Tag: Joy

For the good

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Albert Einstein once said that the most important question a human being could answer is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ A spiritually optimistic point of view holds that the universe is woven out of a fabric of love. Everything that is happening is ultimately for the good if we are willing to face it head-on and use our adversities for soul growth. As soon as we begin to …..open to faith in a friendly universe, the proverbial path opens before us. The people, events and teachings we need are supplied. This is the action of grace.

Joan Borysenko, Fire in the Soul: A New Spirituality of Spiritual Optimism

Opportunities for joy

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Our notions about happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form

Thich Nhat Hanh

A flash of lightning

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A lot of thunderstorms these days in Ireland

The Buddha often used images to try to convey some of this sense of all appearances arising, with nothing we can hold on to. He said life is like a rainbow, an echo, a dream, a drop of dew on a blade of grass, a flash of lightning in a summer sky.

What does a deeper glimpse into this truth of change offer us, ultimately? We see that there is a tender, exultant beauty to every hour, in fact to every minute we have just because we are alive. ..The fragility and dynamism of life is what makes it so vital. Every experience, every encounter, every realized desire, and every unfulfilled longing that comes into our lives is moving, changing…

Life is short, and it is sacred

Sharon Salzberg, Real LIfe: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom

Build your own

Karl Duffy5 Comments

This is where we run into trouble in terms of being fulfilled… You have to make your own happiness, wherever you are.

Your job isn’t going to make you happy, your spouse isn’t going to make you happy, the weather isn’t going to make you happy… You have to decide what you want, and you have to find that way of doing it, whether or not the outside circumstances are going to participate in your success… You have to be able to create your own happiness, period.

Jonathan Fields, American author, in interview with Debbie Millman on the GoodLIfe Project

Big Mind

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From the great Suzuki Roshi. A lot to ponder here but I do like the idea of seeing all that happens as an unfolding of big mind:

Because we enjoy all aspects of life as an unfolding of big mind,

we do not care for any excessive joy.

So we have imperturbable composure.

Shunryu Suzuki Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 

Being with what is

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At any moment, whatever we are experiencing, only one of two things is ever happening: either we are being with what is, or else we are resisting what is.

Being with what is means letting ourselves have and feel our experience, just as it is right now. …

This is where genuine creativity, health, and communication, as well as spiritual power, arise from.

John Welwood