Tag: Be fully present

Noticing simple things

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Flowingtap.jpg

By taking a moment to pay attention to something as simple as turning on the water tap, we give ourselves the opportunity to be aware of how things in our lives come, go, and transform, which makes us less likely to take them for granted.  Instead, we can, for even a moment, be awake to the transitory blessing they are.  And, certainly, we can carry this habit out into the larger world, applying it to whatever we find ourselves doing or encountering.

Turning on the Water:  Water flows from high mountain sources.

Water runs deep in the Earth.

Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life.

Thich Nhat Hanh

photo thegreenj

The real work

Karl Duffy2 Comments

boat dunmore

And I am thinking:

maybe just looking and listening is the real work.

Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem.  

Mary Oliver

Sunday Quote: On not living with regret

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When such as I cast out remorse, so great a sweetness flows into the breast

We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blessed.

W.B. Yeats, A Dialogue Of Self And Soul

A true friend to yourself

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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You build inner strength through embracing the totality of your experience, both the delightful parts and the difficult parts. Embracing the totality of your experience is one definition of having loving kindness for yourself. Loving kindness does not mean making sure you’re feeling good all the time – trying to set up your life so that you’re comfortable every moment. Rather, it means setting up your life so that you have time for meditation and self-reflection, for kindhearted, compassionate self-honesty. In this way you become more attuned to seeing when you’re biting the hook, when you’re getting caught in the undertow of emotions, when you’re grasping and when you’re letting go. This is the way you become a true friend to yourself just as you are, with both your laziness and your bravery. There is no step more important than this.

Pema Chödron

Reducing it down to basics

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Cat-observing

People can think that mindfulness meditation is complicated, but it’s actually very simple to describe.  The great thing is that anyone can start by practicing for just 5 minutes a day.  Even such a short break from the normal activity of the mind can make a big  difference. Paying attention, observing, on purpose, without judgment, to the gentle rhythm of our breathing, is a good place to start to develop this natural skill.

Observation,

giving bare attention to whatever you happen to be experiencing at a particular moment,

is meditation.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

What meditation is really about

Karl Duffy1 Comment

¨File:India - Sights & Culture - 031 - welcome puja (2458852328).jpg

These are the things we can contemplate. We can’t control what arises in the mind, but we can reflect on what we are feeling and learn from it rather than simply being caught helplessly in our impulses and habits. Even though there is a lot in life that we can’t change, we can change our attitude towards it. That’s what so much of meditation is really about — changing our attitude from a self-centered, “get rid of this or get more of that” to one of welcoming life as it is. Welcoming the opportunity to eat food that we don’t like. Welcoming wearing three robes on a hot morning. Welcoming discomfort, feeling fed up, wanting to run away. This way of welcoming life reflects a deeper understanding. Life is like this. Sometimes it’s very nice, sometimes it’s horrible, and much of the time it’s neither one way nor the other. Life is like this.

Ajahn Sumedho

photo of welcoming ritual in India by mckay savage