Tag: impermanence

Thinking we make the moves

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Chess-king.JPG

Maybe something to remember when something bothers us today, and we take it very seriously….

What is the difference
Between your experience of life
And that of a saint?

The saint knows that the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved has just made such a Fantastic Move

that the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I’m afraid you still think

You have a thousand serious moves.

 Hafiz, Tripping Over Joy

What is passing and what remains

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
File:Geese flying near mount scott vertical.JPG
In Sung China, 
two monks friends for sixty years watch the geese pass.
Where are they going?
one tested the other, who couldn’t say.

That moment’s silence continues.

No one will study their friendship
in the koan-books of insight.
No one will remember their names.

I think of them sometimes, standing, perplexed by sadness,
goose-down sewn into their quilted autumn robes.

Almost swallowed by the vastness of the mountains,
but not yet.

As the barely audible
geese are not yet swallowed;
as even we, my love, will not entirely be lost.
Jane Hirshfield, Lives of the Heart
photo schyler at english wipipedia

More learnings from autumn

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Acorns falling onto the ground.jpg

Everything is meant to be let go of,  so that the person may stand in unhampered nothingness

Meister Eckhard

Just as a snake sheds its skin,

so we should shed our past, over and over again

The Buddha

photo muffet

Getting a glimpse in a moment

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Migrating Sandhills departing Barr Lake (1579868329).jpg

When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash – at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the “newness,” the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

A famous Zen poem reads: “The old Pond. A frog jumps in. Plop”  This is a wonderful description of bare attention. The poet, Basho, goes directly to the essence of his experience: the pond, frog, plop. We can say that in meditation we are developing “plop mind”. We are stripping away everything that is extraneous to our immediate experience and simply being present with what is happening. This is bare attention: direct, essential, non-interfering.

Joseph Goldstein, Bare Attention

photo Louis

Being disturbed

Karl Duffy4 Comments

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May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

may you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

may the forms of your belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship –
be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

may the one you long for long for you.
may your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

may a secret providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

may your mind inhabit your life with the sureness
with which your body inhabits the world.

may your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

may you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

may you know the urgency with which God longs for you.

John O Donohue

A special place and time

Karl DuffyLeave a comment
File:You are here.jpg
The Place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you.
 
 Hafiz