Tag: Life

That’s the key

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The teachings about recognizing egolessness sound quite abstract, but the path quality of that, the magic instruction that we have all received, the golden key is that part of the meditation technique where you recognize what’s happening with you and you say to yourself, “Thinking.” Then you let go of all the talking and the fabrication and discussion, and you’re left just sitting with the weather – the quality and the energy of the weather itself. Maybe you still have that quaky feeling or that churning feeling or that exploding feeling or that calm feeling or that dull feeling, as if you’d just been buried in the earth. You’re left with that. That’s the key: come to know that. 

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape

A wish for this …and every…. day

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

 

May all beings be happy.
May they be joyous and live in safety.
All living beings, whether weak or strong, in high or middle, or low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born,
May all beings be happy.
Let none deceive another nor despise any being in any state; let none
by anger or hatred wish harm to another.

Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should
one cherish all living things, suffusing love over the entire
world, above, below, and all around without limit;
so let each cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world.

Buddha, the Metta (Loving-Kindness) Sutra

Good questions

Karl Duffy1 Comment

As long as we are breathing,  there are infinite possibilities.

A good starting point is with a question: What if I completely let go of the fear body and were released from the gloomy future it predicted? And then another question: In the absence of fear what would I want my life to be about? And then another: In the absence of fear,  what would motivate me toward that life?

As we ask these questions and feel the resistance they provoke, we begin to recognize how hypnotized we are by the fear body. Recognizing our own neurosis is the beginning of freedom. 

Tim Burkett, Nothing Holy About it, The Zen of Being Just Who You Are

Being led

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led — make of that what you will.

Wedndell Berry, Jayber Crow, A Novel

A lightness of touch

Karl Duffy1 Comment

If we do our work with a focus on future results or only for those who are “deserving”, we are likely to start judging others and ourselves. Similarly, if we focus on ‘the way it should be’,  we get frustrated when it does not turn out that way.

Staying in the present moment, holding things lightly and with generosity, changes things; it is joyful and promotes gratitude

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection;

The water has no mind to retain their image.

Zen poem from the Zenrin-kushū, a 15th Century compilation of Zen writings

A new morning

Karl Duffy3 Comments

If only we could have this understanding each new day…

Nothing
in the world
is usual today.
This is
the first morning

Izumi Shikibu, born 976, Japanese poet.

She is considered the greatest poet of the Heian period