Tag: Nature

Create a space

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Consider the “forest pool” metaphor so popular in Buddhism. After inclement weather, the pool is muddy, full of sediment and debris. We cannot clear it by trying to control the contents – that would make the pool worse. We can only wait for all the sediment to settle to the bottom, leaving the pool clear again. So in meditation, by concentrating on the breath or our body or on sounds we can hear in the present moment, we create a space for clarity. We often find that in this spaciousness, an answer to a problem will simply “pop up” to the surface. Sometimes it won’t, but our bodies will thank us for a break from all the worrying.

Sarah Napthali, Stewing

Sunday Quote: Remain free

Karl Duffy1 Comment
 
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As time remains free of all that it frames
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
 
John O’Donohue, For Equilibrium

The core conversation

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It might be surprising to think that there are just as many forms of courage and creativity associated with disappearance and doing without; just as many satisfying elements of aliveness associated with a winter as with spring. This central, core conversation to which we return in each succeeding winter is both nourishing and deeply disturbing, it seems heedless of any flimsy structures we may have erected, it seems fiery in that it burns familiar things away and yet provides another form of warmth emanating from a more nested, interior hearth. In my experience the first necessity of an individual in finding this fiery, core conversation is a radical form of simplification. To get to the core conversation we have to withdraw from the edges. Whatever expenses we have been making at the margins of our lives in terms of emotions, finances or time-based commitment must be brought back to the central conversation that makes the most sense.

David Whyte

Patient waiting

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Our passing dramas stand in contrast to the enduring parts of nature, which goes back inside itself at this time of year, and then starts again.

The oak tree
loves patience,
the mountain is
still looking,

as it has for centuries,
for a word to say about
the gradual way it
slides itself

back to the
world below
to begin again,
in another life,

to be fertile.
When the wind blows
the grass
whistles and whispers

in myths and riddles
and not in our language
but one far older.
The sea is the sea is

always the sea.
These things 
you can count on
as you walk about the world

happy or sad,
talky or silent, making
weapons, love, poems.
The briefest of fires.

Mary Oliver, Patience 

What remains

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The shortest days of the year. The balance between light and darkness. A time to let go of those thoughts which hold us back and stand firm in that which we are

I move in the descent of days

from what was dreamed to what remains.

Wendell Berry, Boone

Sunday Quote: Allow

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Allow your life to unfold naturally.

Just as you breathe in and breathe out, there is a time for being ahead and a time for being behind; a time for being in motion and a time for being at rest; a time for being vigorous and a time for being exhausted; a time for being safe and a time for being in danger.

Lao Tzu