Tag: mind

When we get silly thoughts

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With the mind, you can apply inwardly the same attention. When your eyes are closed, you can listen to the inner voices that “speak” in the mind. They say “I am this…”I should not be like that”. You can use those voices for bringing you to the space between thoughts. Rather than making a big problem about the obsession and fears that go on in your mind, you can open your attention and see those obsessions and fears as mental conditions that come and go in space. This way, even an negative thought can take you to emptiness.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way

The gap between words

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think.

Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.

A. A. Milne, The House on Pooh Corner

Staying fluid

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seaWhen you ride in a boat and watch the shore, you might assume that the shore is moving. But when you keep your eyes closely on the boat, you can see that the boat moves. Similarly, if you examine many things with a confused body and mind, you might suppose that your mind and nature are fixed. However, if you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that there is nothing at all that has an unchanging self.

Dogen

Natural wakefulness

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Steps down from the Citadel, Herefordshire Beacon - geograph.org.uk - 1384844.jpg

What then is our path, and what the manner of our flight? This is not a journey for the feet; Feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of a coach or a ship to carry you away;

All this order of things you must set aside and refuse to look at: Instead, you must close the eyes and call upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use.

Plotinus, philosopher 204 – 270, The Enneads, 1.6.

photo bob embleton

We never really arrive

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Atsinanana.jpg

Some people want it pure white

but sweep as you may,

you can’t empty the mind

Keizan Jokin, 1268 – 1325, second founder of Soto Zen

 photo gloumouth1

Sunday Qute: Space

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Centaurus A halo.jpg

Develop a mind that is vast like space

where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear

without conflict,  struggle, or harm

The Buddha, Majjhima Nikaya

photo ESA/Hubble