Notice the thought. That’s fine. Notice the anxiety. Notice the fear. Use the meditation to focus your mind…The only thing that is keeping the emotion alive is your own thoughts. You keep churning it over and over again. Your thoughts do not care about you. They only want to perpetuate themselves.
Gary Schneider, Zen for High Schoolers
A lovely misty morning here in Kildare, and the leaves are clearly starting to fall. Autumn is the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” as Keats said in his beautiful description. The seeds fall underground and move into a period of silent growth. We can learn from them how to trust and wait, in times which are dark or when nothing seems to be happening.
I gratefully acknowledge how darkness has become less of an enemy for me and more of a place of silent nurturance, where the slow, steady gestation needed for my soul’s growth can occur. Not only is light a welcomed part of my life, but I am also developing a greater understanding of how much I need to befriend my inner darkness.
Joyce Rupp, Little Pieces of Light
photo phil champion
I was once told that certain spiritual masters in Tibet used to set their teacups upside down before they went to bed each night as a reminder that all life was impermanent. And then, when they awoke each morning, they turned their teacups right side up again with the happy thought, ‘I’m still here!’ This simple gesture was a wonderful reminder to celebrate every moment of the day.
Susan Jeffers, Embracing Uncertainty
A more practical type of post this afternoon. I started this blog 4 years ago today so this is a kinda of anniversary. And like all birthdays or anniversaries it allows us time to celebrate and take stock. The blog started as a simple aid to those who had done the MBSR Course with me in Geneva to provide an ongoing support. And I hope it has remained true to that purpose: to post some thoughts which help people – now all over the world – trying to maintain a meditation process or develop a more conscious style of living, by relating directly to this moment. And my main thought is one of gratitude to every one who has read the blog in these past years – now approaching a quarter of a million – and who have commented, or encouraged, or in many different ways kept it going.
My first post was about change and referred to a wise Advisor, Fr John Hyde, who I had many years ago in Ireland. And since then I have witnessed some changes, many small and some larger, the most recent of which has been to come back to my home country. I recently put on-line a work-related site www.karlduffy.ie and would be delighted if you click on that and check it out. It contains some nice scientific stuff on mindfulness and recent mindfulness articles “in the news” which you may find interesting.
I finish by returning to the first quote I ever published. It has been the guiding motif behind the word “balance” which links the blog and my work site. It sets before us our daily task, one which is even more relevant today than it was four year ago.
If you hope to find lasting happiness, you must first answer the question,
what is your true priority – your inner or your outer life?
Philipp Moffitt, Loving Life’s Questions
When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater. We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the changing of the seasons, is the freedom and harmony we have sought for so long. Our individual life is an expression of the whole mystery, and in it we can rest in the center of the movement, the center of all worlds
Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart
Most of our suffering comes from habitual thinking. If we try to stop it out of aversion to thinking, we can’t; we just go on and on and on. So the important thing is not to get rid of thought, but to understand it. And we do this by concentrating on the space in the mind, rather than on the thought.
Ajahn Sumedho, Noticing Space
