Tag: heart

Make a start

Karl Duffy1 Comment

It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought:

which is why we so often prefer to live in an almost world, why we prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities to be safely clouded by fear, why we want the horizon to remain always in the distance, the promise never fully and simply made, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.

David Whyte “Beginning” in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

We think we know

Karl Duffy2 Comments

However great our conceptual knowledge and understanding might be,

in the face of real experience,

concepts are like flakes of snow fallen on a burning fire.

Zenkei Shibayama, 1894 – 1974, Japanese Rinzai Zen priest, head Roshi of Nanzenji Zen Monastery in Kyoto

In the deep mid winter

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Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life….

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

William Stafford

Radiant

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Let the world be as it is
and learn to rock with the waves.

Remain ‘radiant,’ as Joyce put it,
‘in the filth of the world’.

Joseph Campbell

Our true nature

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The winter solstice, in the northern hemisphere: the shortest, darkest day of the year

In dark times  when we feel even more burdened and insecure, we should be contemplating our true nature more than ever. It can cheer us up on any day. Despite all the ups and downs of our life, we are fundamentally awake individuals who have a natural ability to become compassionate and wise. Our nature is to be cheerful. This cheerfulness is deeper than temporary conditions. The day does not have to be sunny for us to be cheerful. We are free of having to depend on something else to make us happy. We can bask freely in the natural radiance of our mind.  This is the equanimity of true cheerfulness — nothing more, nothing less.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, A Simple Sense of Delight

A momentary crossing

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A full moon tonight, the last of the year, the Cold Moon, as we approach the shortest day of the year.

There are times when,
If the circumstances are just right,
Like a full moon,
A light rain,
Twilight, or fog,
There is a momentary crossing
From time to timelessness,
Form to Formless,
Blood and bone to earth and rock,
Past and future to present.
Where the atoms, the molecules of me
Forget to stop
From fusing into the earth and other places
Where I am not lost, but found,
Not part, but whole,
No longer longing for myself.

Parker Palmer