Tag: Meditation

Noticing happiness

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Thich-nhat-hanh-i-am-home-i-have-arrived_largeTo take an in-breath and  touch the conditions of happiness that are available, is something that all of us can do. Because of that we can stop and establish ourselves in the present moment. That is the teaching of living happily in the present moment. Please train yourself to make the present moment, the here and the now, into your true home. That is the only home that we have. That is the only place where we can touch life. Everything we are looking for must be found in the here and the now.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Healing by our presence

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Since the condition that has caused our dis-ease is a fixed, partial view of our experience, we cannot promote healing just by adopting a different view. It might be a better view, it might be a wonderful view, it might be the greatest view of reality in the world, but it will not be healing if it’s just another set of beliefs and attitudes. Instead of building bigger or fancier boxes, we need to develop the antidote to all our partial views of reality: being present with our experience as it is. We could call it beginner’s mind. This is unconditional presence. As Suzuki Roshi says “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few” We have all become experts at being ourselves, and in so doing we have lost our ability to be present with our experience in a fresh, open-minded way.

John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening

Not getting in the way

Karl Duffy1 Comment

awake2Just like the question “Can you see your own eyes?” Nobody can see their own eyes. I can see your eyes but I can’t see my eyes. I’m sitting right here, I’ve got two eyes and I can’t see them. But you can see my eyes. But there’s no need for me to see my eyes because I can see! It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? If I started saying “Why can’t I see my own eyes?” you’d think “Ajahn Sumedho’s really weird, isn’t he!” Looking in a mirror you can see a reflection, but that’s not your eyes, it’s a reflection of your eyes. There’s no way that I’ve been able to look and see my own eyes, but then it’s not necessary to see your own eyes. It’s not necessary to know who it is that knows — because there’s knowing.

Ajahn Sumedho

Sometimes waiting is good

Karl Duffy2 Comments

 

Many people believe that emptiness is a lifeless void of nothingness that leads to emotional or mental paralysis.

However, emptiness, when timed correctly in the healing process, leads to freedom…

It serves as the space of transition…

Donald Epstein, The 12 Stages of Healing

Resting our mind

Karl Duffy1 Comment

474676v1Mindfulness involves resting our mind in a place where there is no anxiety, no fear. In fact, in that place we find the opposite. We find resourcefulness, courage, and a quiet happening. Where is that “place”? It is not a geographical location. It is not a location in time. It is the flowing time and place of the present moment. Anxiety is fuelled by thoughts of past and future. When we drop those thoughts, we drop anxiety and find ourselves at ease.

Jan Chozen Bays, How to Train a Wild Elephant

The challenge of the Journey

Karl Duffy2 Comments
File:Path.JPGThen you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses . . .and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.    Exodus 12: 7 & 13

They thought they were safe
that spring night; when they daubed
the doorways with sacrificial blood.
To be sure, the angel of death
passed them over, but for what?
Forty years in the desert
without a home, without a bed,
following new laws to an unknown land.
Easier to have died in Egypt
or stayed there a slave, pretending
there was safety in the old familiar.

But the promise, from those first
naked days outside the garden,
is that there is no safety,
only the terrible blessing
of the journey. You were born
through a doorway marked in blood.
We are, all of us, passed over,
brushed in the night by terrible wings.

Ask that fierce presence,
whose imagination you hold.
God did not promise that we shall live,
but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
brilliant in the desert sky.

Lynn Ungar, Passover