Tag: Be fully present

Seeing the person

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

You might try to cultivate your own beginner’s mind in your daily life as an experiment. Next time you see somebody who is familiar to you, ask yourself if you are seeing this person with fresh eyes, as he or she really is, or if you are only seeing the reflection of your own thoughts about this person. Try it with your children, your spouse, your friends and co-workers, with your dog or cat if you have one. Try it with problems when they arise. Try it when you are outdoors in nature. Are you able to see the sky, the stars, the trees and the water and the stones, and really see them as they are right now with a clear and uncluttered mind? Or are you actually only seeing them through the veil of your own thoughts and opinions?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living.

Soothing ourselves in time of anxiety

Karl Duffy2 Comments

zen tea.We’ve all experienced how unsettling and uncertain life can be and how easily we can be knocked off center at any moment. When we’re not in balance, we can become defined by whatever is happening and get caught in what I call “reactive mind.” But through the skillful application of mindfulness we can learn to self-soothe whenever life delivers us a blow and soon regain our balance. When we lack the ability to self-soothe, we resort to using less skillful strategies to deal with difficulty such as escaping into fantasy, or overindulging in drugs, alcohol, or food, which usually prolongs our suffering. Self-soothing begins with softening into your experience and then applying mindfulness to recognize that “this moment is like this.” From within the spaciousness that this softening creates, you can start to investigate the experience ….What insights can you apply to this difficult situation? For instance, you might reflect on the impersonal nature of life. Although you are having a personal experience, it is just causes and conditions that are creating this experience. This too is going to change because everything changes. Life is hard; therefore, it’s not a mistake that your life is hard in this moment. This insight alone can be a source of great comfort.

Philipp Moffitt

Moments of doing nothing

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Hands foldedIf we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death

Pablo Neruda,

Slowing down choices

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.

Bhante H Gunaratana

Showing up with others

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If we don’t show up for our own life, we tend to ask other people to fill in the bits we won’t show up for. That makes it hard on them. So love begins with really showing up. And practice helps. It’s a way of not dodging the difficult, painful bits. It’s also not dodging the beauty and the marvel of life, the wonder and our capacity to connect to others. Love starts there. But we make a few really basic errors. We sometimes have the idea that a relationship is like a machine, one we can fix if we put the right oil on it or replace a few sprockets. We also can think that a relationship is a matter of calculating the sums of good and bad, what we’re getting and not getting. If we start looking at other people as a gift, it helps us out of these traps. You notice with a child that you show up without wanting a lot in return. It’s not an exchange: give this, get that. It can be like that in all our relationships, with lovers, teachers, friends, what have you. It’s not a trade. Love means bearing people’s differences without trying to change them—not just bearing, but valuing and appreciating and loving people’s uniqueness. That’s a path all by itself. What if the fact that you’re different from me is a gateway rather than an obstacle?

John Tarrant, Not Knowing Is the Most Intimate

A simple saying for this day

Karl Duffy3 Comments

When you really pay attention,

everything is your teacher

Ezra Bayda