Tag: balance

Enough space to hold

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:A blue sky.JPG

We do not meditate in order to be comfortable. In other words, we don’t meditate in order to always, all the time, feel good. I imagine shockwaves are passing through you as you read this, because so many people come to meditation to simply “feel better.” However, the purpose of meditation is not to feel bad, you’ll be glad to know. Rather, meditation gives us the opportunity to have an open, compassionate attentiveness to whatever is going on. The meditative space is like the big sky — spacious, vast enough to accommodate anything that arises.

Pema Chodron, 5 Reasons to Meditate

photo Thamizhpparithi maari

 

Acceptance of things

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Antennae galaxies xl.jpg

Things are as they are.

Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars,

nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Alan Watts

Here and Now

Karl Duffy4 Comments

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Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Storms of life

Karl Duffy3 Comments

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And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

photo huhu uet

A kind of frontier

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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It is possible to attain a state where we are free from suffering. We free ourselves from suffering by being fully in the conversation, rather than something static,  having a conversation at every turn. As an individual, I must learn to live at a kind of frontier between what I think is me and what I think is not me, so that my identify  is more of a meeting place; an edge between past and present rather than an island around which the events of life swirl and move on…Even grief and loss, if felt in a timeless way, can be free from disconnection or suffering.

David Whyte, The Three Marriages

photo svickova

Whole even if not perfect

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Contemporary wabi-sabi tea bowl.jpg

[Thomas] Merton taught me the importance of looking at life not merely in terms of either-or,  but also in terms of both-and. Paradoxical thinking is key to creativity, which comes from the capacity to entertain apparently contradictory ideas in a way that stretches the mind and opens the heart to something new. Paradox is also a way of being that’s key to wholeness, which does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life…..To be whole I have to be able to say I am both shadow and light.

Parker Palmer, A Friendship, A Love, A Rescue

photo wabi-sabi tea bowl by ottmarliebert