Be fully present – Page 613

The choices we make, each day

February 18, 2011February 18, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We create ourselves by our choices.

Kierkegaard

Walking through life with ease and without fears

February 17, 2011February 21, 2011 Karl Duffy1 Comment

In our daily life, our steps are burdened with anxieties and fears. Life itself seems to be a continuous chain of insecure feelings, and so our steps lose their natural easiness. [However] Our earth is truly beautiful. There is so much graceful, natural scenery along paths and roads around the earth! Do you know how many forest paths there are, paved with colorful leaves, offering cool and shade? They are all available to us, yet we cannot enjoy them because our hearts are not trouble-free, and our steps are not at ease.

When you practice walking meditation, you go for a stroll. You have no purpose or direction in space or time. The purpose of walking meditation is walking itself. Going is important, not arriving. Walking meditation is not a means to an end; it is an end. Each step is life; each step is peace and joy. That is why we don’t have to hurry. That is why we slow down. We seem to move forward, but we don’t go anywhere; we are not drawn by a goal. Thus we smile while we are walking.

Walking meditation is learning to walk again with ease.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Living in a distracted age

February 16, 2011February 21, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Philosopher Alain de Botton on the effects of the relentless barrage of information which our minds are subject to in today’s world and how we need to re-learn and practice the ability to switch off:

One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is the task of relearning how to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible…..The need to diet, which we know so well in relation to food, and which runs so contrary to our natural impulses, should be brought to bear on what we now have to relearn in relation to knowledge, people, and ideas. Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.

First steps in Mindfulness: Strengthen concentration

February 11, 2011February 21, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Too many meditators get discouraged at the beginning because their minds won’t settle down. But just as you can’t wait until you’re strong before you start strength training, you can’t wait until your concentration is strong before you start sitting. Only by exercising what little concentration you have will you make it solid and steady.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Building your mental muscles

How meditation leads to kindness

February 10, 2011February 10, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Think of Mindfulness as the habit of seeing things in an uncomplicated way. We generally don’t. Based on our individual histories, our memories, and our fears, we often make up our reality out of a projected worry and frighten or discourage ourselves. Mindfulness is seeing things as they actually are, not as we imagine them to be.

Mindfulness practice… supports our ability to best serve. It keeps our motivation going. I say, “When we see, even in the simplest circumstances, how difficult it is to stay content, how easily irritated we become, how many worries we have, how hard it is to relax — we intuit that that must be true for other people as well. All other people. And we start to be kinder. We are kinder to ourselves and, ultimately, more forgiving of others. The world would get happier if everyone relaxed and forgave each other.” Usually people think about that a moment. Then they smile and say, “I think you’re right.”

Sylvia Boorstein

What are you going through?

February 6, 2011February 7, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Mindfulness practice strengthens our capacity to be present for all that is happening in our lives. It also creates a space within so that we can be present to others. It is easy to be there when people are in good space, or when they make us feel good about ourselves. However, as the French Philosopher Simone Weil says in this beautiful quote, friendship is truly shown when one is able to ask the other “What are you going through?”. This requires courage and inner strength. To stick with another person when they are confused or frightened requires that we are able to put aside our own concerns for a moment and attend to them. Full attention is the most precious gift we can give another. It is not always easy because of our own needs and the believed story that goes on in our head when we encounter another person. Furthermore, when another person is afraid, it often raises fears in us and our first tendency is to withdraw. Paying attention means we are able to step back from our own stories and be there.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not have it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough. In the first legend of the Grail it is said that the Grail belongs to the first comer who asks the guardian of the vessel, a king paralysed by the most painful wound, “What is wrong with you? What are you going through?” Only the person who is capable of attention can do this.

Simone Weil, Waiting for God