Tag: Mindfulness

Giving life to life

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Washing Dishes at the Auberge de Nomad - Bani - Sahel Region - Burkina Faso.jpg

We are paying full attention when there is nothing between us and the task at hand. If you are facing a sink full of dirty dishes and the mind is taken up with aversion to the task, impatience with how long it is taking, thinking about what movie you’re going to see that night, you are separated from what you are doing. The hands are washing but the mind is not. To be divided this way is to be less than fully alive. Giving our whole body and mind over to a task being undivided and intimate in your action is what the Chinese masters called giving life to life

Larry Rosenberg, Breath by Breath

photo adam jones

Two possible directions for today…..and this week

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Irish Road Sign in Ballyvaughan - geograph.org.uk - 452604.jpg

I’ve discovered there are only two modes of the heart.

We can struggle, or we can surrender. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. Getting old, being sick,  losing what is dear to us,  life’s unsatisfactoriness – all are beyond our control.

I can either be frightened of life and mad at life –  or not.

Sylvia Boorstein

photo mike shinners

Refreshing our energy

Karl Duffy1 Comment

glendalough

Often we can find that our body tenses up at moments of transition, such as Sunday evenings, or  in the anticipation of something which will happen tomorrow or in a few days. This can even affect our sleep as the mind switches into problem-solving mode,  and works on resolving what is perceives as a type of “danger”. We can easily become agitated, and there is a sense in which our spirit gets jittery, or in a type of “flux”.  As the poet does here, this is precisely the time we need to create some space  – maybe in meditation or getting out in nature – which will “hold us”,  allowing us to become calm again. In this way the power of tomorrow over our spirit today is weakened.

It is time now, I said,
For the deepening and quieting of the spirit
Among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon
To the sea
Which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Except that it will be a time, again,
For the deepening and the quieting of the spirit.

Mary Oliver, Swimming, One Day in August

Photo: Glendalough on a soft day, April 5th 2014

Sunday Quote: Staying close to our roots

Karl Duffy1 Comment

fossil

At any moment you have a choice

that either leads you closer to your spirit

or further away from it

Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Saturday winding down

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:西湖平湖秋月.JPG

The first condition [required] is peace and calm; without that, it’s very difficult to see anything. That’s why a lot of our practice is actually to bring the heart to a state of balance and calm. Most people are in a constant state of reactivity. But someone who has seen the suffering of reactivity calmly comes to realize that it’s not the best way to relate to life; it is very limited – always the experience of ‘Self’, ‘Me’ and ‘You’. But as the sense of ‘Self’ decreases, the reactivity decreases also. It’s not so much the sense of Self that is the obstacle, its our identification with it.

Ajahn Sundara, Simplicity

photo jeff chenqinyi

 

Fixated

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

maze

There are actually two reasons why people in general are out of touch with their subjective experiences: They have ‘low definition’ bodies and they are continuously fixated in thought, especially verbal thought. Of course, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with thinking. Indeed complex thought is evolution’s wonderful gift to humankind, giving our species special powers that the others lack. Thought per se is not the problem. The problem is the driven and fixated way in which we think.

Shinzen Young, Bringing the Monastery Home