Tag: mind

Seeing the different people

Karl Duffy1 Comment
File:Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee Meeting (080) (7395918716).jpg
There are many different ideas of “you” in your mind, each with its own agenda. Each of these “you’s” is a member of the committee of the mind. This is why the mind is less like a single mind and more like an unruly throng of people: lots of different voices, with lots of different opinions about what you should do. Some members of the committee are open and honest about the assumptions underlying their central desires. Others are more obscure and devious. This is because each committee member is like a politician, with its own supporters and strategies for satisfying their desires. One of the purposes of meditation is to bring these dealings out into the open, so that you can bring more order to the committee — so that your desires for happiness work less at cross purposes, and more in harmony as you realize that they don’t always have to be in conflict.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Training the mind

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:SVVP Klikatá, pes scházející schody.jpg

Nothing in the whole universe is comparable to the mind or can take its place. Everything is mind-made. Yet we all take our minds for granted, which is another absurdity. No one takes the body for granted. When the body gets sick, we quickly run to the doctor. When the body gets hungry, we quickly feed it. When the body gets tired, we quickly rest it. But what about the mind? Only the meditator looks after the mind. Looking after the mind is essential if life is to grow in depth and vision. Otherwise life stays two-dimensional. Most lives are lived in the realities of yesterday and tomorrow, good and bad, “I like it” and “I don’t like it,” “I’ll have it” and “I won’t have it,” “this is mine and this is yours.” Only when the mind is trained can we see other dimensions.

Ayya Khema, Being Nothing,  Going Nowhere

photo honza groh

Sunday Quote: Where we place the mind

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Free Happy Rainbow Water Droplet on Green.jpg

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

Marcus Aurelius

photo D Sharon Pruitt

A space beneath

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Bird in the Sky (5229140646).jpg

Good or bad, happy or sad,

all thoughts vanish into emptiness

like the imprint of a bird in the sky.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

photo afrikaforce

A story about workplaces and days

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Kitchen utensils-01.jpg

There’s a story that Ed Brown, the Zen chef , tells about his early days with his teacher, Suzuki Roshi. Ed was the head cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Centre in California in the 1960s and was well known for his volatile temper.  Once, in a fury, he went to his teacher and complained about the state of the kitchen: people didn’t clean up properly; people talked too much; people were distracted and unmindful.  It was chaos on a daily basis.  Suzuki Roshi’s reply was simple: “Ed, if you want a calm kitchen, calm your mind”

Found in Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, with thanks to Bianca for the loan of the book

photo jeppestown

Substance and weight

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Autumn.jpg

How often do our thoughts condition reactions in the mind, as if the thought itself had substance? Yet the thought of a friend is not the friend; it is a thought. How many life scenarios have we created, directed and starred in  and,  for those moments, taken to be the experience itself? We also may get carried away by the intense energy of our emotions, swept up in a typhoon of the mind and body. To be lost in emotions is not to be mindful of their energy; and when there is a strong identified involvement with them, there is no space in the mind for seeing clearly what is happening.

Joseph Goldstein, in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom

photo autumn wind by jojo