Tag: balance

The two wings

Karl Duffy2 Comments
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The two parts of genuine acceptance — seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion —are as interdependent as the two wings of a great bird. Together, they enable us to fly and be free.The wing of clear seeing is described …..as mindfulness. This is the quality of awareness that recognizes exactly what is happening in our moment-to-moment experience. When we are mindful of fear, for instance, we are aware that our thoughts are racing, that our body feels tight and shaky, that we feel compelled to flee — and we recognize all this without trying to manage our experience in any way, without pulling away. The second wing of Radical Acceptance, compassion, is our capacity to relate in a tender and sympathetic way to what we perceive. Instead of resisting our feelings of fear or grief, we embrace our pain with the kindness of a mother holding her child. Compassion honors our experience; it allows us to be intimate with the life of this moment as it is.
Tara Brach, Unfolding the Wings of Acceptance
photo bengt nyman

Work with whatever arises

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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As many teachers have pointed out, “the path is the goal”. That means that what we experience as “obstacles” along the way is usually just a sense of our own expectations falling apart. These same obstacles can be viewed differently, as the basis for reengaging our attention and working through whatever arises, whether it is a sense of purpose and satisfaction, or boredom and resistance, or a sense of futility. Work with whatever arises

Cyndi Lee, Yoga Body, Buddha Mind

photo prayitno

Ordinary and more

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Mindfulness helps you fall in love with the ordinary

Thich Nhat Hahn 

Two possible directions for today…..and this week

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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I’ve discovered there are only two modes of the heart.

We can struggle, or we can surrender. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. Getting old, being sick,  losing what is dear to us,  life’s unsatisfactoriness – all are beyond our control.

I can either be frightened of life and mad at life –  or not.

Sylvia Boorstein

photo mike shinners

Difficult moments as our teachers

Karl Duffy2 Comments

flight-cancellations

[If] we truly want to progress on the path, we must regard our enemies as our best teachers.  For whoever holds love and compassion in high esteem, the practice of tolerance is essential, and it requires an enemy. We must be grateful to our enemies, then, because they help us best engender a serene mind! Anger and hatred are the real enemies that we must confront and defeat, not the “enemies” who appear from time to time in our lives.

The Dalai Lama

Saturday winding down

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The first condition [required] is peace and calm; without that, it’s very difficult to see anything. That’s why a lot of our practice is actually to bring the heart to a state of balance and calm. Most people are in a constant state of reactivity. But someone who has seen the suffering of reactivity calmly comes to realize that it’s not the best way to relate to life; it is very limited – always the experience of ‘Self’, ‘Me’ and ‘You’. But as the sense of ‘Self’ decreases, the reactivity decreases also. It’s not so much the sense of Self that is the obstacle, its our identification with it.

Ajahn Sundara, Simplicity

photo jeff chenqinyi