Tag: Awareness

Finding a refuge to come home to

Karl Duffy1 Comment

When I ask, ‘Have you found your true home?’ you might respond, ‘Not yet, Thay.’ But with this teaching and practice, we can find our true home. The teaching  is … [one] …of residing in joy, taking refuge in the joy and happiness of the present moment. If we know how to return to the present moment and generate the energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight, then we will be able to get in touch with the wonders of life. We will have happiness and joy immediately. Because we have insight, we no longer discriminate and divide, we are no longer narrow-minded.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Together, We are One

Looking for the good

Karl Duffy1 Comment

This poem from Hafiz,  on drawing warmth from the sun,  makes even more sense in the light of the unseasonal weather in this part of the world and the very wet June which was seen in Ireland and England. Often in our lives we have to deliberately pay attention to the good things that happen, because our brain has a negativity bias and more easily stores the bad events of each day. As psychologist Robert Emmons and his colleagues at the University of California have shown, cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, less anxiety and is beneficial to subjective emotional well-being.  They found that people who consciously noted the good things in each day were more optimistic and felt happier than a control group. Consciously being aware helps us to notice what is good in our lives rather than always noticing and complaining about what is wrong and allows us to wake up to the gifts around us each day. Hafiz knew this and encourages us to squeezing the drops of light and warmth from even the brief appearances of the sun in our lives:

I know the voice of depression still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life still send their invitations .
But you are with the Friend now and look so much stronger.
You can stay that way and even bloom!
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.
Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear, from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days like a broken man Behind a camel.
You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom and Love.


O keep squeezing drops of the Sun

From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.


Now, sweet one, Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

Hafiz, Cast All Your Votes for Dancing

Everything you need is already here

Karl Duffy1 Comment

This is what we mean by the practice of mindfulness. It is the how of coming to our senses moment by moment. There really is no place to go in this moment. We are already here. Can we be here fully? There really is nothing to do. Can we go into non-doing, into pure being?  There really is nothing to attain, no special “state” or “feeling”, because whatever you are experiencing now is already special, already extraordinary, by virtue of the fact that it is being experienced. The paradox of this invitation is that everything you might wish for is already here. And the only important thing is to be the knowing that awareness already is.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners.

Being Dragged Around

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We’re not certain about our own goodness. We begin to stray from it as soon as we wake up in the morning, because our mind is unstable and bewildered. Our thoughts drag us around by a ring in our nose, as if we were cows in the Indian market. This is how we lose control of our lives. We don’t understand that the origin of happiness is right here in our mind. We might experience happiness at times, but we’re not sure how we got it, how to get it again, or how long it’s going to last when it comes. We live life in an anxious, haphazard state, always looking for happiness to arrive.  When we are confused about the source of happiness, we start to blame the world for our dissatisfaction, expecting it to make us happy. Then we act in ways that bring more confusion and chaos into our life. When our mind is busy and discursive, thinking uncontrollably, we are engaging in a bad habit. We are stirring up the mud of jealousy, anger, and pride. Then the mind has no choice but to become familiar with the language of negativity and develop it further.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Another simple explanation

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This practice is just about the mind and its feelings. It is not something that you have to run after or struggle for. Breathing continues while working. Nature takes care of the natural processes – all we have to do is try to be aware. Just to keep trying, going inwards to see clearly. Meditation is like this.

Ajahn Chah, Collected Teaching, The Peace Beyond

Seeing things as they really are

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Through mindfulness we begin to realise that the pure nature of the mind is always with us, even now. Even though we might be agitated or irritated, if we are mindful we’ll experience a natural bliss beyond that. And once we realise that for ourselves, then we know how not to suffer. The end of suffering is in seeing things as they really are, so that our refuge isn’t in this reactive excited condition of the eyes and the ears and the nose, the tongue, the body, the brain, the emotions. In these are the conditions that are irritating, agitated. Through mindfulness we realise that which transcends these conditions. That is our real refuge. This we can realise as human beings through wise contemplation of our own personal predicament.

Ajahn Sumedho