Tag: Joy

90 seconds

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We have a choice. We can spend our whole life suffering because we can’t relax with how things really are, or we can relax and embrace the open-endedness of the human situation, which is fresh, unfixated, unbiased.

So the challenge is to notice the emotional tug of shenpa when it arises and to stay with it for one and a half minutes without the storyline. Can you do this once a day, or many times throughout the day, as the feeling arises? This is the challenge. This is the process of unmasking, letting go, opening the mind and heart.


Pema Chödrön, Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change

Cultivate patience

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Officially Springtime, and the clocks go forward this evening, but Ireland yesterday saw rain, hail and even snow in some places. Seek refuge indeed…

Cultivate your strengths, your patience, and take your refuge. Get established in your embodiment so your somatic energies know the place where it’s alright to not know, to be uncertain, to not have a clue. From there, good will arise, the good will come. This is the act of faith. The Dhamma field is a tremendous blessing that occurs when one takes that step in the dark with faith … and lingers and stays.

Ajahn Sucitto

Dropping the question

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The question of meaning in life is, as the Buddha thought, not edifying.

One must immerse oneself into the river of life and let the question drift away.

Irvin Yalom, The Gift of Therapy

Inside and all around

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The Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. What we need is already here, inside or all around us

If your spiritual guides say to you,
‘Look, the divine Realm is
in the sky’……. well then the birds
will get there ahead of you.
If they say, ‘It is in the sea’….. then the fish will precede you.

No, divine Reality exists inside and all around you.
When you come to know your true Self, you will be fully known —
realizing at last that you are a child of the Living One.
If, however, you never come to know
who you truly are,
you are a poverty-stricken being,
and it is your ‘self’ which will be impoverished.

The Gospel of Thomas, c 120 AD.

Be patient

Karl Duffy1 Comment

A way of working with difficult moments, difficult emotions and with these difficult times:

When you’re like a keg of dynamite just about to go off, patience means just slowing down at that point – just pausing- instead of immediately acting on your usual, habitual response. You refrain from acting, you stop talking to yourself, and then you connect with the soft spot. But at the same time you are completely and totally honest with yourself about what you are feeling. You’re not suppressing anything; patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself. That frustration, that uneasiness and vulnerability is nothing solid. And yet it is painful to experience. Just wait and be patient with your anguish and with the discomfort of it. This means relaxing with that restless energy – knowing it’s the only way to find peace for ourselves.

Pema Chodron, Practicing Peace in Times of War

Sunday Quote: Drained

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Limp along until your legs are spent, and you fall flat and your energy is drained.

Then the grace of the Divine will lift you.

Rumi