Tag: Meditation

How to get the most from the holidays: Slow down

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

There are four different kinds of patience: patience in action, in thought, in word, in the manner of feeling. There are two different acts of patience: the first is to stand firm against the activity of another person, the second to stand firm against one’s own activity. Not to resist the activity of another person is an act of patience of the former sort, and to control oneself when one wishes to do or say a certain thing is an act of patience of the latter sort.

The symbol of patience is the cross. The vertical line indicates activity, the horizontal line control. Patience is for the saint and the sage the first lesson and the last. The more one learns to bear the more one has to bear, such is the nature of life. Yet in reality patience is never wasted, patience always wins something great, even when to all appearance it loses….Every faculty has a tendency to act more and more quickly. Every activity starts from a rhythm that is productive, and when the activity is increased the rhythm becomes progressive, and if it is increased still more the rhythm becomes destructive. These three rhythms are called in Sanskrit satva, rajas, and tamas. It is only by control that one can keep the productive and progressive nature; lack of control allows destruction to set in.  When a person walks he wishes to walk faster, when he speaks to speak more quickly. It is the nature of activity to tend to increase its speed, and if this increase is permitted, very soon the destructive element comes about. The stronger this faculty of control becomes in a person the stronger the person becomes, and the more one loses the power of control the weaker one becomes.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Wisdom of Sufism: Sacred Readings from the Gathas 

How to get the most from the holidays: Holding who you are

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

All the Buddhas of all the ages have been telling you a very simple fact:  Be – don’t try to become.

Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained.

Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.

Osho

Where meaning is found

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

 

The holiest of all holidays are those

Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;

The secret anniversaries of the heart

When the full river of feeling overflows

Longfellow, Holidays

Tenderly holding whatever you touch

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Tenderness is the language of the body as a mother holds her child, as a nurse touches a patient’s wound, or as an assistant bathes someone with a disability. Recently in a buddhist monastery, I watched a sister as she served us food and tea with great delicacy; it was as if the meal itself was sacred, revealing a presence of God. And so it did, because it was treated so.

Tenderness is the language of the body speaking of respect: the body honours what it touches. It honours reality. It does not act as if reality has to be changed or possessed; reality belongs to humanity and to God. Is not this the way we should relate to all living beings, plants, animals and the earth?

Jean Vanier,  Becoming Human

Sunday Quote: Sitting, without speaking

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The whole of practice can be simplified on this day: To be able to sit quietly with where our life is, and be at ease there.

Silence is pure and holy.

It draws people together

because only those who are comfortable with each other

can sit without speaking.

Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

How to get the most from the holidays: Do all things deliberately and with attention

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

“Conquer haste”, the Zen masters say. The writer Joe Hyams, describes how he learned that lesson in a meeting with the master Bong Soo Han. The two were having tea when a letter arrived from the teacher’s family in Korea. Hyams says: ‘Knowing he had been eagerly anticipating the letter, I paused in our conversation, expecting him to tear open the envelope and hastily scan the contents. Instead, he put the letter aside, turned to me, and continued our conversation. The following day I remarked on his self-control, saying that I would have read the letter at once.’

“I did what I would have done had I been alone,” he said. “I put the letter aside until I had conquered haste. Then when I set my hand to it, I opened it as though it were something precious.”  I puzzled over this comment a moment, knowing he meant it as a lesson for me. Finally I said I didn’t understand what such patience led to. “It leads to this,” he said. “Those who are patient in the trivial things in life have the same mastery in great and important things.”

Philip Toshio Sudo.