Tag: impermanence

Endings and beginnings

Karl Duffy2 Comments

In the Christian liturgical calendar tomorrow is the last day of the year, with a new year starting on Sunday in Advent. All wisdom and religious traditions give guidance on how to work with the passing of time, how to celebrate fully and be complete in each moment which we have. This text is from the Stoic philosophical viewpoint: 

Let us prepare our minds as if we had come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books every day..The person that puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.

Seneca,  Moral Letters, 101, 7b – 8a

 

Learning to bend

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The first very cold night of the year here and strong wind and rain expected later today.  Ancient wisdom for dealing with the changing weathers of life: 

All things, the grass as well as the trees,
are tender and soft while alive
When dead, they are withered and dried.

Therefore the stiff and the rigid are companions of death
The gentle and the kind are the companions of life

Lao Tzu

Being content

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The heart receives many conflicting messages about how to relate to the world and what brings happiness. In the US Thanksgiving leads into Black Friday, and the influence of this notion is now reproduced around the world, including here in Ireland. 

For many people in our culture, the heart fills up with joy, with gratefulness, and just at the moment when it wants to overflow and really the joy comes to itself, at that moment, advertisement comes in and says “No, no, there’s a better model, and there’s a newer model, and your neighbor has a bigger one.” And so instead of overflowing, we make the bowl bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And it never overflows. It never gives us this joy. It’s affluent, this affluency side that means it always flows in, it doesn’t overflow. It flows in, and in, and in, and in, and chokes us eventually. And we don’t have to deprive ourselves of anything, but we can learn that the real joys come with quality, not with quantity.

David Steindl-Rast, Anatomy of Gratitude, Interview with Krista Tippett, On Being.

Grateful

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A special greeting for Thanksgiving for all those who read and follow the Blog in the United States. Gratitude helps us to focus on what we have, and not on what we lack, 

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite – only a sense of existence. I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it. How sweet to think of my extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on the bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. 

Henry David Thoreau, Letter, Friends and Followers, 1856

Relating to what is going on

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Often in popular culture, mindfulness is taken to mean simply “be present” rather than how we are relating to the present. I think that is a significant understanding that it would be helpful to clarify.

Joseph Goldstein

The purpose of meditation

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The fundamental purpose of … meditation is not to create a comfortable hiding place for oneself;

it is to acquaint the mind, on a moment -to-moment basis, with impermanence.

Mark Epstein, Advice not given: a Guide to Getting over Yourself