Tag: balance

Its own terms

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More wind and rain passing over Ireland this afternoon. Most conversations about the weather tend to judge it in terms of “normal” and “predictable”, when in fact it keeps surprising us in its variety and extremes. We often fall into the trap of thinking that it should fall in with our plans and in doing so we risk missing the richness of what actually happens.

It’s not all that hard to get enlightened; what is difficult is to keep giving up our sense of the world so that the world can come to us on its own terms, with its vast, pitiless, loving intelligence…we return to the simplest things with an immense recognition and gratitude.

Stephen Mitchell

photo don macauley

Pushing

Karl Duffy3 Comments

Statue representing the portrait of Buddha in meditation. Copy space.

There is a quick-fix mentality in Ireland and elsewhere today, which even apply to ways of working on ourselves – like the latest surefire diet, or radio interviews which imply that an instant mindfulness session will cure all ills. At the heart of these is a vision of quick change which encourages us to strive and push to achieve.  We think that we need to control everything and impose ourselves upon it. While useful at times, this  sometimes can mean that we are never happy with anything, including ourselves. Meditation practice encourages a different way, of letting things come to us instead.  We sit in meditation and create space, allowing things unfold in their own time.

To push your self forward to experience and illuminate the millions of things, that is delusion. 

When the millions of things come forward and illuminate themselves, that is freedom

Dogen, GenjoKoan

Balance

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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Seek patience
and passion
in equal amounts.

Patience alone
will not build the temple.

Passion alone
will destroy its walls.

Maya Angelou

photo Golden Temple, Kyoto by Ellywa

Our shifting energies

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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The source of our unease is the unfulfillable longing for a lasting certainty and security, for something solid to hold on to. Unconsciously we expect that if we could just get the right job, the right partner, the right something, our lives would run smoothly.  [Instead,] we are encouraged to get comfortable with, begin to relax with, lean into, whatever the experience may be. We are encouraged to drop the storyline and simply pause, look out, and breathe. Simply be present for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, a whole lifetime, with our own shifting energies and with the unpredictability of life as it unfolds, wholly partaking in all experiences just exactly as they are.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap

Really get a sense of

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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In the ongoing truthfulness of our practice, it is really important to sift through all the static and white noise that the emotions and psychologies are setting up — to really see, to get a handle on, what intention feels like in our nervous system. And the quality of attention — how big, or narrow, or tight we feel, how bound we feel when we’re really occupied with a whole series of thoughts, how our attention bunches up — we start to sense this is, in the bodily sense; we get a real sense of the feel of this and the release of that. This is what we practice. This is the dissolving.

Ajahn Sucitto, What if I get it wrong?

The seeds within

Karl Duffy4 Comments

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Mindfulness involves paying attention to and nurturing what is helpful, as well as evaluating,  and not allowing a footing to, those seeds which will cause confusion and distress:

If we take good care of everything in us, without discrimination, we prevent our negative energies from dominating. We reduce the strength of our negative seeds so that they won’t overwhelm us. Mindfulness means to be present, to be aware of what is going on. This energy is very crucial for the practice. The energy of mindfulness is like a big brother or big sister, holding a young one in her arms, taking good care of the suffering child, which is our anger, despair, or jealousy. So mindfulness recognizes, embraces, and revives. Mindfulness helps us look deeply in order to gain insight. Insight is the liberating factor. It is what frees us and allows transformation to happen. 

Thich Nhat Hahn, Taming the Tiger Within

photo Ude