Tag: Be fully present

How difficulties can be creative…

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Flog og Fjaere 2.JPG

A different way of seeing the challenges in life, and maybe a more helpful way of looking at the slow diversions which life obliges us to take:

Une difficulte est une lumiere. Une difficulte insurmontable est un soleil. Paul Valery

(A difficulty is a light; an insurmountable difficulty is a sun)

We tend to perceive difficulty as disturbance. Ironically, difficulty can be a great friend of creativity… I love these lines from Paul Valery: this is a completely different way of considering the awkward, the uneven, and the difficult. Deep within us, there is a terrible impulse and drive toward perfection. We want everything flattened into one shape. We do not like unexpected shapes… The imagination in its loyalty to possibility often takes the curved path rather than the linear way. Such risk and openness inherit the harvest of creativity, beauty and spirit.

 John O’Donohue Anam Chara

photo kilabs

In this ordinary life

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On Sunday during his sermon in Bolton Abbey,  Fr Michael said that an awareness of goodness can strike at any moment, cutting through our complacency and reminding us that, deep down, there is wonder at the heart of our experience, even  when we struggle and cannot see it.  He saw it in the tender care of a cow for its new-born calf. Merton saw it in the swallows flight:

There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life, just as it is, in all its incompleteness, yet, this is where Heaven starts. See within yourself, if you can find it. I walked through the field in front of the house, lots of swallows flying, everywhere! Some very near me. It was magical.

We are already one, yet we know it not

Thomas Merton,

This day (this month) contains all

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Drink your tea slowly and reverently,

as if it as the axis on which the world revolves

Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen teaches that our approach to today determines our whole approach to life.

The Japanese call this attitude Ichi-nichi issho:

‘Each day is a lifetime.’

Philip Toshio Sudo, Zen 24/7

All we get are glimpses

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Saints and bodhisattvas may achieve what Christians call mystical union or Buddhists call satori — a perpetual awareness of the force at the heart of things. For these enlightened few, the world is always lit. For the rest of us, such clarity comes only fitfully, in sudden glimpses or slow revelations. Quakers refer to these insights as ‘openings.’ When I first heard the term … I thought of how, on an overcast day, sunlight pours through a break in the clouds. After the clouds drift on, eclipsing the sun, the sun keeps shining behind the veil, the memory of its light shines on in the mind.

Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe

This is how it is 2: Whatever arises must pass away

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Lacquer buddha.jpg

Sometimes I’d go to see old religious sites with ancient temple buildings, designed by architects, beautifully built by skilled craftsmen. In some places they would be cracked. Maybe one of my friends would remark, “Such a shame, isn’t it? It’s cracked. ” I’d say: “If that weren’t the case then there’d be no such thing as the Buddha, there’d be no Dharma. It’s cracked like this because it’s perfectly in line with the Buddha’s teaching.

Ajahn Chah

photo sookie

This is how it is 1: No here, no there, no liking and disliking

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Canne di bambù (Roma 2005).jpg

The 9th Century Zen Master Siubi was asked “What is the secret of Zen”

“Come back when there is no-one around and I shall tell you”

The inquirer returned and Siubi took him to a bamboo-grove, pointed to the bamboos and said 

“See how long these are. See how short these are”

Suddenly the questioner had a flash of awakening. What did he see? He had a revelation of sheer existence. Where there is revelation, explanation becomes superfluous. Curiosity is dissolved in wonder.

John Welwood: Ordinary magic: Everyday life as Spiritual Path