Tag: Mindfulness

Ordinary circumstances

Karl Duffy2 Comments

It is natural to look for things you want outside of where you are now. That is the whole point of a journey. Yet this moment is all anyone has. So if freedom, love, beauty, grace, and whatever else is desirable are to appear, they must appear in the now. It would be nice if they appeared in the now you have now. And if they are to appear and endure they will have to be found in ordinary circumstances, since ordinary circumstances fill most of life.

John Tarrant, Bring me the Rhinoceros and other Zen Koans

Not getting tired

Karl Duffy4 Comments

I saw a programme recently on G.K Chesterson and was reminded of this quote, similar in theme to the poem published yesterday morning.  In it he encourages us to have eyes like children, seeing things as if for the first time, not tired and dulled by the fact that we have seen them before:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G.K Chesterson

Moment by moment, here is where I am

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself

or get anywhere else,

but simply to realize where you already are.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you Go, There you are.

Making our experiences solid

Karl Duffy1 Comment

snow_melting2More on naming our experiences, which we saw in the Sutta yesterday. It is good to pay attention to this spontaneous tendency, as it lies at the root of a lot of our everyday suffering:

When we look outward, we solidify the world by projecting onto it attributes that are in no way inherent to it. Looking inward we freeze the flow of consciousness when we conceive of an “I” enthroned between a past that no longer exists and a future that does not yet exist. We take it for granted that we see things as they are and rarely question that opinion. We spontaneously assign intrinsic qualities to things and people “thinking this is beautiful, that is ugly” without realizing that our mind superimposes these attributes upon what we perceive. We divide the world between “desirable” and “undesirable” and see independent entities in what is actually a network of ceaselessly changing relations.

Matthieu Ricard, Happiness

Seeing today for the first time

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P1000461Do not say, ‘It is morning,’
and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.
See it for the first time
as a newborn child that has no name.

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Everything comes to us that belongs to us
if we create the capacity to receive it.

Faith is the bird that feels the light
when the dawn is still dark.

From the solemn gloom of the temple
children run out to sit in the dust,
God watches them play and forgets the priest.

I have become my own version of an optimist.
If I can’t make it through one door,
I’ll go through another door – or I’ll make a door.
Something terrific will come
no matter how dark the present.

Rabindranath Tagore

How we name our experiences

Karl Duffy3 Comments
A lot of our difficulties comes from the “name” we put on our experiences, how we label what is happening to us. This applies particularly to how we talk to ourselves in the moments that something is occurring, as this Sutta from the Buddhist tradition tells us:
Name has weighed down everything
Nothing is more extensive than name.
Name is the one thing that has
All under its control

S. 1.61