Tag: mind

Moments are all we have

Karl Duffy1 Comment

forest light 2

Small moments or days are enough to see the richness of life, if we are able to pay attention and give ourselves fully:

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They’re small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing.

Mary Oliver, Hum

Beyond the story

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File:Stillness (24389492169).jpg

In meditation one tries to calm the body and the senses, to calm the mind, and become what’s called “the silent witness,” the witness beyond the mind. We in the West think that the mind is everything, but all Eastern practice is to get beyond the mind to the point of the silent witness, where you’re witnessing yourself, where you’ve gone beyond the ego, beyond the self.

The Indian tradition rests on what the West has largely lost: that there are three levels. There is the level of the body and the level of the mind, which the Western world thinks is the end. But beyond the body is the spirit. And that is the goal of life, to get to that.

Bede Griffiths

photo uros novina

Quiet Minds

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File:Grandfather Clock Face Waters building EXPLORE 4-8-08 2828.jpg

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened

but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, just

like a clock during a thunderstorm.

Robert Louis Stevenson

photo steven depolo

Grounded

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Namibie Etosha Lion 01.JPG

When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick:

every time a stick is thrown, you run after it.

Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower.

One only throws a stick at a lion once

Milarepa, Tibetan Buddhism, 1052 – 1135

photo calips

Space for gratitude

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Brave person walking out on the glacier point ledge.jpg

Then there was Jim, who said that for many years he took walks that were ‘ranting’ walks. He would walk and contemplate all the things that angered him about the world. One day he decided to begin taking ‘gratitude’ walks. ‘Now while I walk I recount all the things I am grateful for in my life and don’t allow myself to think of negative things at all. I have found this simple practice to be a great gift.’

John Izzo, The Five Secrets you must Discover before Your Die

A deeper source

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:There's still life in this old tree - geograph.org.uk - 1039441.jpg

Maybe you are searching among the branches

for what only appears in the roots

Rumi

 photo evelyn simak