Tag: impermanence

Holding on and letting go

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Letting go is about carefully revealing assumptions, biases, and life messages (‘There’s something wrong with me, I’m unworthy’) and releasing them.

You can liken the process to a gradual descent out of the tumult and the gridlock of your personal world into the free space of the unconditioned. It’s rather like lowering oneself down a rope. You have to know how to do that. It is a matter of holding on to something you trust, even though it seems like a thin strand, then letting go a little bit and trusting the downward pull.

Ajahn Sucitto

Let things pass.

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

As a new month is about to begin….

If I had to sum up [meditation] practice in three words, without hesitation, I’d go for “Let things pass.”

In the midst of chaos or deep in one’s inner battlefields, dare to make the experiment of not controlling, of dropping the self. It’s mayhem, but there’s no problem! Far from giving up and far from resignation, letting things pass means distinguishing between the psychodramas (the problems created by conceptual mind) and the genuine tragedies of existence, which call for solidarity, commitment, and perseverance.

Meditating is stripping down, daring to live nakedly in order to give oneself, contributing to the welfare of the world, giving one’s share. Why don’t we look at the day that lies ahead of us not as a store where we can acquire things, but as a clinic, a dispensary of the soul, where together we can recover and advance?

Alexandre Jollien, 1975 – Swiss philosopher and writer

At home

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn’t the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that’s actually the easy part. The hard part is what’s right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life. The hard part is learning not just how to be but mastering the nearly impossible art of how to be at home.

Meghan Daum, Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House

Rest

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Your heart muscle goes on working for as long as you live. It does not get tired, because there is a phase of rest built into every single heartbeat. Our physical heart works leisurely. And when we speak of the heart in a wider sense, the idea that life-giving leisure lies at the very center is implied. Seen in this light, leisure is not a privilege but a virtue.

Leisure is not the privilege of a few who can afford to take time, but the virtue of all who are willing to give time to what takes time – to give as much time as a task rightly takes.


David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer