Tag: Joy

Let go of the small sense of self.

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Meditation comes  alive through a growing capacity to release our habitual entanglement in the stories and plans, conflicts and worries that make up the small sense of self, and to rest in awareness. In meditation we do this simply by acknowledging the moment-to-moment changing conditions — the pleasure and pain, the praise and blame, the litany of ideas and expectations that arise. Without identifying with them, we can rest in the awareness itself, beyond conditions, and experience what my teacher Ajahn Chah called jai pongsai, our natural lightness of heart. Developing this capacity to rest in awareness nourishes samadhi (concentration), which stabilizes and clarifies the mind, and prajna (wisdom), that sees things as they are.

Jack Kornfield, A Mind like Sky: Wise Attention, Open Awareness.

Noticing the Dualistic mind today

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In the face of the economic hardship the world is now suffering, it is possible for us to spin out and become very dualistic. When we are not sure what’s going on, we react with fear and start labeling things black or white, good or bad, doomed to fail or destined to succeed. The process of labeling something because we are not sure what it is further increases the illusion of duality. Dualistic mind creates an aggressive scenario because we project a “self” and “other,” and this process becomes a cycle: the heavier the dualism, the heavier the fear.

What virtues can we develop to overcome the fear that freezes life into a dualistic illusion? Gentleness is key in overcoming the aggression that results from the process of fixating. We’re living in a time when even within our own mind, it is difficult to find peace. We label many faults in ourselves; we become harsh with ourselves. When we’re unable to find peace with ourselves, it becomes difficult to find peace with each other. So we must begin to practice peace by being gentle with ourselves. When we are gentle with ourselves, we are naturally gentle with others.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, It’s Not Us and Them


Why difficulties are necessary

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Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile.

Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way.

David Whyte

Where joy comes from

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Joy seems to be part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences or expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole  and to show up and meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us. This willingness to win or lose moves us out of an adversarial relationship to life and into a powerful kind of openness. From such a position we can make a greater commitment to life. Not only pleasant life or comfortable life, or our idea of life, but all life. Joy seems more closely related to aliveness than to happiness.

Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom

This will never come again

Karl Duffy2 Comments
That it will never come again, Is what makes life so sweet. Emily Dickenson

What exactly is Emily Dickenson writing about. She’s writing about just this.  This wonderful, clear, bright, blue day. It won’t come again. There will be other, very similar days, no doubt. But this day will not return. And you sitting here reading this, you will not sit down in this same way, with these same thoughts and feelings. None of this will be the same again. Even as you set down this book and leave the room, you’ll not be the person who walked in. This will never come again. This is always the case. That this will never come again is what it actually means to be born again and again. We and indeed the whole world are born repeatedly, over and over, in each new moment…What makes human life – which is inseparable from this moment – so precious, is its fleeting nature.

Steve Hagan, Buddhism is Not what You Think

Photo : Assisi, Early Morning, Easter

Sunday Quote: Joy

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If you start looking at life with joy,

sadness starts disappearing.

You cannot have heaven and hell together,

you can have only one.

It is your choice.

Osho