Tag: Mindfulness

Fearless receptivity

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Berezhnytsya (Explore!).jpg

We can’t travel with others in territory that we haven’t explored ourselves. It is the exploration of our own inner life that enables us to form an empathetic bridge to the other person.  It’s our task to trust, to listen, and to pay careful attention to the changing experience. At the deepest level, we are being asked to cultivate a kind of fearless receptivity.

This is a journey of continuous discovery in which we will always be entering new territory.  We have no idea how it will turn out, and it takes courage and flexibility. We find a balance.  The journey is a mystery we need to live into, opening, risking, and forgiving constantly.

Frank Ostaseski

photo juanedc

Gaps

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Cheltenham Spa Station ... MIND THE GAP. (6191893794).jpg

The ‘law of white spaces’ is an important piece of universal legislation that we ignore at our personal and collective peril. The law states that it is the white space between the words on a page that make it readable. Or the silence between two musical notes. Or the rest between periods of action. Without periods of silence and non-action our words and our deeds jumble up into meaningless spirals of stress. We need a web of silence spread around the world just as extensively as the web of technology.

Laurence Freeman, Web of Silence

A good way to measure

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Colours of Happiness 3.jpg

I read in Brand’s “Popular Antiquities” that “Bishop Stillingfleet observes, that among the peoples of the northern nations, the Feast of the New Year was observed with more than ordinary jollity: thence, as Olaus Wormius and Scheffer observe, they reckoned their age by so many Iolas.” (Iola: to make merry) So may we measure our lives by our joys.

We have lived, not in proportion to the number of years that we have spent on the earth,

but in proportion as we have enjoyed

Henry David Thoreau, Journals (1860)

Sunday Quote: Being true to oneself

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Bee and Flower (15677562528).jpg

The flower doesn’t dream of the bee

It blossoms and the bee comes

Mark Nepo

photo incidencematrix

No stories, just enjoy

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Gear toy and young girl.jpg

It is no easy matter to stop short at just seeing.

Mahasi Sayadaw.

photo blue plover

Needs no comment

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Egretta garzetta, Keitakuen, Osaka II.jpg

Awareness is the centre of what we call ‘mind’, but normally of course, the mind is awareness plus regret, or longing, or analysis, or sidetrack and rumbling trains of thought moving forward, backwards – or anywhere except the simply open present. So it takes training, but with guidance and effort, the meditator centres on awareness as the feature of the mind that is constant, irreducible and needs no comment. Consequently, as awareness releases from these associated activities, it is revealed in its depth and warm beauty. It’s a given treasure.

Ajahn Sucitto, Mind out of Time

phto Laitche