Tag: impermanence

Letting go of the things that change

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Things change so quickly. On Friday the news was dominated by weddings and dresses, by pomp and circumstance. Yesterday we awoke to news of  death and differences,  and to the insecurity it provokes.  Such changes can make the ground we stand on feel quite uncertain. However,  it is not just change on a world level but how we deal with the smaller changes in our lives that determines our ongoing  sense of inner peace and calm. We expend quite a lot of energy each day in trying to hold on to what is familiar and in attempting to make the world conform to how we would like it to be. The problem with this – other than the futile waste of energy – is that  we limit our ability to experience joy in the present moment as it actually is. If we approach moments with fear,  rather than opening to how they are, we cannot see the richness in them.

A contrary strategy works best: Stop trying to grasp, to control the world around you or the day ahead of you. In doing so you loosen the grip of fear and  give each experience the possibility to bring its richness.   Letting go of control lets go of suffering.

It is not because of impermanence that we suffer

But because of our ideas about permanence.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Sunday Quote: ….. Creating our future

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Both our present and our future depend on us.

From moment to moment, we are creating our future.

Tenzin Palmo

Studying meditation and its effect on aging

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A link to a report in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper about the effect meditation may have on genes and aging. It describes one of the largest pieces of research currently undergoing on the benefits of meditation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/apr/24/meditation-ageing-shamatha-project

How to be serene

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All the world religions and wisdom traditions come to the same conclusion: True contentment comes about through  working out, through the twists and turns of one’s own life, a personal understanding of these deeply different realities.

For whoever has learned to love,

for whoever has learned to suffer,

life is imbued with serene beauty

Br Roger

How our current story is put together

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When reality is formed through our personal view, we attempt to think our way out of pain, which simultaneously maintains our story and perpetuates the pain. The sense-of-self only knows how to handle problems and proceed using its story, which is composed of thoughts and emotions that have formed around past failures and successes. We prefer to tackle one problem at a time, resolving the first before moving onto the next. This strategy is derived from the storyteller who attempts to perpetuate his purpose  and meaning by resolving the difficulties of his story. Each resolved problem or failure confirms a growing self-image and adds a new chapter to our tale of woe or sense of nobility.

Rodney Smith, Stepping out of Self-Deception

What I want in my life

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled –
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything –  that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

Mary Oliver, The Ponds