Tag: Be fully present

It better happen this way

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Strokestown 1 (14005111178).jpg

Every day, we give precedence to our mind’s thoughts over the reality unfolding before us. We regularly say things like, “It better not rain today because I’m going camping” or “I better get that raise because I really need the money.” Notice that these bold claims about what should and shouldn’t be happening are not based on scientific evidence; they’re based solely on personal preferences made up in our minds. Without realizing it, we do this with everything in our lives — it’s as though we actually believe that the world around us is supposed to manifest in accordance to our own likes and dislikes. If it doesn’t, surely something is very wrong. This is an extremely difficult way to live, and it is the reason we feel that we are always struggling with life.

Michael SInger, The Surrender Experiment

photo Irish Defense Forces

…and not recognizing

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Hanging at the Shop (5971682238).jpg

An ancient tale tells how Karamita met the Buddha but did not recognize him. He asked the “stranger” to explain the Buddha’s teachings to him, but did not like them. He then asked him if he had actually ever heard these ideas directly from the Buddha’s lips himself, to which the Buddha with a smile, answered no. Ajahn Amaro comments on this episode:

Ajahn Chah often said that this is a position we often find ourselves in – face to face with the Buddha, sharing a room together, spending hours and hours in deep conversation and not realizing who this is. The truth of life is staring us in the face, but because we have already got programmed with something else that we want and expect, we are missing out on the lessons that life is actually able to teach us.

Ajahn Amaro, Silent Rain

photo alex proimos

 

Not really present…

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Person in bluebell wood (14099117974).jpg

I feel a little alarmed when it happens that I have entered a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something outside the woods?

Thoreau, quoted in Writing Nature: Henry Thoreau’s Journal

photo james petts

 

…No path

Karl Duffy3 Comments

dune

Go forth on your path,
As it exists only through your walking

Saint Augustine, Sermon 169.

The Hearts Actions

Karl Duffy7 Comments

File:Song thrush near Faringdon Folly - geograph.org.uk - 682555.jpg

Everything has two endings – a horse, a piece of string, a phone call.

Before a life, air.
And after.

As silence is not silence, but a limit of hearing.

As some strings, untouched, sound when no one is speaking.

So it was when love slipped inside us.

As this life is not a gate, but the horse plunging through it.

The heart’s actions
are neither the sentence nor its reprieve.

Salt hay and thistles, above the cold granite.
One bird singing back to another because it can’t not

Jane Hirshfield, born 1953, American poet:  Come,  Thief: Poems

photo brian robert marshall

Our guide when sailing

Karl Duffy1 Comment

sea

When you are compassionate with yourself,
you trust in your soul,
which you let guide your life.

Your soul knows the geography of your destiny
better than you do.

John O’Donohue