Tag: impermanence

Asking for the impossible

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:CrackedBellOzumba.JPG

Whenever you experience any pain or difficulty, always remember one of the deep meanings of the word suffering: asking the world for something it can never give you. We expect and ask impossible things from the world. We ask for the perfect home and job and that all the things we work hard to build and arrange run perfectly at the right time and place. Of course, that is asking for something that can never be given. We ask for profound meditation and enlightenment, right here and now. But that’s not the way this universe works. If you ask for something that the world can’t supply, you should understand that you’re asking for suffering. So whether you work or meditate, please accept that things will go wrong from time to time. Your job is not to ask for things the world can’t give you. Your job is to observe.

Ajahn Brahm, It all goes wrong anyway

photo alejandrollinaresgarcia

The bare bones

Karl Duffy3 Comments

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Come back to square one, just the minimum bare bones:

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time – that this the basic message

Pema Chodron

photo Immanuel giel

Everything we need to know

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

He thought that if he stood on the bottom rail of the bridge and leant over, 

and watched the river slipping slowly away beneath him,

then he would suddenly know everything that  there was to be known.

A. A Milne, The House at Pooh Corner, chapter 6

Moment by Moment

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Kells Bridge - geograph.org.uk - 1391830.jpg

A post from an Irish author, to mark St Patrick’s Day

I would love to live like a river flows,

carried by the surprise of its own unfolding

John O’Donohue

photo of Kells Bridge over the Kings River by Mike Searle

Watching it pass by

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Man sitting on high hill and watching river down.jpg

Through mindfulness practice you began to experience how conditioned the world is and how these conditions constantly change. To free ourselves, we need to quieten the mind through some mindfulness in meditation. Then, instead of identifying with the changing conditions, we learn to release them and turn toward consciousness itself, to rest in the knowing. Ajahn Chah called this pure awareness, “the original mind,” and resting in “the one who knows.” We can be in the midst of an experience, being upset or angry or caught by some problem, and then step back from it and rest in pure awareness. We let go.

Jack Kornfield, This Fantastic, Unfolding Experiment

Storms of life

Karl Duffy3 Comments

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And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

photo huhu uet