Tag: Mindfulness

Keeping a place

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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If I keep a green bough in my heart,

the singing bird will come.

Chinese Proverb

Full life

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Listen, are you breathing just a little,

and calling it a life?

Mary Oliver, Have you ever tried to enter the Long Black Branches

The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cézanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he’s alive
forever, this instant, and may be.

Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, 2001, VIII

The challenge

Karl Duffy4 Comments

lakes

I want to know if you can see beauty … every day,

and if you can source your own life from its presence.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

Photo: Glendalough, June 18 2015

Stubborn refusal

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The path of love is not the absence of fear. Real love is made possible through vulnerability. Vulnerability is the possibility of having one’s heart open enough to let love in, and also let pain in.  The path of love is not the avoiding of suffering, but the welcoming of joy and suffering alike, the way a gracious host would.

So no, the path of love is not being impervious to fear.

It is simply the stubborn refusal to let fear have the last word.

Omid Safi, We must Cling to Love

photo Eric kilby

Not wasting our lives

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If you have one hour of air  and many hours to go,

you must breathe slowly.

If you have one arm’s length and many things to care for,

you must give freely.

If you have one chance to know God and many doubts, you must

set your heart on fire.

We are blessed.

Every day is a chance.

We have two arms

Fear wastes air.

Mark Nepo, Freefall

In a nutshell…

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

A really clear and succinct definition of mindfulness practice, showing how it includes a evaluating, even judging aspect, discerning between helpful and unhelpful mental energies:

I often like to summarize correct practice in the following way:

Have mindfulness

and know bodily and mental phenomena as they really are

with a mind that is stable and impartial.

Ven Pramote Pamojjo, To see the Truth