Tag: Joy

Mindfulness is simply being who you are

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The complete teaching …… is how to rediscover who we are. We are continuously distracted from coming to our natural state, our natural being. Throughout our day everything pulls us away from natural mindfulness, from being on the spot. We’re either too scared or too embarrassed or too proud, or just too crazy, to be who we are. This is what we call the journey or the path: continuously trying to recognize that we can actually relax and be who we are. 

So practicing meditation begins by simplifying everything. We sit on the cushion, follow our breath and watch our thoughts. We simplify our whole situation. What we’re doing is taming our mind. We’re trying to overcome all sorts of anxieties and agitation, all sorts of habitual thought patterns, so we are able to sit with ourselves. Life is difficult, we may have tremendous responsibilities, but the odd thing, the twisted logic, is that the way we relate to the basic flow of our life is to sit completely still. It might seem more logical to speed up, but here we are reducing everything to a very basic level.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Sunday Quote: Where we seek

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. 

All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.

Shantideva

Being courageous today

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Courage is like –  it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue:

you get it by courageous acts.

It’s like you learn to swim by swimming.

You learn courage by couraging.

Mary Daly

Surviving life, with its ups and downs

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

We just need to remember to practice relaxing into our life, in all its joys and sorrows, and to relinquish the need to know what’s going to happen next. The third element of patience is acceptance of the truth, meaning that we accept our experience as it is – with all its suffering – rather than how we want it to be. We recognize that because our experience is continually changing, we don’t need it to be different than it is. This acceptance of  “things as they are” requires profound wisdom and compassion, which takes a long time to evolve; we must therefore develop a long-enduring mind that will enable us to understand time from a radically new perspective.

Michele McDonald, Finding patience

Bring your mind to the present moment

Karl Duffy2 Comments

I think the most important thing is to consciously choose to bring your mind to the present moment. How do you do that? You decide that you’re going to see what your eyes are looking at; you bring your consciousness to the present moment. When you are going up the stairs, you look at the steps, you look at the handrail. Most of us unconsciously climb the steps, never think about the steps, can’t even say what the color of the carpet is, if there is a carpet, because we’re somewhere else.

Pay attention to the present moment. Bring your mind, bring your ears to the present moment, start savoring the awareness of the information you perceive in the present moment, and let that grow. And it’s like with any circuitry: the more you concentrate on it and experience it, the more it will develop itself.

Jill Boite Taylor

It is the heart that notices

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The weather has changed these days. Not as settled or as consistently warm as it has been in the previous weeks. However, the wind brings a different texture. Why do we prefer one thing to another? Things are different, but equally beautiful.

The dance of the flower in the wind, in the sun, in the rain,

cannot be understood by the head;

the heart has to be open for it.

Osho