Tag: balance

Lean toward

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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The next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering — yours, mine, and that of all beings.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

photo maureen

Note, dont react

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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Buddhadasa Bhikkhu said, “If there was to be a useful inscription to put on a medallion around your neck it would be This is the way it is’.” This reflection helps us to contemplate: wherever we happen to be, whatever time and place, good or bad, ‘This is the way it is.’ It is a way of bringing an acceptance into our minds, a noting rather than a reaction.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Way it is

photo : sharada prasad

Knowing oneself gently

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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Dogen Zen-ji said, “To know yourself is to forget yourself.” We might think that knowing ourselves is a very ego-centered thing, but by beginning to look so clearly and so honestly at ourselves—at our emotions, at our thoughts, at who we really are — we begin to dissolve the walls that separate us from others. Somehow all of these walls, these ways of feeling separate from everything else and everyone else, are made up of opinions. They are made up of dogma; they are made of prejudice. These walls come from our fear of knowing parts of ourselves. There is a Tibetan teaching that is often translated as, “Self-cherishing is the root of all suffering.” It can be hard for a Western person to hear the term “self-cherishing” without misunderstanding what is being said. I would guess that 85% of us Westerners would interpret it as telling us that we shouldn’t care for ourselves….. But that isn’t what it really means. What it is talking about is fixating.

Pema Chodron, To Know Yourself is to Forget Yourself

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Conscious living

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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The real goal of a therapy is not a “cure”, for the human condition is not a disease. Yes, real, resistant problems of daily life can and must be addressed and the resources of consciousness brought fully to bear on their resolution. But the real gift of a therapy, or of any truly considered life, is that one achieves a deepened conversation around the meaning of one’s journey – a conversation without which one lives a received life, not one’s own, a superficial life, or a life in service to complexes or ideologies.

James Hollis, What Matter most: Living a more considered Life

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The key to balance

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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More wisdom, this time from the Taoism tradition, on keeping our sense of self fluid:

Can you call your mind back from its wandering
and keep to its original oneness?
Can you concentrate the energy of life
and keep it supple like a newborn child?

Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind
and in this way understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 10

photo amolnaik3k

Happiness and not judging anything

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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Some of the early Christian Desert Fathers saying are almost  Zen-like in their simplicity. In this example we find echoes of yesterdays post. It contains an instruction on what leads to us being content –  finding rest from our inner agitations: Turn the mind away from judgments, either about ourselves or others, keep the self fluid and in this way stop sticking labels on what is happening. Good advice for today.

Abba Poeman said to Abba Joseph, “Tell me how to become a monk”

He said, “If you want to find rest here below…in all circumstances say ‘who am I’ and do not judge anyone”