Tag: balance

Returning home

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Its Christmas time... (4213408196).jpg

Remember that your ‘True Home’ is not found outside yourself, but it is right in your own heart. We do not need to bring home anything for us to feel fulfilled. We have everything we need,  right in our heart. We do not need to practice for many years or to travel far to arrive at our true home. If we know how to generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration, then with each breath, with each step, we arrive at our true home. Our true home is not a place far removed from us in space and time. It is not something that we can buy. Our true home is present right in the here and now; if only we know how to return and to be truly present to it.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Home is the Way – A Christmas Message

photo randi hausken

 

A time for rest

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Jefferon park tree in snow.JPG

O little forests, meekly

Touch the snow with low branches!

O covered stones, Hide the house of growth!

Secret vegetal words, Unlettered water,

Daily Zero.

Pray undistracted, Curled tree carved in steel –

Buried zenith!

Fire, turn inward

To your weak fort, To a burly infant spot,

A house of nothing.

O peace, bless this mad place:

Silence, love this growth.

O silence, golden zero, Unsetting sun

Love winter when the plant says nothing

Thomas Merton

photo lumpytrout

What we do not see

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Sheep Gate sunrise large print.jpg

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one

John O’Donohue, The Inner History of a Day

photo of Trim, Co Meath, by Denis O’Donovan

Letting light fill our fears

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Paddling a narrow cleft below St. Abbs Head - geograph.org.uk - 1524969.jpg

And I think over again
My small adventures
When from a shore wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And I thought I was in danger.

My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.

And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing.
To live and see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.

Traditional Inuit (Copper Eskimo) Song

photo andy waddington

Seeing all we have

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Eigg.jpg

It is important to emphasize, in discussing meditation … that you shouldn’t start out with some idea of gaining. This is the deepest paradox in all of meditation: we want to get somewhere—we wouldn’t have taken up the practice if we didn’t — but the way to get there is just to be fully here. The way to get from point A to point B is really to be at A. When we follow the breathing in the hope of becoming something better, we are compromising our connection to the present, which is all we ever have. If your breathing is shallow, your mind and body restless, let them be that way, for as long as they need to. Just watch them. The first law  is that everything is constantly changing. No one is saying that the breathing should be some particular way all the time. If you find yourself disappointed with your meditation, there’s a good chance that some idea of gaining is present. See that, and let it go. However your practice seems to you, cherish it just the way it is. You may think that you want it to change, but that act of acceptance is in itself a major change.

Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing

photo griff le riff

Staying still

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Galeria e Arteve e Kosoves.JPG

A certain brother went to Abba Moses in Scete,
and asked him for some good advice.
And the elder said to him:
“Go, sit in your room, and your room will teach you everything.”

Sayings of the Desert Fathers

I discovered that all  of our problems stem from a single cause, – we do not know how to sit at ease in a room alone.

(J’ai découvert que tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose,

qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre)

Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and Philosopher, 1623 –  1662,  Pensees

photo bujar I gashi