Tag: heart

Noticing colour in grey days

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Some similar thoughts, this time from a poet and not a neuroscientist. She encourages us to notice the little moments of colour that come into every day as a way of going against the heart’s tendency to close in on itself:

Red bird came all winter firing up the landscape as nothing else could.
Of course I love the sparrows, those dun-colored darlings so hungry and so many.
I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.
Still, for whatever reason —
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,
or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens —
I am glad
that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Mary Oliver, Red Bird

…but rather, looking inside

Karl Duffy1 Comment

One of Tony De Mello’s stories, with a similar theme – We often think that what we want is outside us. Rather, the real work we need to do is within:

One day God got tired of being pestered by people asking for this and for that, so God calls a meeting of the most trusted angels and asks for suggestions as to where one can hide from pestering people. One angel advises God to hide on the highest peak of the highest mountain because no one will search there. Another angel says, “No, hide in the depth of the deepest ocean in the world and no one will search for you there.” Finally, God turns to the most trusted angel and asks: “Where do you suggest I should hide?” And the angel responds: “Hide in the human heart! No one will search for you there.”

Not looking outside our lives….

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We all have a tendency to look outside for someone or some idea which will answer the questions which our lives pose, or in the face of changes which we do not expect. The current ongoing economic crises, news of natural or man-made disasters, unusual weather patterns,  or even ancient calendars  can mean that this New Year  continues the ongoing sense of fear and uncertainty which has characterized the last few years. This exterior climate inevitably has an effect on our interior state of mind and the confidence we feel.  It is not easy living in a time of fear, and it means we are more likely to seek solutions and changes proposed by others which seem to offer a more solid footing. Now we all receive guidance from other people and from reading the works of experienced teachers. However, when the external environment is tinged with fear, we often become more security-oriented in our lives,  and the fear can prompt us to seek simple,  quick certainties .

In general, mindfulness practice tells us that the best way to work with change is to look inside, and to slowly increase our interior freedom in the face of our fearful thoughts. It allows us to go beneath the surface level of reactive experience, which is frequently filtered through conditioning and  emotions. It places our confidence in the working of the mind, not in looking excessively to heroes or gurus or the latest, quick-fix solutions. In this way, its slow confident progress is at odds with a rapidly changing world, which loves quick solutions and neat, happy endings.

This encouragement to look within applies to all, even to the best of teachers. In this story, the great Thai teacher, Ajahn Chah, takes advantage of Ajahn Sumedho’s complaints to make the point that, no matter what is going on in our lives or in the world, we have within us a capacity to work with it. We can apply this in our lives today, whenever we notice our tendency either to blame people or factors outside our mind for our moods or wishing for some magical change to come in the future.

Through the early years of his life as a monk with Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Sumedho was full of inspiration and could find no flaw in his teacher. As time went by and the glamour wore off somewhat, more and more cracks started to be seen in Ajahn Chah’s perfection. After some time Ajahn Sumedho could not hold back any longer and decided to broach these criticisms with the Master. Even though such face-to-face criticism is much avoided in Thai society, Ajahn Sumedho was an all-American boy and decided to talk straight.  He went to Ajahn Chah and asked permission to recount his grievances, to which Ajahn Chah listened carefully and receptively.

When Ajahn Sumedho reached the end of his litany of complaints, Ajahn Chah paused for a few moments and then said: “Perhaps it’s a good thing that I’m not perfect, Sumedho, otherwise you might be looking for the Buddha somewhere outside your own mind”

Letting go in Winter

Karl Duffy1 Comment

As the embrace of the earth welcomes all we call death,

Taking deep into itself  the right solitude of a seed,

Allowing it time to shed the grip of former form

And give way to a deeper generosity that will one day send it forth,

A tree into springtime,

May all that holds you fall from its hungry ledge Into the fecund surge of your heart.

John O’Donohue

Not waiting for some future perfection

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Maybe we think that someday we will have gained perfect maturity from the lessons of our lives. Subconsciously,  we are lured by the expectation that we will reach a stage where we don’t have to fix anything ever again. One day we will reach “happily ever after” We are convinced of the notion of “resolution”. It’s as if everything that we’ve experienced up until now, our whole lives up to this moment, was a dress rehearsal. We believe that our grand performance is yet to come, so we do not live for today. For most people this endless managing, rearranging, upgrading is the definition of “living”. In reality we are waiting for our life to start. When prodded, most of us admit that we are working toward some future moment of perfection – retirement in a log cabin in Kennebunkport or in a hut in Costa Rica. Or maybe we dream of living out our later years in the idealized forest landscape…serenly meditating …..overlooking a waterfall and koi pond.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, What makes you not a Buddhist.

Faith in the possibilities of this day

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Being alive necessarily means uncertainty and risk, times of going into the unknown. If we withdraw from the flow of life, our hearts contract. We hold back so much that we feel separate from our own bodies and minds, separate from other people, even people we really care about. In the grip of other intense emotions, like grief and jealousy, we might feel anguish, but fear shuts us down, arrests the life-force. To be driven by fear is like dying inside. When the suffering is overwhelming, we may try to recoil from how bad it feels by numbing our reactions. Many of us survived childhood in just this way. But, ultimately, cutting ourselves off from what is happening locks us into fear and makes us unable to see that we might find another way to respond outside the small section delineated by the dots, defined by our assumptions.

Faith, in contrast, reminds us of the ever-changing flow of life, with all its movement and possibility. Faith is the capacity of the heart that allows us to draw close to the present and find there the underlying thread connecting the moment’s experience to the fabric of all of life. It opens us to a bigger sense of who we are and what we are capable of doing.

Sharon Salzberg, Faith