Tag: balance

The moon just shines

Karl Duffy2 Comments

P1000422The symbol for compassion is one moon shining in the sky while its image is reflected in one hundred bowls of water.  The moon does not demand, “If you open to me, I will do you a favor and shine on you.”  The moon just shines.  The point is not to want to benefit anyone or make them happy.  There is no audience involved, no “me” and “them.”  It is a matter of an open gift, complete generosity without the relative notions of giving and receiving.  That is the basic openness of compassion: opening without demand.  Simply be what you are.  Be the master of the situation.  If you will just “be,” then life flows around and through you.

Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism

Inner strength

Karl Duffy1 Comment

cloudz

 

You are the sky.

Everything else – it’s just the weather.

Pema Chodron

Making time for ourselves

Karl Duffy2 Comments

474676v1We need to find a way of balancing our ‘inner’ work and our ‘outer’ work  and we begin to appreciate a basic paradox: that in order to be truly generous, truly of service to others, we actually need to be completely ‘self-centred’. We need to be able to stay in touch with our own hearts, listening carefully to what they tell us, even while engaged in external activity or interaction. We need to remain attentive to our own needs, and to really make sure that these are well taken care of  even if it means disappointing people, letting them down, not living up to the expectations they may have of us (or that we have of ourselves). This is not at all easy, with the conditioning most of us have: ‘Don’t be selfish’.

Ajahn Candasiri, A Question of Balance

Placing things in a deeper context

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

A person is satisfied not by the quantity of food, but by the absence of greed. Gurdjieff

If we are silly enough to remain at the mercy of the people who want to sell us happiness, it will be impossible for us ever to be content with anything. How would they profit if we became  content? We would no longer need their new product. The last thing the salesman wants is for the buyer to become content. You are of no use in our society unless you are always wanting to grasp what you never have. The Greeks were not as smart as we are. In their primitive way they put Tantalus in hell. [Advertising]…on the contrary, would convince us that Tantalus is in heaven.

Thomas Merton

The end of the year: Allowing things move on

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

https://i0.wp.com/homepage.ntlworld.com/thegrinch/photogallery/Photos060204/flowers%20in%20the%20melting%20snow.JPGWe may think that letting go means not having, or getting rid of something; but actually we can just allow it to go, rather than holding on to it or trying to throw it away. Sometimes just accepting and recognising is enough. It is a way of letting go of the aversion, the negativity. Like every other condition that we experience: if it arises, it will cease. And usually it ceases much more quickly if we can really let it go. Sometimes people use the expression ‘just letting be’.

Ajahn Candasiri, Simple Kindness

…and not being disturbed.

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The reason why silence is so disturbing to us [is this]: As soon as we begin to become silent, we experience the relativity of our ordinary everyday mind. With this mind we measure our space and time coordinates, we calculate probabilities and count up our mistakes and successes. It is so useful and familiar a state of mind that we easily think it is all there is to us: our whole mind, our real selves, our full meaning.

Laurence Freeman