Tag: Awareness

Not leaning

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File:Baum Sardinien.jpg

In our usual mind state, we are continually activating the process that in Buddhist terminology is known as “bhava,” which literally means “becoming.” In this space of becoming, we are subtly leaning forward into the future, trying to have security based on feeling that we can hold on, we can try to keep things from changing. We are continually out of balance in this state – in meditation we might notice that we even try to feel the next breath while the present one is still happening. When we speak about letting go, or unplugging, or renouncing, we are talking about dropping the burden of becoming and just returning our awareness to the natural center of our being, returning to a state of natural peace.

Sharon Salzberg, How Doing Nothing Can Help You Truly Live, Huffington Post

photo arcalino

Changing and unchanging

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File:Moon in dawn reflection on lake scenic.jpg

In the MBSR group last night in Moone we were talking about how each day we are confronted with new experiences and challenges – unexpected deadlines, getting a parking ticket, the wind bringing down trees. We can be faced with changing feelings and attitudes, moods and emotions. However, as we said,  it is not so much the experiences in our life that are crucial but how we relate to our experiences. Through sitting we are nourishing something that does not change – our awareness – which allows us say, as Tara Brach suggested yesterday,  “This too”:

The water in the stream may have changed many times,

but the reflection of the moon and the stars remains the same.

Rumi

Support

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Holding Hands with Elderly Patient

We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in some ways shameful – because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed – is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them.

Alice Walker, Letter to President Clinton

A way of seeing things today

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Letting the past go

By letting it go it all gets done.
The world is won by those who let it go.
But when you try and try.
The world is beyond the winning.

Lao Tzu

Sunday quote: where to place our attention

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Amazon Black Friday

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James

…..onto how reality is

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sun through clouds

Clouds draw water from the ocean to fall as rain on the earth
And there is neither increase nor decrease;
Just so, reality remains unaltered like the pure sky.

Saraha, 8th century Buddhist teacher