Tag: Awareness

Take time

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The theology of progress forces us to act before we are ready. We speak before we know what to say. We respond before we feel the truth of what we know. In the process, we inadvertently create suffering, heaping imprecision upon inaccuracy, until we are all buried under a mountain of misperception. But Sabbath says, Be still. Stop. There’s no rush to get to the end, because we are never finished. Take time to rest, and eat, and drink and be refreshed. And in the gentle rhythm of that refreshment, listen to the sound the heart makes as it speaks the quiet truth of what is needed. 

Wayne Muller, Sabbath

Not fighting with what is happening

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Being silent for me doesn’t require being in a quiet place and it doesn’t mean not saying words. It means, “receiving in a balanced, noncombative way what is happening.” With or without words, the hope of my heart is that it will be able to relax and acknowledge the truth of my situation with compassion.

Sylvia Boorstein, That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist

Trust in the goodness underneath

Karl Duffy2 Comments

When we get anxious and insecure is we speed up. We get busy: we get addicted to email, we get addicted to being online, we get addicted to food and drugs, we get addicted to talking to other people – not just to communicate but just to keep busy.  The only way that you’ll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.  Meditation helps us to pay attention so that we can directly realize and trust the goodness that’s there. We actually begin to recognize that who we are is awareness, who we are is love, and our sense of identity shifts in such a fundamental way that it actually challenges the small-self story.

Tara Brach,  Just say Yes to the Moment

The key to happiness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

 

Happiness lies not in finding what is missing,

but in finding what is present

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

Allowing things to be….

Karl Duffy1 Comment

You have to trust this simple ability that we all have to be fully present and fully awake, and begin to recognize the grasping and the ideas we have taken on about ourselves, about the world around us, about our thoughts and perceptions and feelings. The way of mindfulness is the way of recognizing conditions just as they are. We simply recognize and acknowledge their presence, without blaming them or judging them or criticizing them or praising them. We allow them to be, the positive and the negative both.

Ajahn Sumedho.

Resting in the knowing

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Through mindfulness practice you begin to experience how conditioned the world is and how these conditions constantly change. To free ourselves we need to quiet the mind through some mindfulness in meditation. Them, instead of identifying with the changing conditions, we learn to release them and turn toward consciousness itself, to rest in the knowing. Ajahn Chah called this pure awareness resting in “the One Who Knows”….The senses and the world are always changing conditions, but that which knows is unconditioned. With practice we discover the selflessness of experience; we shift identity. We can be in the midst of an experience, being upset or angry or caught by some problem, and then step back from it and rest in pure awareness.

Jack Kornfield, Bringing Home the Dharma