Tag: impermanence

It’s another Monday

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The mind is constantly making judgments about ourselves, others, or how this day is going to be. Better to stick with the moment-to-moment experience, and avoid coming to conclusions before they happen.

Our daily world is commonly held in terms of non-specific generalizations, like its ‘another Monday,’ or, ‘a typical man’, or ,‘I dread meeting Janice, she’s always like this,’ or ‘I’m hopeless.’ In fact ……. any sense of a lasting entity or state of being is an act of generalization. It’s a useful convention, but one that allows the mind’s neuroses and corruptions to be projected onto the here and now.

Ajahn Sucitto, The Low Point

The paradox of human life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings.

If we refuse to hold them in hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.   

Parker Palmer

Seasons are natural

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As yesterday’s post reminded us, things are always changing in life, just as nature has its seasons:

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep in your heart the miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Kahil Gibran The Prophet

Living in the midst of uncertainty

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In the Christian calendar,  this is the last week of the year, so some of the reflections around this time are on how to arrive at the end of one’s life without regret and with a sense of acceptance and wisdom. Do we ever get to any real place of resolution in this world?

This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess and that’s what I mean by Hallelujah…. That’s what it’s all about. It says that none of this – you’re not going to be able to work this thing out – you’re not going to be able to set – this realm does not admit to revolution – there’s no solution to this mess. The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say ‘Look, I don’t understand a fucking thing at all – Hallelujah! That’s the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.

Leonard Cohen

Monday morning choice

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Its not so much what happens in a day that causes suffering, but our response to it:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms —

to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances,

to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl, Mans Search for Meaning

Sunday Quote: Cold and warmth

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Similar to Mary Oliver’s quote last Sunday: a walk today shows that life’s experience is a mixture –  cold frost and warm colour. Sheep and goats, as today’s Gospel parable reminds us.

A world of grief and pain, 
Flowers bloom
Even then.

Issa, 1763 –  1828, Japanese Buddhist poet.

Some of his poems reflect his attempts to come to terms with the premature passing of his children.