Tag: Life

Sunday Quote: Healing

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leaf

To heal

is to touch with love

that which we previously touched with fear.

Steven Levine

Stand back

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File:Domestic cat sleeping.JPG

Every day has enough trouble of its own

When you go to sleep

bury all that has happened in the mercy of God

It will be safe there

Stand back from what has happened

and be grateful for it all

When the new day begins

be sure that you yourself can be

new and pure as new light

It is like the resurrection

Rule for a New Brother

photo izemah

Contentment: Letting it land

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Acorns falling onto the ground.jpg

One or two practices from different traditions on letting go after work, or at the end of a day or a week, or maybe endings in general. They remind us of the wider perspective mentioned at the start of the week. It is linked to a sense of release, the opposite to the continual striving and adding on which we think will bring contentment.

[When] you get to the end of the meeting, the day, let that unravel. You cultivate the wisdom of no-performance and no-result. You listen to any judgements that are rattling in your mind, establish mindfulness on the mind-state and its feeling, then let the defenses and identities go. It’s a matter of acknowledging the inner helicopter that is hovering over ‘If only this’ and ‘I should have said that’ and ‘How dare they do this!’ and steadily touching the ground. Allow the feeling to be felt and breathe through it. Let it end, even let the wish that it all end come to an end. When the rotor blades stop, just here, on the other side of failure, is purity and release.

Ajahn Sucitto, Happy Deathday

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At home

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

autumn_leaves

Why do we always think that happiness is to be found in the future, or when this or that happens,

and not seek it in the life that we have or in the here and now?

I was passionate,
filled with longing,
I searched
far and wide.

But the day
that the Truthful One
found me,
I was at home.

Lal Ded, (Mother Lalla), 1320 – 1392, Kasmiri Hindu poet and mystic

Keeping space in the mind

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Blue grapes in vineyard.jpg

Another Monday morning. For some the beginning of a work week can come too soon, the weekend not allowing enough time to relax and wind down. Even from early the mind starts to speed up and get sucked into the details. To balance this, the wisdom and faith traditions place our daily and weekly activities in a wider context, allowing us to see beyond the dramas which play out in our minds,  with us at the center. They remind us that to hold a bigger, slower,  perspective, and to notice little moments of wonder as they present themselves to us, this day.

The sun,

with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it,

can still ripen a bunch of grapes

as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

Galileo

Sunday Quote: Still heart

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File:TofukujiReiunin1.jpg

In the still heart that refuses nothing,

the world is twice born.  

Jane Hirshfield