Tag: balance

The right rhythm

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Old Road trees (02), January 2010.JPG

The weekend can allow us get out into nature and into its pace, learning its balance and wisdom.  It is a useful corrective to the speed which modern society  – and workplaces –  consider necessary,  and to the importance which it places on passing trends:

The internal activity of analysis, speculation, memory, investigation, cross-referencing, decision-making, and self-evaluation can amount to a volume of overwhelming proportions. Then the experience of overload develops into one of exhaustion, or of a pressure in our lives that diminishes peace and joy… This is the loss of balance that we can rightly experience as being flooded.

It isn’t the world per se, nor is it that we are chronically unbalanced;

it’s just that the right relationship hasn’t been struck.

Ajahn Sucitto, Parami

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure

with a liberal allowance of time.

Henry David Thoreau

photo of the Mourne mountains, County Down by ardfern

The beginning of happiness

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Fahan Old Church 1996 08 29.jpg

What do Sad people have in
Common?
It seems
They have all built a shrine
To the past
And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.
What is the beginning of
Happiness?
It is to stop being
so religious
Like that.

Hafiz

Photo: Fahan, Co Donegal, Ireland by Andreas Borchert

Let go

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Bee Holme in autumn mist - geograph.org.uk - 761379.jpg

The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you?

You hold on to things,  causing your confusion.

Let nature teach you. Hear the bird’s song then let go.

If you know nature, you’ll know the Way. If you know the Way, you’ll know nature.

Ajahn Chah

photo Phil Champion

The origin of suffering

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Blue Line Train Passing Through State Street Station.jpg

Be attentive and notice that whatever arises passes away; that whatever condition of your mind or body – whether it is a sensation of pleasure or pain, feeling or memory, sight, sound, smell, taste or touch, inside or outside – is just a condition. It’s important to reflect on what ‘ignorance’ really means when .. called … the origin of all suffering. ‘Being ignorant’ means that we identify with these conditions, by regarding them as ‘me’ or ‘mine’, or as something that we don’t want to be ‘me’ or ‘mine’. We’ve got the idea that we’ve got to find some permanent pleasant condition, we have to achieve something, get something we don’t have. But you can notice that desire in your mind is a moving thing, looking for something, so it’s a changing condition that arises and passes away – it’s not-self.

Ajahn Sumedho, Everything that arises passes away

photo sean p bender

 

Sunday Quote: The basis for wisdom

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Falling Leaves (Tectona grandis) I IMG 3427.jpg

Whatever is subject to arising, 

is also subject to passing away

Collection of Middle-length Discourses,  56

photo jm garg

The start of Autumn

Karl Duffy7 Comments

Here in the Irish and Celtic calendar, the season of Autumn began on Monday, the 1st of September. Although the weather is still very mild, the mornings are misty and some leaves have already started to fall. We are moving into a period which helps us reflect on impermanence and on the fact that all things change. Our meditation practice reminds us that there is only suffering to be had when we try to fix things solid, or hold onto them, like the long days of summer or the memories of times past. We instinctively prefer permanence and how it tells a story of a solid, single identity. Instead, in reality,  like the seasons, we are always changing; things come and go in our lives.  Nature lets go and moves on. Maybe we can learn from that.

If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure – if I can let you go.

May Sarton, Autumn Sonnets

photo of the Barrow river at Bagenalstown, Co. Carlow.