Tag: balance

Integrating light and darkness

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

moutain

Everything in life changes. The path to true happiness is one of integrating and fully accepting all aspects of our experience. This integration is represented in the Taoist symbol of yin/yang, a circle which is half dark and half light. In the midst of the dark area is a spot of light, and in the midst of the light area is a spot of darkness. Even in the depths of darkness, the light is implicit. Even in the heart of light, the dark is understood, acknowledged, and absorbed. If things are not going well for us in life and we are suffering, we are not defeated by the pain or closed off to the light. If things are going well and we are happy, we are not defensively trying to deny the possibility of suffering.

Sharon Salzberg

A place of awareness

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Stop Running

We know how to become, but we don’t know how to stop.

We are not used to stopping.

Stopping is the practice of learning how to take the points of when you feel the mind moving and proliferating

and coming back to a place of awareness.

Ajahn Passano , On Becoming and Stopping

….And space in not knowing

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

There was this  friend who came to me  every afternoon about four o’clock, sat me down in a chair in the living room, took off my shoes and socks and massaged my feet. He hardly ever said anything. He was a Quaker elder. And yet out of his intuitive sense, from time to time would say a very brief word like, ‘I can feel your struggle today,’ or farther down the road, ‘I feel that you’re a little stronger at this moment, and I’m glad for that.’ But beyond that, he would say hardly anything. He would give no advice.  Somehow he found the one place in my body, namely the soles of my feet, where I could experience some sort of connection to another human being.

What he mainly did for me, of course, was to be willing to be present to me in my suffering. He just hung in with me in this very quiet, very simple, very tactile way. And it became for me a metaphor of the kind of community we need to extend to people who are suffering in this way, which is a community that is neither invasive of the mystery nor evasive of the suffering but is willing to hold people in a space, a sacred space of relationship, where somehow this person who is on the dark side of the moon can get a little confidence that they can come around to the other side.

Parker Palmer

Grateful seeing

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

springbuds

Grateful seeing is the ability to look first for what is good and working in our lives without minimizing or denying the hardships or challenges that are also present. Many traditional societies hold the perspective, or world-view, that what has been given to us ultimately ignites growth and strengthens us. Individuals who are viewed as seers are highly respected, honored, and valued for their gifts of insight, vision, and grateful seeing.  We, too, can learn to be seers — seers of the blessings, learnings, mercies, and protections that surround us everyday. In Spring, we open to the bounty and goodness that is present in our lives, any pockets of ingratitude that once seemed large in our imaginations become dwarfed — nearly nonexistent. It is important to remember that whatever we need to rectify in our lives is often small in proportion to all the benefits we have extended toward and received from others. All the good intentions, prayers, good deeds, and kind words we have offered others are still with us: they cannot be taken away, and this is a great source of encouragement.

Angeles Arrien

Our tendency to blame

Karl Duffy7 Comments

File:Kopfsalat Setzlinge.JPG

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change

Thich Nhat Hanh

Balance…. interior and exterior

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Light-shining

If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and the only threshold of an inner world. This wholesomeness is holiness. To be holy is to be natural, to befriend worlds that come to balance in you.

John O’Donohue, AnamChara