Tag: Awareness

Rushing, time, and opening to our lives

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Child drawing.jpg

It doesn’t actually take any more time to say good-bye or hug you know, your children or whatever it is in the morning when you’re on your way to work. But the mind says, ‘I don’t have any time for this.’ But actually that’s all you have time for, is this because there’s nothing else than this…So when your four year-old can’t decide which dress she wants to wear, that’s not a problem for you, unless you make it a problem for you. That’s just the way four year-olds are. And the more we can sort of learn these lessons the more we will not be in some sense running towards our death, but in a sense opening to our lives.

Jon Kabat Zinn

photo D Sharon Pruitt

…to see things differently

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:The path up to Slieve Donard - geograph.org.uk - 1521933.jpg

In a sense, our path is no path. The object is not to get somewhere. There is no great mystery, really; what we need to do is straightforward. I don’t mean that it is easy; the “path” of practice is not a smooth road. It is littered with sharp rocks that can make us stumble or that can cut right through our shoes. Life itself is hazardous. The path of life seems to be mostly difficulties, things that give trouble. Yet the longer we practice, the more we begin to understand that those sharp rocks on the road are in fact like precious jewels; they help us to prepare the proper condition for our lives…There are sharp rocks everywhere. What changes from years of practice is coming to know something you didn’t know before: that there are no sharp rocks — the road is covered with diamonds.

 Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special

photo of Slieve Donard, County Down,  Ireland by Dean Molyneaux

In the present

Karl Duffy3 Comments

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Our way is to practice one step at a time,

one breath at a time,

with no gaining idea.

Shunryu Suzuki

More awake

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Sunrise across River Corribh, Galway, Ireland.png

Every day of your life, every morning of your life, you could ask yourself, “As I go into this day, what is the most important thing? What is the best use of this day?” At my age, it’s kind of scary when I go to bed at night and I look back at the day, and it seems like it passed in the snap of a finger. That was a whole day? What did I do with it? Did I move any closer to being more compassionate, loving, and caring — to being fully awake? Is my mind more open? What did I actually do? I feel how little time there is and how important it is how we spend our time.  What is the best use of each day of our lives? In one very short day, each of us could become more sane, more compassionate, more tender, more in touch with the dream-like quality of reality. Or we could bury all these qualities  and get more in touch with solid mind, retreating more into our own cocoon.

Pema Chodron, Waking up to your World

photo of sun rising over the Corrib river, Galway,  by tom murphy

Stop chasing after

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Squirrel Contemplation.jpg

De temps en temps,

il est bon de faire une pause dans notre quête du bonheur et juste être heureux.

Now and then

it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness

and just be happy.

Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet, 1880 – 1918

photp ingrid taylar

Mind states that pass through

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

looking at clouds

Many people fail to distinguish between their true nature and their personality traits, particularly their less desirable traits. The fact is you are not the worst characteristics of your personality. It is the nature of the untrained mind to want what it perceives as advantageous and to fear or hate what seems painful. Discovering how your heart and mind can work together to use these feelings allows you to move beyond them. You may feel overwhelmed by the circumstances of your present life or bound by past traumatic events. Again, this is a failure in perception. They are just mind-states which can be known. They can be seen as impermanent and not belonging to you and, therefore, they do not ultimately define your true nature.

Philip Moffitt