Tag: Nature

Non duality

Karl Duffy2 Comments

trees333

Look at love – how it tangles
with the one fallen in love

look at spirit – how it fuses with earth
giving it new life.

Why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend

why talk about all the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known

why think separately of this life and the next
when one is born from the last

look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs

look at water and fire, earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once

the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the deer
far away yet together

look at the unity of this
spring and winter, manifested in the equinox

you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me

be like sugarcane, sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words

my beloved grows right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be.

Rumi, Look at Love

Self blessing

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:The flower buds.jpg

All of us, from time to time, doubt our inner goodness and beauty. We have to rediscover it within or be reminded by others that it lies there: 

Sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness, 

to put a hand on its brow 

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch 

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within

of self-blessing.

Galway Kinnell, St Francis and the Sow

photo NNU-12-22100555

 

Moments are all we have

Karl Duffy2 Comments

lyrath

How do we cultivate the conditions

for joy to expand?

We train in staying present.

Pema Chodron

photo of Spring wildflowers at Lyrath House, Kilkenny

Celebrating just as it is

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File:Lough Dan snow (389434714).jpg

We are having a strange mix of weathers this year in Ireland. Daffodils already in bloom, buds on the trees, followed by snow and sleet yesterday, and having to avoid large puddles when getting out of the car.  Good practice in celebrating little moments of beauty amid everyday changes

In the scenery of spring,
we can’t say one thing is better, the other worse;

The flowering branches are
of themselves, some are short, some others long.

Ryōkan, 1758 – 1831

photo light snow on Lough Dan in Wicklow by bea&txm

 

The intelligence of nature

Karl Duffy3 Comments

tree

How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing – each stone, blossom, child – is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things teach us: to fall,
patiently trusting our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, II, 16

Darkness and light

Karl Duffy3 Comments

File:Sally Gap R115-R759 crossroads.jpg

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,

but by making the darkness conscious

Jung

Today is Lá Féile Bríde, St. Brigid’s Day,  celebrated on the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc, a word meaning perhaps “in the womb”, and linked with the feminine, fertility and the birth of lambs.  The Celts were much more in touch with the rhythms of nature and with symbols than we are, and so lit fires in the darkness to mark the fact that they had arrived at the midway point between the winter and the spring solstice. They celebrated the lengthening days and the early signs of Spring,  in a declaration of trust that the darkness of winter was not going to last. It was the start of a period of planting and birth: a time for looking forward and beginning again. For us too, some form of death and rebirth is always happening in our inner selves, even if we are unaware of it.   We are never really in just one place, but always somewhat in-between, re-working our own myths and adding depth and meaning to our journey.

For last year’s words
belong to last year’s language
and next year’s words
await another voice.

And to make an end
is to make a beginning

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding