Tag: Mindfulness

Holding

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

holding a spaceBy not stopping our thoughts and feelings in meditation,  we are paving the way for gentle ways of being with our experience. When thoughts are intentionally cut off, that is often an act of harming. If it is done aggressively, even with a miniscule amount of force, it supports and furthers the tendency to get rid of thoughts rather than the tendency to get to know them. Our ability to get to know our thoughts and feelings depends on our ability not to get rid of them. Holding our experience gently,  thoughts and feelings come and go  in their own time.

Jason Siff, Unlearning Meditation

How we carry

Karl Duffy2 Comments

....in the ordinary moments of this life.

How we carry what has gone wrong for us

is essential to being at home in ourselves,

and present to the world with all of its failings.

Krista Tippett

As Spring arrives

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

springtime1

The best way to ‘get somewhere,’ to make progress in meditation — and that’s a dangerous way to think about it — is to just begin to pay attention, moment to moment, with less judgment.

Jon Kabat Zinn

Wonder, evening and morning

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

springbuds

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?

G.K. Chesterson, Evening

Life as a long party

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Baking3.jpg

Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.

William Stafford, American Poet, A Valley Like This

Watching our “add-on’s”

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

kids cooking partyNo, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

A famous Zen haiku reads: “The old Pond. A Frog jumps in. Plop”  This is a wonderful description of bare attention. The poet, Basho, goes directly to the essence of his experience: the pond, frog, plop. We can say that in meditation we are developing “plop mind”. We are stripping away everything that is extraneous to our immediate experience and simply being present with what is happening. This is bare attention: direct, essential, non-interfering.

Joseph Goldstein, Bare Attention