Tag: Be fully present

Totally still

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
File:Still Water At Dusk.jpg
Ajahn Chah would ask “Have you ever seen still water?” They would nod, “Yes, of course, we’ve seen still water before.” Then he would ask, “Well then, have you ever seen flowing water?”  They’d respond, “Yes, we’ve seen flowing water.”“So, did you ever see still, flowing water?” “No. That we have never seen.”   He loved to get that bewilderment effect.

Ajahn Chah would then explain that the mind’s nature is still, yet it’s flowing. It’s flowing, yet it is still. He would use the word “citta” for the knowing mind, the mind of awareness. The citta itself is totally still. It has no movement; it is not related to all that arises and ceases. It is silent and spacious. Mind objects — sights, sounds, smell, taste, touch, thoughts, and emotions — flow through it. Problems arise because the clarity of the mind gets entangled with sense impressions. By contemplating our own experience, we can make a clear distinction between the mind that knows (citta) and the sense impressions that flow through it. By refusing to get entangled with any sense impressions, we find refuge in that quality of stillness, silence, and spaciousness.  This policy of  non-interference allows everything and is disturbed by nothing.

Ajahn Amaro,  Small Boat

photo Miguel Virkkunen Carvalho

Moving and not moving

Karl Duffy1 Comment

geese

(Practice) ……. is not to be found in moving forwards,

nor in moving backwards,

nor in standing still.

This, Sumedho, is your place of nonabiding.

Ajahn Chah,  Letter to Ajahn Sumedho

In the ordinary

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
pots_pans
One of the monks asked a renowned Forest Ajahn: ‘What’s it like to see things as they really are?’ There was an understandable air of expectation in the room: to ‘see things as they really are’  is the vision of the Awakened Mind. What mystical insight was about to be revealed?

‘It’s ordinary’, said the Ajahn in his customary succinct and matter-of-fact way.

Ajahn Sucitto, Awakening: Nameless and Stopped

Step by step

Karl Duffy1 Comment

feet_walking1

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

Letting go of black and white

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Project 365 -27 270109 Bah, Humbug! (3231534159).jpg

When we train in letting go of thinking that anything — including ourselves — is either good or bad, we open our minds to practice with forgiveness and humor. And we practice opening to a compassionate space in which good/bad judgments can dissolve. We practice letting go of our idea of a “goal” and letting go of our concept of “progress,” because right there, in that process of letting go, is where our hearts open and soften — over and over again.

Pema Chodron

photo: pete

Not limiting

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Zeď2005.jpg

When you are identified on the level of “I am the body and I am my feelings, thoughts and memories”, you’re always limiting, binding yourself to unsatisfactory conditions. These conditions can never satisfy you, because they’re changing: when you try to find security and lasting happiness in things that are forever changing, you’re going to be terribly disappointed. You going to feel this… sense of lack, and we tend to take that as a very personal flaw: “There’s something wrong with me. What’s wrong with me that I should feel lonely, inadequate, incomplete, or unfulfilled?“

Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of SIlence