, full of wonder.

Micah Ling, Bon Iver: Holocene

When thinking gets in the way

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ducks

I think 99 times and find nothing.

I stop thinking,

swim in silence,

and the truth comes to me.

Albert Einstein

Now is the only time

Karl Duffy1 Comment
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Now is the only time. How we relate to it creates the future. In other words, if we’re going to be more cheerful in the future, it’s because of our aspiration and exertion to be cheerful in the present. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now.
Pema Chodron

Clear mind

Karl Duffy3 Comments

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Clear mind is like the full moon in the sky. Sometimes clouds come and cover it, but the moon is always behind them. Clouds go away, then the moon shines brightly. So don’t worry about clear mind: it is always there. When thinking comes, behind it is clear mind. When thinking goes, there is only clear mind. Thinking comes and goes, comes and goes, You must not be attached to the coming or the going.

Seung Sahn, 1927 – 2004

photo AnRo0002

Our natural spaciousness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Path across field - geograph.org.uk - 1297870.jpg

We all have a clear, wondrously bright field from the beginning. With boundless wisdom,  journey beyond this,  letting go of accomplishments. Abandon all scheming and simply take on responsibility. Having turned yourself around, and accepting where you are, set out along your path, and a spiritual energy will marvelously move you along. Contact phenomena with total sincerity, not a single atom of dust outside yourself.

Hongzhi, 1091-1157, Chinese Chan (Zen) monk

photo evelyn simak