Tag: Be fully present

In a nutshell…

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

A really clear and succinct definition of mindfulness practice, showing how it includes a evaluating, even judging aspect, discerning between helpful and unhelpful mental energies:

I often like to summarize correct practice in the following way:

Have mindfulness

and know bodily and mental phenomena as they really are

with a mind that is stable and impartial.

Ven Pramote Pamojjo, To see the Truth

 

Amazing

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Parc Upper Lake.jpg

According to the ancient Chinese, one of the main goals in life is to reach the evening of our life without regret. So we can ask: What fears hold us back from fully embracing what is offered now? What preoccupied thoughts hinder us from seeing the beauty that is before us in each moment?

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver, When Death Comes

Speed

Karl Duffy3 Comments
File:Shenandoah National Park SHEN9228.jpg
It’s a long weekend here in Ireland and the weather is even forecast to be good. A time to slow down, let go our that part of the mind which is task driven and touch into some non-doing:
The great tragedy of speed as an answer to the complexities and responsibilities of existence is that very soon we cannot recognize anything or anyone who is not traveling at the same velocity as we are…..as slaves to speed, we start to lose sight of family members, especially children, or those who are ill or infirm, who are not flying through the world as quickly and determinedly as we are. Just as seriously, we begin to leave behind the parts of our own selves that limp a little, the vulnerabilities that actually give us color and character. We forget that our sanity is dependent on a relationship with longer, more patient cycles extending beyond the urgencies and madness of the office.
David Whyte.

Falling and getting back up

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Toddler running and falling.jpg

If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe,

I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me.

But this was shown:

that in falling and rising again we are always kept in the same love

Julian Of Norwich 1342 – 1416, Anchoress at the church of St Julian, Norwich

photo Jamie Campbell

Learning from the birds these days

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Sayornis phoebe 1905.jpg

The phoebe sits on her nest
Hour after hour,
Day after day,
Waiting for life to burst out
From under her warmth.

Can I weave a nest for silence,
Weave it out of listening,
Listening, Layer upon layer?

But one must first become small,
Nothing but a presence,
Attentive as a nesting bird,
Proffering no slightest wish,
No tendril of a wish
Toward anything that might happen
Or be given,
Only the warm, faithful waiting,
Contained in one’s smallness.
Beyond the question, the silence.
Before the answer, the silence.

May Sarton, Beyond the question, 1

Too much thinking, not enough seeing

Karl Duffy2 Comments

cessy

The burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness.

What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?

Third Zen Patriarch