Tag: impermanence

True freedom is related to absolute trust

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

It is hard to find better guidance than this. Knowing it deep down would be so nice: to be without anxiety about my imperfections or messy reality or about what is not fully achieved in my life:

One thing, all things,  they move and intermingle without distinction.

To live in this realization

is to be without anxiety about imperfection.

The mind of absolute trust is beyond all thought, all striving,

is perfectly at peace,  for in it there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.

Seng T’san, 7th Century Zen Patriarch,  Hsin Hsin Ming

The wisdom of never being secure

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

One of the foundations of wisdom is to see that things are always changing, and changing in ways that we do not expect. The weather we are having these “Summer” days helps – showers, followed by sun, followed today by longer spells of rain:

It must be obvious..

that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe

whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

A new month: thresholds

Karl Duffy1 Comment

At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres.

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us 

Being at ease with the messiness of life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

With mindfulness practice, you learn to see how the untrained mind is agitated by the human condition and how not to allow this general anxiety to fuel your fear in a specific situation. You also gain tolerance for the unpleasantness of uncertainty and also the naturalness of your own imperfection. You have confidence that “life is like this.” You cannot and are not supposed to miraculously fix it; rather, you gain the insight that happiness and peace come from relating to life just as it is.

Philipp Moffit, Freedom from Fear

No perfect way

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Two quotes for today from the great Suzuki Roshi.

Life – or work – can contains elements of mess or chaos and we often approach them with a belief that a resolution can be, or should be arrived at. However, in reality, most of the time, it is rather a question of holding the irresolution or the problem in a new awareness.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

There is no way set up for us. Moment after moment we have to find our own way.

Some idea of perfection, or some perfect way which is set up by someone else, is not the true way for us. Each one of us must make his own true way, and when we do, that way will express the universal way.

Shunryū Suzuki Roshi, 1904 –  1971

Do not resist

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.

Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.

Let reality be reality.

Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like

attributed to Lao Tzu