Holding things and oneself lightly

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The practice of mindfulness has as its overall goal the reduction of suffering and an increase in fullness in the totality of our lives. But in order for us to see the actual benefits now, whether here in Ireland or wherever you are reading this,  we need to practice it with the big and small moments of each day. This profound text indicates one way we do this. Mindfulness has a quality of not wobbling in the face of the different winds that blow us, the difficulties and changes which we face in our day-to-day living. Persistent practice allows us to hold ourselves more lightly, and not be as strongly fused with the story we maintain about how our lives should be or how certain moments in the day should go. One way of saying this is that we are not as attached, or not clinging, to outcomes, or to some fixed aspects of our identity. In this way changes and unexpected turnings do not bring the same dismay as once they did:

How do we arrive at non-agitation through non-clinging?

When the instructed person does not regard form with these words: “This is mine, this I am, this is my self.”

The form of his changes and alters,

but with the change and alteration of form,

sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure and despair do not arise.

The Buddha, S 22.8
photo dmitry rozhkov

Grounded

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Our bodies know they belong,
It’s our minds that make our lives so homeless.

John O’Donohue

Just being fully present

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Here it is – right now.

Start thinking about it and you miss it.

Huang Po, Chinese Zen Master,  died 850

A mind that is astonished

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Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.

 How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will

never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

 Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

 Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

 Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes

Conscious breathing

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Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.

Conscious breathing is my anchor.

Thích Nhất Hạnh, Stepping into Freedom

Sunday Quote: what we miss

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The whole of life lies in the verb “seeing”

Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit theologian and palaeontologist