Tag: impermanence

The two dynamics

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Playing hide and seek with the animals at the zoo (14466807451).jpg

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible. Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty.

John O Donohue

photo benson kua

Non duality

Karl Duffy2 Comments

trees333

Look at love – how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

look at spirit – how it fuses with earth
giving it new life.

Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known

why think separately of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire, earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the deer
far away yet together

look at the unity of this
spring and winter, manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane, sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be.

Rumi, Look at Love

Lightness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Look Ma, I can Jump!.jpg

Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.

Eckhart Tolle

photo pam

To wait

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Hasedera-Kamakura--Nagomijizo.jpg

To listen to your soul is to stop fighting with life – to stop fighting when things fall apart; when they don’t go our way, when we get sick, when we are betrayed or mistreated or misunderstood. To listen to the soul is to slow down, to feel deeply, to see ourselves clearly, to surrender to discomfort and uncertainty and to wait.

Elizabeth Lesser.

Not wanted

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Brotherhood at the top of Afghanistan DVIDS362051.jpg

Saying yes to everything in a day, including things we would prefer not to be happening, is not easy, but it helps us remember that life is made up of both pleasant and unpleasant:

Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water —

not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.

Jane Hirshfield, A Cedary Fragance from Given Sugar, Given Salt

The wisest way

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Sunset (5198999906).jpg

If you must look back,  do so forgivingly

If you must look forward,  do so prayerfully

However, the wisest thing you can do

is to be present in the present….

gratefully.

Maya Angelou

photo don toofee