Tag: Mindfulness

Cultivating

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planting_seeds_4l
To establish mindfulness and full awareness in daily life relies on a skilful filtering of the input of stuff coming at us from all directions, because the sheer deluge of contact can overwhelm them: what we give attention to receives our energy and enters our hearts, and there it stimulates action and reaction. Because we consequently build up bright or dark habits, we need to be responsible about what we give attention to. Part of cultivation is therefore about turning away from input and actions that just pull the mind out into craving or aversion or distraction. …Fathoming attention then is an action that causes us to pause, and takes us into our minds and hearts more deeply.
Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the End of Kamma

October dawns

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bberry
The Irish word for October is Deireadh Fomhair, which means the “last harvesting” of the fruits of what we have planted earlier in the year. There is a rich crop of black berries on the hedgerows after the long Summer and mild Autumn here in Ireland.  So a quote which I am fond of, and which resonates with some of the recent words on autumn, second half of life and integration:

There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another’s wounds. Lets remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.
Henri Nouwen

photo elin

Having an attentive eye

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:An Autumn Field - geograph.org.uk - 615320.jpg

To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty,

and in the same field, it beholds, every hour,

a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Keep walking

Karl Duffy4 Comments

mist walk

Today is the birthday of  the 13th Century Persian Poet Rumi. So here is one of my favourite short quotations, which in its few lines contains as much as we need to know. 

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings. Move within,
But don’t move the way fear makes you move.

Not letting it become our whole world

Karl Duffy1 Comment

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Experiencing the power of faith doesn’t mean we’ve annihilated fear or denied it or overcome it through strenuous effort. It means that when we think we’ve conquered fear only to be once again overcome by it, we can still go on. It means feeling our fear and still remaining in touch with our heart, so that the fear does not define our entire world

Sharon Salzberg, Faith

….into the nature of things

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Eyes to see

In our meditation and insightful understanding of the way things are, we see that beauty, refinement, pleasure are impermanent conditions — as well as pain, misery and ugliness. If you really understand that, then you can enjoy and endure whatever happens to you. Actually, much of the lesson in life is learning to endure what we don’t like in ourselves and in the world around us; being able to be patient and kindly, and not make a scene over the imperfections in the sensory experience. We can adapt and endure and accept the changing characteristics of the sensory birth and death cycle by letting go and no longer attaching to it. When we free ourselves from identity with it, we experience our true nature, which is bright, clear, knowing; but is not a personal thing anymore, it is not ’me’ or ‘mine’.

Ajahn Sumedho, Mindfulness, the Path to the Deathless