Tag: Meditation

Having and being enough, today

Karl Duffy4 Comments

We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.

Lynne Twist, The Surprising Truth of Sufficiency

 

The surprising way our vision of life enlarges

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Our practice throughout our lifetime is just this: At any given time we have a rigid viewpoint or stance about life; it includes some things, it excludes others. We may stick with it for a long time, but if we are sincerely practicing our practice itself will shake up that viewpoint; we can’t maintain it. As we begin to question our viewpoint we may feel struggle, upset, as we try to come to terms with this new insight into our life; and for a long time we may deny it and struggle against it. That’s part of practice. Finally we become willing to experience our suffering instead of fighting it. When we do so our standpoint, our vision of life, abruptly shifts. Then once again, with our new viewpoint, we go along for a while – until the cycle begins anew.  Once again the unease comes up. And we have to struggle, to go through it again. Each time we do this – each time we go into the suffering and let it be – our vision of life enlarges. It’s like climbing a mountain. At each point that we ascend we see more; and that becomes broader with each cycle of climbing. 

Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen: Love and Work

Sunday Quote: How to be calm

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble.

You yourself make the waves in your mind.

If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

…and not in the present

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Origins of Plum Trees thumbnailMy work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.

Mary Oliver, Messenger

Fear keeps us in the future….

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Notice how much of the day you hold tightly to your fears, especially the fear of the loss of control. All of our “what if” thinking falls into this category: “What if I don’t do it right?” “What if it’s painful?” “What if I look bad?” These thoughts are based on wanting to control some imagined future more than on what’s happening now. It’s crucial to see and to label them with the question: “What is my most believed thought right now?”

 Ezra Bayda

Not in control

Karl Duffy3 Comments

A phrase that dominates much of the self-help jargon of our society is “take control of your life.” To be in control of one’s destiny, job, or finances is an unquestionable moral value today. It even sounds mature and spiritual. On a practical level it is true, but not on the big level. Our bodies, our souls, and especially our failures, teach us this as we get older. We are clearly not in control. It is amazing that we have to assert the obvious. This is not a negative discovery but, in fact, the exact opposite. It is a thrilling discovery of one’s fate, divine providence, being led, being used, one’s life having an inner purpose, being guided, having a sense of personal vocation, and owning one’s destiny as a gift from God. Learning that you are not in control situates you correctly in the universe. You cannot understand the joy and release unless you have been there.

Richard Rohr,  Adam’s Return