Tag: Be fully present

Time rushing by

Karl Duffy1 Comment
File:Border collie running down the beach at low tide.jpg
A leap year, so we “gain” an extra day, some extra time.  How will we use it?
Why has time disappeared in our culture? How is it that after decades of inventions and new technologies devoted to saving time and labor, the result is that there is no time left?
We are a time-poor society; we are temporally impoverished. And there is no issue, no aspect of human life, that exceeds this in importance.
The destruction of time is literally the destruction of life.
Jacob Needleman, American philosopher, born 1934
photo kyknoord

Sunday Quote: Blessings

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Wuxi Taihu lake Changchun bridge.jpg

But listen to me.

For one moment quit being sad.

Hear blessings dropping their blossoms
around you.

Rumi

photo synyan

The path

Karl Duffy7 Comments

File:Coast path at Higher Sharpnose Point - geograph.org.uk - 1570182.jpg

We can learn to recognize that the difficulty is our path instead of trying to escape from it. This is a radical yet necessary change in our perspective. When uncomfortable things happen to us, we rarely want to have anything to do with them. We might respond with the belief ‘Things shouldn’t be this way’ or ‘Life shouldn’t be so messy.’ Who says? Who says that life shouldn’t be a mess? When life is not fitting our expectations of how it’s supposed to be, we usually try to change it to fit our expectations. But the key to practice is not to try to change our life but to change our relationship to our expectations — to learn to see whatever is happening as our path.

Ezra Bayda, Being Zen

photo philip halling

Right now

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Waiting for a train.jpg

A similar theme on staying in the present moment, this time from the early Christian tradition

One of the early Desert Fathers said

 ‘There is no such thing as delay with the Holy Spirit.’

This means that everything happens at the right moment.

Laurence Freeman, Common Ground: Letters to a World Community of Meditators

photo: inexplicable

Moments are all we have

Karl Duffy1 Comment

forest light 2

Small moments or days are enough to see the richness of life, if we are able to pay attention and give ourselves fully:

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing.

Mary Oliver, Hum

Everything today

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Croissant y cortado - Mover el Bigote.jpg

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world revolves –

slowly, evenly,

without rushing toward the future

Thich Nhat Hanh

photo mover el bigote