Tag: Life

Unique path

Karl Duffy1 Comment

little birdEvery person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique. It is the duty of every person…to know and consider…that there has never been anyone like him in the world, for if there had been someone like him, there would have been no need for him to be in the world. Every single person is a new thing in the world and is called upon to fulfill his particularity in this world. Every person’s foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, be it even the greatest, has already achieved.

Martin Buber

Travelling light

Karl Duffy6 Comments

File:Berlin hauptbahnhof drei rollkoffer 15.04.2011 15-07-46.JPG

There is an old story of a famous rabbi living in Europe who was visited one day by a man who had traveled by ship from New York to see him. The man came to the great rabbi’s dwelling, a large house on a street in a European city, and was directed to the rabbi’s room, which was in the attic. He entered to find the master living in a room with a bed, a chair, and a few books. The man had expected much more.  After greetings, he asked, “Rabbi, where are your things?” The rabbi asked in return, “Well, where are yours?” His visitor replied, “But, Rabbi, I’m only passing through,” and the master answered, “So am I, So am I.”

This is not a lesson to be put off. One great teacher explained it this way: “The trouble with you is that you think you have time.” We don’t know how much time we have. What would it be like to live with the knowledge that this may be our last year, our last week, our last day? In light of this question, we can choose a path with heart.

Jack Kornfield,  A Path With Heart

photo dirk ingo franke

The slow pace of creation

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Early Morning Driveway.jpg

Slowing how we think and feel and take in the world is directly related to being centered. The wisdom traditions all have some form of meditation and prayer that is aimed at slowing us into this center, where the very pace of creation breathes…..At the pace of creation, all things breathe the same way….So, when we slow and open and center ourselves, we breathe in unison with all of life, and breathing this way we draw strength from all of life.  At the pace of creation, the beginning enters us and we are new.

Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

photo josh hallett

Trust

Karl Duffy1 Comment

buds2

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

David Whyte

A different strength

Karl Duffy1 Comment

sitting

Too often, people think that solving problems is based on conquering the earth,

rather than touching the earth,

touching ground.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Travelling at night

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Photo art.triddle.jpg

E.L. Doctorow said once said that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life

photo triddle