Tag: impermanence

Not limiting

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When you are identified on the level of “I am the body and I am my feelings, thoughts and memories”, you’re always limiting, binding yourself to unsatisfactory conditions. These conditions can never satisfy you, because they’re changing: when you try to find security and lasting happiness in things that are forever changing, you’re going to be terribly disappointed. You going to feel this… sense of lack, and we tend to take that as a very personal flaw: “There’s something wrong with me. What’s wrong with me that I should feel lonely, inadequate, incomplete, or unfulfilled?“

Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of SIlence

A tolerance for not knowing

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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John Keats, the great English Romantic poet, writing  about the qualities needed for  full openness to the infinite depth of the world and of the person:

When man is capable of being in uncertainties,

Mysteries, doubts,

without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.

Letter to George and Tom Keats,  December 1817

photo: heather

…..finished and unfinished

Karl Duffy3 Comments

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I love this quote from Karl Rahner, one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the last Century. There is a great comfort in knowing in our bones the truth of these words. We have to continually balance two aspects within us: one which wants to know everything, to be everywhere, to be faithful to the energy and desire within. The other is that restlessness which knows that this can never really be possible, and that how we relate to what we don’t know is ultimately more important than what we do know.

In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable

we eventually learn that here, in this life,

all symphonies remain unfinished

Light and shade….

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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The Full Moon is more beautiful

when partially obscured by clouds.

Murata Shuko

Life as it is

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Those who don’t love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either. Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain or even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat  ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength and greatness.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Bare Attention

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Mindfulness and some anxiety problems

Just know what is happening in your mind: not happy or sad about it, not attached.

If you suffer – see it, know it, and be empty.

It’s like a letter – you have to open it before you can know what’s in it.

Ajahn Chah