Tag: Be fully present

No ovation

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality – there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand? Here is the truth – actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested… True heroism is you, alone, in a designated work space. True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care – with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

How to work with worry

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When unresolved energies begin to bubble up and flood the heart, they project onto circumstances in the external world. One’s thoughts can acquire tremendous drama, concocting scenarios that carry flavors such as passion or despair – and then spin the heart.

So we have to use breathing to gather those energies in, catch mind-stuff as it begins to trickle – or rush – out. Investigate: “How does this feel?” “This is the quality of worry.” And where in your body is that? Breathe through that, where in your felt body is the insecurity or worry? Breathe through that, extending compassionate attention. Energies may run out into desire fantasies. Where in your body is that craving, lust, passion? Breathe, cool, steady that in your body. Tackle them at the source rather than as the vivid blossoms of people, events, past and future that they create.

Catch them, handle their energy – and breathe through it.

Ajahn Sucitto

A different nourishment

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Do not ask
for flowery perfume
when I can give you
fruits of autumn

Do not reject nourishment
because winter is at the door
and already the old saints
have raised their brows
to contemplate eternity
We children of the moment
drink up the last of the wine.

Lalla Romana, 1906 – 2001 Italian poet

The life you have got

Karl Duffy1 Comment

You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, but you mustn’t wish for another life.

The chance you have is the life you’ve got.

You mustn’t want to be somebody else.

What you must do is this: Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.
I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

Wendell Berry

All this falling

Karl Duffy1 Comment

As I walk through the woods along the lake, I’m quickened by nature’s palette of subtle and vivid colors. At the same time — as the leaves drop and the dark skeletons of the trees begin to emerge — I’m sobered by the fact that all green, growing, and glorious things must pass away.

And yet, as the years go by, the more I find that these two feelings dance with each other. The fact that all things must die makes me ever more grateful for the beauties of nature and human nature.

If we let that gratitude animate us to care for the natural and human communities, then what falls to the ground around us and among us will seed the flowering of new life.

As Rilke says in this lovely and well-known poem, “…there is Someone, whose hands, infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.”

We are that Someone’s hands. Let’s hold all this falling in ways that will help the earth and its creatures rise…

Parker J. Palmer

This is life

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

This then is life.
Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.
How Curious! How real!
Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.

Walt Whitman