Tag: Awareness

A real miracle

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
File:Path , Muirsheil Country Park - geograph.org.uk - 30201.jpg
I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child  – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

photo richard webb

Everything arises and passes away

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:The pure clean spring water of Lowthorpe Beck - geograph.org.uk - 222624.jpg

One of the most popular bits of poetry in Zen.

Simple, and yet it contains all of practice.

I stroll along the stream up to where it ends.

I sit down watching the clouds as they begin to rise.

Wang Wei,   Chinese poet ( 699-761)

photo phil catterall

 

The full moon

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Andrew Choy - Moon (by).jpg

Prompted by seeing a beautiful (almost) full moon in the clear Kildare sky last evening:

At night, deep in the mountains

I sit in meditation

The affairs of men never reach here

Everything is quiet and empty

The incense has been swallowed up

by the endless night;

My robe has become a garment of  dew.

Unable to sleep, I walk into the woods;

Suddenly, above the highest peak,

the full moon appears.

Ryokan, Zen Buddhist monk,  1758 – 1831

photo Andrew Choy



 

	


				
	






	
	

		
Begin afresh
	


	
					

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buds


I was reminded of Larkin’s beautiful poem by the buds opening on the trees in the garden and on the hedgerows around here in County Kildare.  This time of year  moves him from a reflection on loss and grief, to thoughts on being born again,  to finally being convinced to begin over again.  The message is like something “almost being said”, so we need to create time to see this: we learn from nature and from this season if we are still enough to listen.


The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.


Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too,

Their yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.


Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.


Philip Larkin, The Trees





	


				
	






	
	

		
Sunday Quote: Light
	


	
					

			 Karl Duffy3 Comments		

	
	


		
earlz morning menton


I wish I could show you,


when you are lonely or in darkness


the astonishing light of your own being


Hafiz

	


				
	






	
	

		
Notice the space, not the furniture
	


	
					

			 Karl Duffy1 Comment		

	
	


		
File:Entrance hall Sutton Scarsdale Hall 1919.jpg


Consider a room, which is naturally spacious. However we organize the furniture in the room will not affect its intrinsic spaciousness. We can put up walls to divide the room, but they are temporary. And whether we leave the room clean or cluttered and messy, it won’t affect its natural spaciousness. Mind is also intrinsically spacious. Although we can get caught up in our desires and aversions, our true nature is not affected by those vexations. We are inherently free. Once the mind is calm, instead of fixating on the chairs, tables, and so on, you see its spaciousness. Practice is life and all of its “furniture.” Practice helps us see the room and not attach to the furniture. 


Guo Gu, You are Already Enlightened