Tag: Mindfulness

An invitation to fullness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Chargé d’affaires ad interim.JPG

There is really no place to go in this moment. We are already here. Can we be here fully?

There really is nothing to do. Can we let go into non-doing, into pure being? There really is nothing to attain, no special “state” or “feeling” because whatever you are experiencing in this moment is already special, already extraordinary,  by virtue of the fact that it is being experienced.

The paradox of this invitation is that everything you might wish for is already here.

And the only important thing is  – to be the knowing that awareness already is.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners

Welcome to this world

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Cherry blossom trees at side of Tafuse River 20160330.JPG

Another reflection on the calming effects of nature.

This famous haiku reflects on the letting go found under a tree when all things feel at home and we know that beauty is being born at every second.  At times like this we treat all moments and all people as friends

In the cherry blossom’s shade
there’s no such thing
as a stranger

Kobayashi Issa, 1763 – 1828

A doorway into thanks

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Coquelicots en gare de Vaires-sur-Marne.jpg

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver, Praying

photo tango paso

Why a walk in nature helps

Karl Duffy5 Comments

tree light

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

David Wagoner, Lost

Sunday Quote: In the moment

Karl Duffy4 Comments

File:Tour to the Quebrada de las Conchas.jpg

I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke, American poet, 1908 – 1963, The Waking

photo Jlla00

Asking for nothing

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Dupont's Lark, Morocco 1 (crop).jpg

God, I said. What good is language?

part of me wondered, but I did not stop.

God I said, from deep inside of me.

Outside it was almost dawn:

the birds awake in all the trees, singing.

These were not the words I had grown up to say:

My mind quiet before the growing sounds.

The birds have opened all their throats once and then again and again:

God, each one singing, asking for nothing, inside my heart.

Nadia Colburn, Where the Light Enters

photo mike prince