Tag: Mindfulness

Openness

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Your relationship to time reveals your capacity to trust that whatever is present each day, you can handle; otherwise it would not be there. The surprising or unexpected happenings of each day reveal your attachments and teach you about your ability or inability to remain flexible. In what ways are you manifesting the 5 simple qualities of childlike openness:

Not worrying about your daily bread 

Not complaining when you fall sick

Sharing whatever you have

When you fight or quarrel, not holding a grudge and making up quickly

Showing your vulnerability when frightened or threatened.

Angelus Arrien

Our moods change

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

One of the Japanese words for mind is kokoro. The word koro is the onomatopoeia for “rolling along.” Something that rolls like a ball is koro koro koro. So kokoro is something that is always moving and changing, never stopped. There is no object or form that we can identify as mind. It is always changing. Though we are always looking for something to rely on, we cannot find it in something called mind.

From the excellent book I am reading at the moment:

Shodo Harada , 1940 – Rinzai Zen abbot, Not One Single Thing: A Commentary on the Platform Sutra

Start the day

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Dawn is coming…… I step quietly from my bed, alive to the silences around me. This is the quiet time, the time of innocence and soft thoughts, the childhood of the day. Now is the moment when I must pause and lift my heart – now, before the day fragments and my consciousness shatters into a thousand pieces. For this is the moment when the senses are most alive, when a thought, a touch, a piece of music can shape the spirit and color of the day. But if I am not careful – if I rise, frantic, from my bed, full of small concerns – the mystical flow of the imagination at rest will be broken, the past and the future will rush in to claim my mind, and I will be swept up into life’s petty details and myriad obligations. Gone will be the openness that comes only to the waking heart, and with it, the chance to focus the spirit and consecrate the day.

Kent Neburn, Small Grace: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday life

Making enemies

Karl Duffy1 Comment

The ego loves to complain and feel resentful not only about other people but also about situations. What you can do to a person, you can also do to a situation: make it into an enemy. The implication is always: this should not be happening; I don’t want to be here; I don’t want to be doing this; I’m being treated unfairly. And the ego’s greatest enemy of all is, of course, the present moment, which is to say, life itself.

Eckhart Tolle