Tag: Be fully present

Being slow to label

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Cebus apella eating grapes-0006.jpg

When we taste something, what is the ‘realness’ of it? We can say, ‘It tastes nice’ but this is what we think about it, not what the taste is. We can say, ‘It’s a grape’, but that’s a designation, a perception, isn’t it? What is the actual taste? We say, ‘It’s sweet’, but ‘sweet’ is a judgment, isn’t it? We come to understand that the reality of it is indefinable, and that for most of our life we are operating at the level of interpretations and classifications, of secondary experiences, rather than living the actuality of it. We never even know who we really are, because everything is constantly changing; the reference points are changing so although we feel we’re something, nothing quite fits. So as long as we identify with the world of change and appearance, this is all we shall ever feel ourselves to be, just an appearance that changes and wants to find a certain position.

Ajahn Sucitto, Gnosis and Non-Dualism

photo MatthiasKabel

Lost in our heads

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Head of statue of John of Nepomuk in Třebíč, Czech Republic.jpg

Meanwhile, here we are, missing the fullness of the present moment, which is where the soul resides.  It’s not like you have to go someplace else to get it.  So the challenge here is, Can we live this moment fully?   Over a lifetime, you may wind up in the situation where you are never actually where you find yourself.  You’re always someplace else, lost, in your head, and therefore in a kind of dysfunctional or non-optimal state.  Why dysfunctional?  Because the only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets.  You’re only here now; you’re only alive in this moment. The past is gone, and I don’t know what’s coming in the future.  It’s obvious that if I want my life to be whole, to resonate with feeling and integrity and value and health, there’s only one way I can influence the future:  by owning the present. 

Jon Kabat Zinn

photo : frettie

Daring to live

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.

And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true

William James, Is Life Worth Living?

…no ideal place

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Dún Laoghaire PD Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, Dublin. Sea Cloud.jpg

The Spiritual  journey is not about finally getting to a place that’s really swell. Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure is what in Buddhism is called samsara, a cycle that goes round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly…. Instead,  this very moment is the perfect teacher, and lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are. However, most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape. There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to get us away from this moment, to soften its hard edge, deaden it so that we do not have to feel the full impact of the pain that arises when we cannot manipulate the situation to make us come out looking fine.

Pema Chodron, When Things fall apart.

Photo of Dun Laoghaire Harbour, Co. Dublin

Continually judging

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Boring2

We are taught to make sense of things by imposing our judgement on everything in front of us. Naturally, as we grow up, we question some of the judgements and interpretations thrown our way, we agree with some and we disagree with others, and fit our personal understanding with our experience. But we rarely question the act of judging itself. Without much analysis we simply keep interpreting and reinterpreting reality as good or bad, right or wrong, useful or detrimental,  fun or boring, constantly tweaking our conceptions as new experiences  reinforce or undermine what we think we “know”

Karuna Cayton, The Misleading Mind

Life is not in our minds

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:BeachDog.JPG

The life that we have in our mind, the life that is a reflection of our planning, the life that has been constructed out of bits and pieces in our environment — external conditioning, things we have observed in other people, things that influential people have told us — is actually not who we are. Life emerges out of the silence of our inner being. 

Reginald Ray, Busyness is laziness