Tag: Awareness

Caring for oneself today

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To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times.  Thomas Merton

Obviously Merton wasn’t speaking about pathologically self-destructive behavior. Instead he was drawing our attention to the shadow side of normative, even seemingly positive, culturally approved behavior. He was referring to how we do great violence to ourselves simply in the manner in which we go about arranging our lives…

Philip Moffitt, Violence against Self

Staying where we are

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As I said in an earlier post this week, there are a number of themes that recur in all cultures around this time,  as the Winter Solstice approaches. One of them is patience –  waiting in hope for the dark days to pass and for the signs of new life and growth to reappear. So here, as on previous Sundays,  is a reflection on the rich meaning of the word patience, both as a practice of staying with what is happening in each moment, as well as a way of working with difficult times in our lives.

A waiting person is a patient person. The word “patience” means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her womb.

Henri Nouwen, Eternal Seasons: A Spiritual Journey through the Church’s Year

Taking our thoughts very seriously

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These trains of thought and states of mind are constantly changing, like the shapes of clouds in the wind, but we attach great importance to them. An old man watching children at play knows very well that their games are of little consequence. He feels neither elated nor upset at what happens in their game, while the children take it all very seriously. We are just exactly them.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

The colour of our inner movie

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Thoughts can be our best friends and our worst enemies. When they make us feel that the entire world is against us, every perception, every encounter, and the world’s very existence become sources of torment. It is our thoughts themselves that rise up as enemies. They stampede through our mind in droves, each one creating its own little drama of ever-increasing confusion. Nothing is right outside because nothing is right inside. When we get a close look at the tenor of our everyday thoughts, we realize the extent to which they color the inner film that we project onto the world….. According to Andrew Solomon, “In depression, all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future, and the present qua present no longer exists at all.” The inability to manage our thoughts proves to be the principal cause of suffering. Learning to tone down the ceaseless racket of disturbing thoughts is a decisive stage on the road to inner peace.

Matthieu Ricard, Happiness

Seeing how precious things are

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Joy has to do with seeing how big, how completely unobstructed, and how precious things are. Resenting what happens to you and complaining about your life are like refusing to smell the wild roses when you go for a morning walk, or like being so blind you don’t see a huge black raven when it lands in the tree you’re sitting under. We can get so caught up in our own personal pain or worries that we don’t notice that the wind has come up or that somebody has put flowers on the dining room table or that when we walked out in the morning, the flags weren’t up, and that when we came back, they were flying. Resentment, bitterness, and holding a grudge prevent us from seeing and hearing and tasting and delighting.

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape

Real Happiness

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Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions. While ordinary pleasures are produced by contact with pleasant objects and end when that contact is broken, sukha – lasting well-being – is felt so long as we remain in harmony with our inner nature.

Matthieu Ricard, Happiness