Tag: Life

What are you going through?

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Mindfulness practice strengthens our capacity to be present for all that is happening in our lives. It also creates a space within so that we can be present to others. It is easy to be there when people are in good space, or when they make us feel good about ourselves. However, as the French Philosopher Simone Weil says in this beautiful quote,  friendship is truly shown when one is able to ask the other  “What are you going through?”. This requires courage and inner strength. To stick with another person when they are confused or frightened requires that we are able to put aside our own concerns for a moment and attend to them. Full attention is the most precious gift we can give another. It is not always easy because of our own needs and the believed story that goes on in our head when we encounter another person. Furthermore, when another person is afraid, it often raises fears in us and our first tendency is to withdraw. Paying attention means we are able to step back from our own stories and be there.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not have it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough. In the first legend of the Grail it is said that the Grail belongs to the first comer who asks the guardian of the vessel, a king paralysed by the most painful wound, “What is wrong with you? What are you going through?” Only the person who is capable of attention can do this.

Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Well being comes from within

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We expend a lot of effort to improve the external conditions of our lives, but in the end it is always the mind that creates our experience of the world and translates this experience into either well-being or suffering

Matthieu Ricard

The goodness in life

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It is a beautiful morning here, and as I said, being Irish, the Spring season has already started for me.  This Mary Oliver poem captures the day perfectly. It shows how attention to what is present in any moment, especially in the beauty of nature, and having the space to taste and hear it, leads to a deep joy in life. It is not always possible with the troubles and hassles of work, so we should take her advice: Go outside and just look, listen. Life is good.


It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves—
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness—
and that’s when it happened,

when I seemed to float, to be, myself, a wing or a tree—
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing—
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky— all, all of them

were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed, so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last

for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,

is that, once you’ve been there, you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Mary Oliver, Such Singing in the Wild Branches

Staying fluid 1: Fear and hurt mean we put labels on things

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. Thomas Merton

It is a good practice to keep the heart soft and the stories we tell ourselves fluid, but it is not always easy. We can get locked into the hurt of a certain moment and find it hard to move beyond that. It becomes attached to a particular story. Our practice encourages us to keep moving to the present, and not allow a past event limit how we enjoy life. Sometimes we will never get perfect explanations, or full understanding. We still have a choice: will we stay stuck in a moment we can’t get out of or accepting that it happened, open to the way the present moment actually is, as one full of new and future possibilities.

Someone is walking toward us — suddenly we freeze. Not only do we freeze ourselves, but we also freeze the space in which the person is walking toward us. We call him “friend” who is walking through this space or “enemy.” Thus the person is automatically walking through a frozen situation of fixed ideas — “this is that” or “this is not that.” This is what is called “wrong view.” It is a conceptualized view which is imperfect because we do not see the situation as it is.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

How to bring light into the dark places within us

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In the Christian Calendar today is the feast of Candlemas. While not as old as the Celtic feast of yesterday, it does date from the 4th Century in Jerusalem, and reflects the same need to mark this period of winter with light and hope. Traditionally it was celebrated by a procession of candles and the blessing of candles for use in the home.

From time to time difficulties occur in our lives which can then seem dark and without hope. Bringing awareness to what is going on inside us at those moments can allow light to shine in the darkness. We sit and observe  what arises and passes away in the mind and body. We  name it – “there is anger“, “there is fear” – thus creating a gap and allowing what we experience to become something known. In this way, our mood and behaviour will not be shaped entirely by invisible, unconscious conditioning, but can become a more reflective response.

When we meditate, we kindle a fire that never dies away.

When we meditate, we’re not idly passing time. In following the breath and learning to deal with our thoughts, we’re laying the foundation for a shift in attitude that has the power to change our lives in a truly meaningful way. There’s a lot of darkness and aggression in our world. Developing our best qualities has an immediate effect on ourselves and others. When we apply ourselves in practice, we’re not only doing something very present; we’re also creating the conditions for how our lives can move forward.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Fear as a constant companion

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

One more post prompted by recent references to Adam and Eve. These ancient stories attempt to do justice to the fundamental truth of the human condition, using the language  of  those days. And we are told that after they ate of the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve hid themselves. This simple fact – the need to hide and protect themselves, the existence of judgmental thoughts and guilty emotions – alerted God to the fact that something had changed. When he asked them why they were hiding, Adam replied “I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself”

As I said, the writers were reflecting on what their own experience was. And it is similar to ours. We feel fear and that leads us to pull back and hide from others, because of the anticipation that we will get hurt. The openness and ease of the original days is not easy to find, even in the closest relationships. And most of us have been hurt along the way, from early childhood onwards. There is a relationship between how reliable things were in our childhood and how confused and difficult our relationships are as adults. So there can be an ongoing struggle between the part of us that loves and the part of us that fears, the part that wishes to be open and be seen and the part that want to protect itself and hide. And so all of us will struggle from time to time to keep believing in love, in allowing ourselves get close to others.

What we can learn from these ancient stories is that some undercurrent of fear has always been present in human history and will likely always be present in our lives. The difference between adulthood and childhood is that we do not have to allow it dominate. We can act in spite of our fears. Mindfulness is based on this same understanding that there are fears  at the heart of life, and that  does not mean there is anything wrong with our life, or with us,  just because we feel them. We do not have to turn this fact into a judgment about ourselves or others. We can choose not to hide. We can work through our fears.