Tag: Present moment

Push and pull

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File:Tug of war 2.jpg

Meditation practice provides the perfect context for observing our beliefs and recognizing the tug-of-war we have with our experience. Just sit quietly for five minutes and watch what happens. Unless we have some accomplishment in meditation, we won’t know what to do with all the activity. We become overwhelmed by the energetic play of the mind, pummeled by our own thoughts and emotions, bewildered by our inability to sit in peace. We will want to do something. And we really only have two means of escape from all this mayhem: we can either spin out into thought, which is an exaggeration of reality, or we can suppress or deny it.

Exaggeration and denial describe the dilemma we have with mind, and not just in meditation. Exaggeration and denial operate in conjunction with all our fantasies, hopes, and fears. When we exaggerate experience, we see what isn’t there. And when we deny it, we don’t see what is. Both exaggeration and denial are extraneous to the true nature of things, the nature we experience when we can just stay present.

Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, The Power of an Open Question

wanting to be a pleasant feeling

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Our attitude is frequently one of wanting to get it done, wanting to have it finished in order to be peaceful, to relax, or to enjoy ourselves….

We want to be a feeling.

Rushing along to be something in the next moment, we fail to open and appreciate this moment.

Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth

Noticing the flower

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Flowers_growing

What flower will we miss today, because we wish we were elsewhere or think we have something “better” to do?

One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha’s gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower.

To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.

Thich Nhat Hanh,  Peace Is Every Step

 

Growing old

Karl Duffy3 Comments

dog-walking3

Here is one of the practices I referred to in the post this morning. It comes from the community established by Thich Nhat Hanh.  I like it because it balances an awareness of the human condition and the inevitability of change with a focus on present actions.

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill-health. There is no way to escape ill-health.

I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are the nature to change.

There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.

My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

Thich Nhat Hanh,  Plum Village Chanting Book

Appreciating

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rainy autumn day

We will not perish for want of information,

but only for want of appreciation

The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding

that life without wonder in not worth living.

Abraham Heschel, God in search of Man

…… is equally important

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Clocks-set-to-internation-001

To apprehend

The point of intersection of the timeless

With time, is an occupation for the saint.
T.S.Eliot: The Dry Salvages V

In Ireland, and the rest of Europe, the clocks went back last night (whatever that means) and we have an extra hour today. It happens next week in the US.  Arbitrary distinctions, but they prompt us to be more aware of time. Two minutes before midnight 2012 is not much different from two minutes after midnight 2013 and yet we assign huge meaning to certain transitions. To help us deal wisely with the passing of time we concern ourselves with the present moment, in whatever form it takes. We loosen the meanings we assign to it, which often distract us from being fully engaged. We practice sticking close to how things actually are, rather than how they “should” be:

Sometimes we divide our time into categories: you have time for work, time for exercise, time for eating, time for your partner, time for the children and finally, you hope, time for yourself. But the ….attitude [behind mindfulness]  is that all time is for yourself: whatever you’re doing, however trivial, is equally important to everything else. No time is wasted. We should give total respect and attitude to whatever we are doing.

Larry Rosenberg, Living in the Light of Death.