Tag: Meditation

Good news

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Dandelion and Ocean.jpg

The good news they do not print.
The good news  we do print.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
that the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available: hugging is possible.

They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile, singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head. Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow, of preoccupation,
and get free.

The latest good news
is that you can do it

Thich Nhat Hanh

photo Paul Davidson

Running just to stand still

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Busy.jpg

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!

The Red Queen, in Through the Looking Glass

photo trishna datta

Being awake

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Bumblebee

There’s not a good way to come into meditation or a bad way to come into meditation. It might feel preferable to show up feeling calm and spacious, but really meditation is about being awake and present to whatever is going on. You can’t critique your meditation in terms of good and bad. The only thing you can measure your meditation against is the question: “Was I present or not?” And even then, to say to yourself that you weren’t present is a result of the fact that you’ve been meditating and you recognized that fact. There’s some sense of awareness about what is actually happening.

Pema Chodron, How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with your mind

Our restless heart

Karl Duffy1 Comment

tree

I love you, gentlest of Ways,
who ripened us as we wrestled with you.

you, the great homesickness we could never shake off,
you, the forest that always surrounded us,

you, the song we sang in every silence,
you dark net threading through us,

on the day you made us you created yourself,
and we grew sturdy in your sunlight…

let your hand rest on the rim of heaven now and mutely bear the darkness we bring over you.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours,  translation anita barrows and joanna macy

Losing touch with the real

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blossom falling

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts,

so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusion.


Alan Watts

Another passing thing

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Looking Outside

Clinging is weakened by the activity of meditation. For example, we sit quietly and experience the flow of feeling, the dependent and changing experience of our bodily form, and all the “I should do it” programs twitching in the mind. And through meditating we can unhook the reactions and reflex-activities by focusing on their changeability. This practice, although based on ethics and sense-restraint, doesn’t attempt to affect the topics that the mind is carrying in its perceptions and volitions….so that whatever our impulse or perception is, it’s just seen as another passing thing.

Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth