Tag: Mindfulness

A mind that is astonished

Karl Duffy3 Comments

IMG_0664

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.

 How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds will

never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

 Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

 Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

 Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes

Conscious breathing

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Ireland - Plains of South Kildare.jpg

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.

Conscious breathing is my anchor.

Thích Nhất Hạnh, Stepping into Freedom

Relaxing

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open20hands

The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts, we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed destiny. We have to be able to relax the psychic and spiritual cramp which knots us in the painful, vulnerable, helpless “I” that is all we know of ourselves.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Sunday Quote: what we miss

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spring buds

The whole of life lies in the verb “seeing”

Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit theologian and palaeontologist

In the garden

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File:HandsInSoil.jpg

Everything that slows us down
and forces patience,
everything that sets us back
into the slow circles of nature,
is a help.

Gardening is an instrument of grace.

May Sarton

photo m tullottes

Making every moment count

Karl Duffy2 Comments

supermarket queue 3

Mindfulness meditation is a wonderful tool for making each day, each moment of our life count. Paradoxically this is achieved by not doing more, but by doing less. We may feel that we need to do the things  have to be done faster so that we have time for doing more things. Mindfulness practice goes the other way. I may need to go to the store to get a carton of milk. The way to make the experience more satisfying is not doing it as fast as possible while thinking of other things, but to enjoy the walk to the store by paying attention. This way, we make every moment count. We are not sacrificing the means for the goal. Otherwise, our day becomes a series of dry chores.

Joseph Emet, Buddha’s Book of Sleep