Tag: Present moment

The address of happiness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:River Barrow Towpath - geograph.org.uk - 489173.jpg

The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment. The present moment is the destination, the point to arrive at. Every time you breathe in and take a step, you arrive: “Breathing in I arrive, breathing out I arrive”. This is the address of happiness, the address of life. The Buddha said “Life is accessible only in the present moment”. Life with all its wonders is accessible now. So we train in coming back to the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh, You are Here

photo kevin higgins

Learning from the birds these days

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

File:Sayornis phoebe 1905.jpg

The phoebe sits on her nest
Hour after hour,
Day after day,
Waiting for life to burst out
From under her warmth.

Can I weave a nest for silence,
Weave it out of listening,
Listening, Layer upon layer?

But one must first become small,
Nothing but a presence,
Attentive as a nesting bird,
Proffering no slightest wish,
No tendril of a wish
Toward anything that might happen
Or be given,
Only the warm, faithful waiting,
Contained in one’s smallness.
Beyond the question, the silence.
Before the answer, the silence.

May Sarton, Beyond the question, 1

Too much thinking, not enough seeing

Karl Duffy2 Comments

cessy

The burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness.

What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separations?

Third Zen Patriarch

An invitation to fullness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:Chargé d’affaires ad interim.JPG

There is really no place to go in this moment. We are already here. Can we be here fully?

There really is nothing to do. Can we let go into non-doing, into pure being? There really is nothing to attain, no special “state” or “feeling” because whatever you are experiencing in this moment is already special, already extraordinary,  by virtue of the fact that it is being experienced.

The paradox of this invitation is that everything you might wish for is already here.

And the only important thing is  – to be the knowing that awareness already is.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners

To be quiet in heart

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:2014 Eid ul-Fitr Praying - Imam Ali Shrine - Najaf 2 Cropped.JPG

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

 

Being too busy

Karl Duffy2 Comments

File:Astragalus adsurgens (7462039404).jpg

I practice meditation

so that I can notice the small purple flowers by the roadside

that I would otherwise miss

Anagarika Shri Munindra, 1915 – 2003, Vipassana teacher

photo matt lavin