Tag: balance

A Saturday morning walk along country lanes in Ireland

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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This is the first, the wildest, and the wisest thing I know:

that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.

Mary Oliver, Primroses

I thrive on long walks where I find myself slowing down to the rhythm of my own possibilities. That is my speed. There I find my breathing. I used to live in Thailand where the word for breathing, hai jai, is translated as ‘give your heart.’ This used to remind me that to breathe, and to simply be aware of that breath, is to give to your heart.

Jenny Kane, On Being Blog

photo : pokrojac

Hold things lightly

Karl Duffy3 Comments

clouds-square

February has begun rainy and very wild and windy here in Ireland. I am reminded of how Ryokan worked with the mental energies, thoughts, feelings and moods which passed through his body-mind. We can learn a lot from these monks on how to work in a practical way with our daily experience:

Not being so attached to our facts,  or even our “alternative facts”, and how to let go of certain types of thoughts which are just not important.

If someone asks about 
the mind of this monk, 
say it is no more than a passage of wind 
in the vast sky. 

Ryokan, 1758 – 1831, Buddhist monk, hermit and poet.

Still the mind and practice freedom

Karl Duffy6 Comments

reeds

A new month.

A lot of anxiety and dysfunction all around. The challenge: Not to be a victim of the frantic world in which we live in, or of the way in which our nervous systems respond.

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Being aware of our patterns

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Mosaic - Mosquée de Paris.jpg

One reason we strengthen our awareness in meditation is to see more clearly the patterns laid down in our childhood, how we believe these to be our personality and the limiting stories which they often tell us about our abilities.

According to neuroscience, even before events happen the brain has already made a prediction about what is most likely to happen, and sets in motion the perception, behaviors, emotions, physiologic responses and interpersonal ways of relating that best fit with what is predicted. In a sense, we learn from the past what to predict for the future and then live the future we expect.

Regina Pally, The Predicting Brain

photo MarcCooperUK

Sunday Quote: our inner resource

Karl Duffy4 Comments

reflected

May we all grow in grace and peace,
and not neglect the silence that is printed
in the centre of our being.
It will not fail us.

Thomas Merton

“If only” this would change …

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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People [have always] faced the same kinds of  issues we face now, but with different window dressing. In the time of the Buddha,  men and women were arguing, gossiping, judging others, losing their perspective, overreacting, sexualizing their experiences, chasing after greener pastures, obsessing about non-essentials, feeling lonely and creating too many pipe dreams….. Nothing has fundamentally altered.

How many of us  are still convinced, mature as we may be, that if our partner would only change, or if we could meet the perfect person, everything would be fine?  These are the dysfunctional myths and illusions that drive our lives in very dissatisfying directions.  How many people remember the song from the musical Fiddler on the Roof – “If I were a Rich Man…” 

What is your “big if”?  The big “if” that leads you away from wisdom and reality?

Lama Surya Das,  Awakening the Buddha within