Tag: Life

When things don’t turn out as planned

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Patience and waiting are some of the themes of this season of Advent

So there has been a blockage in terms of what we expect. It happens quite often: the bus or train is late; the visitor doesn’t show up; the machine breaks down – and so on. And when that happens, your mind can do one of a number of things. Firstly, you can get annoyed and blame someone (or blame yourself). Secondly, you can feel depressed and cheated by life. Thirdly, you can wait patiently. And finally, your mind can pause, open and appreciate the space where the will relaxes and it feels good to be conscious with nothing to do and nowhere to go. 

The significant point is that when you can’t get what you want, your underlying tendencies to get exasperated or feel let down come up – and they then interpret the situation as ‘lazy disorganized people’ or ‘no one considers my feelings’. Actually there are generally a number of causes as to why things don’t go my way — the Buddha just called it ‘dukkha’ – but the immediate reaction and interpretation are an indication of tendencies in one’s own mind. 

We don’t have to guess at why things aren’t going according to plan; and jumping to a conclusion is always a move into the shadows of one’s own mind.  So, pause. A pause is not a disapproval or a judgement; it’s an opening of attention.  Pausing is an essential, deep and accessible practice.

Ajahn Sucitto, Learning the Pause

Clutter

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The time has come
To stop allowing the clutter
To clutter my mind
Like dirty snow,
Shove it off and find
Clear time, clear water.

May Sarton, New Year Resolve

Seeking real treasure

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I have just three things to teach

Simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures:

Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 67

A rush to consume

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In the second Noble Truth, the Buddha identified taṇhā – the urge to become, to have or consume more – as a main cause of our subtle discontent and ongoing stress.  However, this underlying drive to consume can be observed and then its power diminishes. This is one meaning of “waking up”: becoming free by cutting off the momentum towards unhappiness at its source

If you sleep, restless craving (taṇhā) grows in you like a vine in the forest. Like a monkey in the forest you jump from tree to tree, never finding the fruit – from life to life, never finding peace. If you are filled with this restless craving, your sorrows will multiply like the grass growing after rain. But if you let craving go, your sorrows fall from you like drops of water from a lotus flower. This is good advice and it is for everyone: as the grass is cleared for fresh planting, let go of grasping lest death after death crush you as a river crushes helpless reeds. For if the roots hold firm, the felled tree grows up again. And if restless craving is not uprooted, sorrows will grow again in you.

Dhammapada

Slowing Down

Karl Duffy2 Comments

The end of the year in the Christian Calendar. A different rhythm begins tomorrow with the start of Advent

In this world of speed and distraction, choosing to be less busy feels almost countercultural; slowing down, eccentric. Perhaps it is, for there’s no denying the expansive, time-bending effects of awareness. Sometimes, I do call it meditation: I sit cross-legged on a cushion in my yoga room; I set a timer and focus on my breath, bringing my attention to bear on the elusive, invisible third eye in the center of my brow point. These sittings are humbling: My mind sneaks away, I chase it down, lead it back, tie it again and again to my breath. Eventually, if I’m not in a rush to get on to the next thing, a small, silent space clears. I savor the taste of quiet, roll it around on my tongue, feel the day’s contours softening and opening around me.

Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment

Moments in themselves

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Psychologist Steve Taylor recalls watching tourists in the British Museum in London who weren’t really looking at the Rosetta Stone…on display in front of them , so much as preparing to look at it later, by recording images and videos on their phones. So intently were they focusing on using their time for a future benefit – for the ability to revisit or share the experience later on – that they were barely experiencing the exhibition itself at all. Of course, grumbling about young peoples smartphone habits is a favourite pastime of middle-aged curmudgeons like Taylor and me. But his deeper point is that we are all frequently guilty of something similar. We treat everything we’re doing – life itself in other words – as valuable only insofar as it lays the groundwork for something else.

from the always interesting Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to LIve it