Tag: balance

Learning

Karl Duffy5 Comments

File:Leri embankment, Borth - geograph.org.uk - 15104.jpg

Suffering is our best teacher because it hangs onto us and keeps us in its grip until we have learned that particular lesson. Only then does suffering let go. If we haven’t learned our lesson, we can be quite sure that the same lesson is going to come again, because life is nothing but an adult education class. If we don’t pass in any of the subjects, we just have to sit the examination again. Whatever lesson we have missed, we will get it again. That is why we find ourselves reacting to similar situations in similar ways many times.

Ayya Khema, Being Nothing,  Going Nowhere

photo nigel callaghan

Not everything is grasped by thinking

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Playing Lambs 01.jpg

After learning from Dogen and the Japanese Zen tradition yesterday, today we can learn from Bodhidharma, (6th Century),  the larger-than-life transmitter of Chan Buddhism to China, who similarly reminds us that direct knowing is often richer than understanding reality just by thinking.

If you use your (thinking) mind to study reality,

You won’t understand either your mind or reality.

If you study reality without using your mind

You’ll understand both.

photo oxfordian kissuth

A calm mind

Karl Duffy2 Comments
File:西湖平湖秋月.JPG
In the heart of the night,
The moonlight framing
A small boat drifting,
Tossed not by the waves
Nor swayed by the breeze.
 
Dogen, 1247, one of the verses he prepared for the Shogun in Kamakura
photo jeff chenqinyi

A kind practice

Karl Duffy3 Comments

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First, come into the present. Flash on what’s happening with you right now.  Be fully aware of your body, its energetic quality.  Be aware of your thoughts and emotions.

Next, feel your heart,  literally placing your hand on your chest if you find that helpful.  This is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in this moment,  a way of saying “This is my experience right now, and it’s ok”

Then go into the next moment without any agenda.

 Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully

photo elvert barnes

Sunday Quote: Now

Karl Duffy3 Comments

leaf river

We have only now,

only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us,

day and night.

Jack Kornfield

Moments to celebrate in life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Tickle.jpg

Children, old people, vagabonds laugh easily and heartily:

they have nothing to lose and hope for little.

In renunciation lies a delicious taste of simplicity and deep peace.

Matthieu Ricard

photo kyle flood