Tag: Mindfulness

locked inside our brains

Karl Duffy1 Comment

All Eastern traditions agree that constant striving for a future state is the root of our unhappiness. No surprise then that the West, with its focus on achievement, has such high levels of anxiety and depression.

.Our society is very result-oriented, that’s why we are so competitive. That’s why we are always stressed, because we are always looking at something in the distance.

If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing, you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet.

We are always looking ahead, aren’t we? And then the actual thing, the actual living, passes us by. We are locked inside our brains, cut off from the present moment, always centered on something beyond our reach. 

Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake

The change of outside circumstances

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Pleasure depends very much on circumstances, what triggers it. Then it’s a sensation, in a way. So sensations change from pleasurable to neutral and to unpleasurable. I mean even the most pleasurable thing – you eat something very delicious. Once, it’s delicious. Two, three times, OK. And then ten times, you get nauseous…. The most beautiful music, you hear it five times, 24 hours, it’s a nightmare. And also, it’s something that basically doesn’t radiate to others. You can experience pleasure at the cost of others’ suffering. So it’s very vulnerable to the change of outer circumstances. It doesn’t help you to face the outer circumstances better.

Now if we think of happiness as a way of being, a way of being that gives you the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life, that pervades all the emotional states, including sadness.

So we have to distinguish mental factors which contribute to that way of being, the cluster of qualities like altruistic love, inner freedom, and so forth, from those who undermine that, which is like jealousy, obsessive desire, hatred, arrogance. We call that “mental toxins,” because they poison our happiness and also make us relate to others in a poisonous way. So happiness is something that you can cultivate, unlike pleasure. You don’t cultivate pleasure, but happiness in that sense is a skill. 

Matthieu RIcard, On Being interview

enduring strength

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Springtime. We trust the grass to rise again; Trust your own returning.

Let us not forget to be quietly powerful,

growing like a blade of grass.

Omid Safi

The stories we tell ourselves

Karl Duffy2 Comments

What holds us back is rarely life itself, but the narrative which we cling to. When the story falls silent, movement returns.

One cannot individuate as long as one is playing a role to oneself;

the convictions one has about oneself are the most subtle form of persona and the most subtle obstacle against any true individuation.

One can admit practically anything, yet somewhere one retains the idea that one is nevertheless so and so and this is always a sort of final argument which counts apparently as a plus ; yet it functions as an influence against true individuation.

Jung

the basic misunderstanding

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There’s a kind of basic misunderstanding that we should try to be better than we already are,

that we should try to improve ourselves, that we should try to get away from painful things, and that if we could just learn how to get away from the painful things, then we would be happy.

That is the innocent, naïve misunderstanding that we all share, which keeps us unhappy.

Pema Chödron, The Wisdom of No Escape: And the Path of Loving-Kindness

a waste of time

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There were people who went to sleep last night,
poor and rich and white and black,
but they will never wake again.

And those dead folks would give anything at all
for just five minutes of this weather
or ten minutes of plowing.

So you watch yourself about complaining.

What you’re supposed to do
when you don’t like a thing is change it.
If you can’t change it,
change the way you think about it.

Maya Angelou