Tag: Joy

When complicated gets in the way

Karl Duffy2 Comments

What I encourage is a moving toward simplicity, rather than complexity. We’re already complicated personalities. Our cultural and social conditioning is usually very complicated. We’re educated and literate, which means that we know a lot and have a lot of experience. This means that we are no longer simple. We’ve lost the simplicity that we had as children and have become rather complicated characters….What is most simple is to wake up – it’s as simple as that. The most profound teaching is the phrase “wake up”. Hearing this, one then asks, “what am I supposed to do next?” We complicate it again because we’re not used to being really awake and fully present. We’re used to thinking about things and analyzing them; trying to get something or get rid of something; achieving and attaining.

Ajahn Sumedho, Intuitive Awareness

Not getting tired

Karl Duffy4 Comments

I saw a programme recently on G.K Chesterson and was reminded of this quote, similar in theme to the poem published yesterday morning.  In it he encourages us to have eyes like children, seeing things as if for the first time, not tired and dulled by the fact that we have seen them before:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G.K Chesterson

Seeing today for the first time

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

P1000461Do not say, ‘It is morning,’
and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.
See it for the first time
as a newborn child that has no name.

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Everything comes to us that belongs to us
if we create the capacity to receive it.

Faith is the bird that feels the light
when the dawn is still dark.

From the solemn gloom of the temple
children run out to sit in the dust,
God watches them play and forgets the priest.

I have become my own version of an optimist.
If I can’t make it through one door,
I’ll go through another door – or I’ll make a door.
Something terrific will come
no matter how dark the present.

Rabindranath Tagore

Starting again, with this moment

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to being present. There is no “performance”. There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or get anywhere else. We are not even running after special insights or visions. Nor are we forcing ourselves to be non-judgmental, calm, or relaxed. And we are certainly not promoting self-consciousness or indulging in self-preoccupation. Rather, we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness and equanimity right here and right now.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Sunday Quote: A Project for the New Year

Karl Duffy1 Comment

 

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white.

Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

Lao Tzu

A fresh start

Karl Duffy2 Comments

/files/Stepping Stones/stepping-stones-1.jpgStart close in, don’t take the second step
or the third, start with the first
thing close in,
the step you don’t want to take.

 Start with the ground you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own way of starting
the conversation.

 Start with your own
question, give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them smother something
simple.

To find another’s voice
follow your own voice,
wait until that voice
becomes a private ear
listening to another.

 Start right now, take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused, start close in,
don’t mistake that other
for your own.

 Start close in,don’t take the second step
or the third, start with the first
thing close in,
the step you don’t want to take.

David Whyte, Start Close in