Tag: Mindfulness

What story

Karl Duffy1 Comment

¨When we see through our negative story, what we have left is the truth. That is why the practice of letting go of our story is extremely liberating and leads to great spaciousness and joy. Whenever I’m suffering or get confused, one of my main personal practices is to simply ask myself, “What story am I believing right now?” The moment I ask this, it allows me to see the emptiness of the thought and let go of the story. I’m out of my prison and can see things from a more spacious perspective. Thoughts are as real as we believe them to be or as empty as we see them to be. You may find, as I do, that using this reflection is an effective way to free the mind of the tyranny of negative thinking.

James Baraz

Opportunities

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Letting go is an important practice in everyday life, as well as on the path of liberation. Daily life provides innumerable small and large occasions for letting go of plans, desires, preferences, and opinions. It can be as simple as when the weather changes, and we abandon plans we had for the day. Or it can be as complex as deciding what to sacrifice, when pulled between the needs of family, friends, career, community, or spiritual practice. Daily life provides many situations where letting go is appropriate, or even required. Learning how to do so skilfully is essential to a happy life.

Gil Fronsdal

photo from Tiny Buddha

Fixed ideas

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Coming home

All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions. And at bottom, those opinions are merely our efforts to escape the underlying uneasiness of being human, the uneasiness of feeling like we can’t get fixed ground under our feet. So we hold onto our fixed idea of this is how it is and disparage any opposing views. But imagine what the world would be like if we could come to see our likes and dislikes as merely likes and dislikes, and what we take to be intrinsically true as just our personal viewpoint.

Pema Chodron, Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change.

Noticing our discontent

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A good part of our automatic thinking is negative. Discontent comes naturally to us. Kids are discontented with their parents, parents are discontented with their teenagers, we are all discontented with our weight, and the prevalence of aesthetic surgery points to our discontent with the way we look. It is as if the brain is wired for discontent.  With mindfulness we can become aware of this tendency. I remember distinctly the first time I became aware of the habit of negative thinking. I was at a staff meeting in work. All of a sudden, I noticed that I had a negative mental comment about everyone who spoke. Either he was incompetent, or he kept saying the same useless things, or he did not really understand the problem…Then a light bulb went on: Maybe the problems were in my mind rather than out there. Maybe I had a problem accepting things as they are, and people as they are.

Jospeh Emet, Buddha’s Book of Sleep

Getting a vantage point

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Looking over the maze

Our world of thoughts and concerns can be like a maze; we don’t realize that all we have to do is “stand on our toes” to get a broader view. From a higher vantage point, our problems may appear very different. We may not be able to change the problem itself, but through mindfulness supported by concentration we may be able to shift our perspective and radically change the way we relate to the situation.

Gil Fronsdal

Moments of doing nothing

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Hands foldedIf we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves with death

Pablo Neruda,