Tag: Be fully present

Welcoming everything that happens today

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Ceremonial Tea in Japan.jpg

The understanding of welcome, outlined in this post, applies not just to other people but also to the emotions and thoughts provoked by everything that happens today:

Hospitality means creating welcoming space for the other. Henri J. Nouwen notes that the Dutch word for hospitality, gastvrijheid, means ‘the freedom of the guest.’ It entails creating not just physical room but emotional spaciousness where the stranger can enter and be himself or herself, where the stranger can become ally instead of threat, friend instead of enemy: “That precious experience — when contemplated, cherished, and celebrated — enables me in turn to welcome others: I begin to be less fearful of the other; I start to see the stranger as gift. I become willing to create space in myself to invite the other in, and I open myself to the possibility of being changed by the presence of the other“.
Sister Marilyn Lacey, Creating Welcoming Space, from Awakin org
photo hyougushi

Labelling

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Hello my name is sticker.svg

This is most people’s reality: As soon as something is perceived,

it is named, interpreted, compared with something else,

liked, disliked, or called good or bad by ….the ego.

Eckhart Tolle

photo eviatar bach

The quiet growth of winter

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Winter sun (5334703199).jpg

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence,

and I learn, whatever state I may be in,

therein to be content

Helen Keller.

photo berit

Standing here

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Stand Still. Hoboken, NJ.jpg

One of our human absurdities is the fact that we’re constantly thinking about either the future or the past. Those who are young think of the future because they’ve got more of it. Those who are older think more about the past because, for them, there is more of it. But in order to experience life, we have to live each moment. Life has not been happening in the past. That’s memory. Life is not going to happen in the future. That’s planning. The only time we can live is now, this moment, and as absurd as it may seem, we’ve got to learn that. As human beings with life spans of sixty, seventy, or eighty years, we have to learn to actually experience living in the present. When we have learned that, we will have eliminated a great many of our problems.

Ayya Khema, Being Nobody, Going Nowhere

photo ali

Cyclical

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Schneeglocken.jpg

In moments of darkness and pain

remember all is cyclical.

Sit quietly behind your wooden door

Spring will come again

Loy Ching-Yuen (1873 – 1960) Chinese Taoist tai chi master.

Blown by the wind

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:The angry Atlantic coast.JPG

A big storm with gale force winds hit Ireland overnight, causing high waves and uprooting trees, disrupting schedules and causing difficulties for normal activities. Although unusual, such an event is a useful metaphor for how our minds are at times, as we are subject to moods or get caught up in  –  and blown along by – the swirling events of a day.  Life can create a succession of different storms, events and emotions that can unseat or destabilize us. What we are trying to do in meditation is to sit and tame this mind,  cultivating a still center which does not get hooked by the winds of mood and of events:

The stillpoint, the centeredness –  that’s awareness. When I cannot notice it and go out into the turning world, I become a person and get caught in my habits, my loves and hates, my likes and dislikes.  But if I am centered at this point, it’s like the island you cannot go beyond, or the stillpoint of the turning world, the eye of the storm. And then the world revolves around it. The mood you are in is not the stillness. The mood comes and goes. It changes, revolves; it’s happy, sad, elated, depressed, inspired, bored, loving, hateful, and on and on like this….It’s so easy to say “I’m in a bad mood” or “I’m in a good mood” Our langauge is like that, so we become the mood – “I feel happy today, everything’s fine” or “Today is one of my bad days”. That’s why I encourage this investigation of thought, so that you are not creating yourself, endlessly reinforcing the sense of self through your proliferating thoughts.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of Silence

photo mcmimages1965