Tag: Awareness

Cradling our fears

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The essential practice is to cultivate maitri, or loving-kindness. The Shambhala teachings speak of “placing our fearful mind in the cradle of loving-kindness.” Another image for maitri is that of a mother bird who protects and cares for her young until they are strong enough to fly away.  People sometimes ask, “Who am I in this image – the mother or the chick. The answer is both….Without loving kindness for ourselves it is difficult if not impossible to genuinely feel it for others

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

Sunday Quote: Like a leaf

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Walk around feeling like a leaf
know you could tumble at any second.

Then decide what to do with your time.

Naomi Shibab Nye, The Art of Disappearing

Time unfolding

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There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change.  But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford

Trusting the body

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The body always leads us home . . .

if we can simply learn to trust sensation

and stay with it long enough for it to reveal appropriate action, movement, insight, or feeling. 

Pat Ogden

Softening, allowing, being with today

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Softness means opening to whatever is there, relaxing into it. At such times try this “mantra”: “It’s Ok. Whatever it is it’s Ok, Let me feel it”. This is the softening of the mind. You can open to your experience with a sense of allowing, and simply be with whatever predominates, a pain, a thought, an emotion, anything.

Softening the mind involves two steps. First, become mindfully aware of whatever is most predominant. That is the core guideline for all insight meditation. So the first step is just to see, to open. For the second step, notice how you are relating to whatever arises….The easiest way to relax is to stop trying to make things different. Rather than try to create another space, simply allow space for whatever is going on.

Joseph Goldstein, Insight Meditation

Awareness is the refuge within

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Awareness is your refuge:
Awareness of the changingness of feelings, of attitudes, of moods, of material change and emotional change: Stay with that, because it’s a refuge that is indestructible.
It’s not something that changes. It’s a refuge you can trust in.
This refuge is not something that you create. It’s not a creation. It’s not an ideal. It’s very practical and very simple, but easily overlooked or not noticed.
When you’re mindful, you’re beginning to notice,
it’s like this.

Ajahn Sumedho,