Tag: Present moment

Time enough

Karl Duffy2 Comments

 

The butterfly counts not months

but moments,

and has time enough.

Rabindranath Tagore

That’s all we have

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Every moment in life is absolute itself. That’s all we have. There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future; there is nothing but this. So when we don’t pay attention to every little this, we miss the whole thing. And the contents of this can be anything. This can be straightening our sitting mats, chopping an onion, talking to one we don’t want to talk to. It doesn’t matter what the contents of the moment are; each moment is absolute. That’s all there is, and all there ever will be. If we could totally pay attention, we would never be upset. If we’re upset, it’s axiomatic that we’re not paying attention. If we fill our days and we miss not just one moment, but one moment after another, we’re in trouble.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Standing still?

Karl Duffy2 Comments

There is a problem in thinking that you are supposed to be advancing in your practice all the time. You don’t have to constantly be on the road. If you have a flat tire, that is also part of the journey. Ambition makes you feel that you are not doing anything. There seems to be a hypnotic quality to ambition and speed, so that you feel that you are standing still just because you want to go so fast. You might actually be getting close to your goal.

Chögyam Trungpa

Showing up in our lives

Karl Duffy2 Comments

One of the more difficult paradoxes to accept is that this abundance of gifts is always quietly present and that it is we who drift in and out of seeing it. The one recurring doorway to this vitality is our simple participation in life. When we slip into heartless watching, the abundance seems to vanish. When we dare to show up and be fully present, grace and wonder and mystery start to appear, even in the midst of pain. Not as planned dreams, or as images of lovers, or as scripts of success designed by our fantasies of ourselves. But as oddly shaped pods of vitality bursting to multiply and bring us further into the mystery of living.

Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live an Authentic LIfe

Lost in interpretation

Karl Duffy8 Comments

When  confronted with a difficult experience, the untrained mind wants to be anywhere but in the present moment, where it perceives acute unpleasantness. The mind becomes anxious whenever it’s uncertain and reacts as if one’s survival is at stake. So rather than staying with the experience and determining the best possible way to relate to it, the mind jumps to creating a story that involves  worrying about the future or judging oneself or others based on past experiences. This pattern of resistance to staying present in experience is an automatic response arising from the limbic brain as it detects threats. Ironically, the story imparts a false sense fo knowing what’s going on, and therefore can seem temporarily soothing.

Philipp Moffitt, Emotional Chaos to Clarity

Making friends with yourself

Karl Duffy6 Comments

In meditation practice, you work directly with your confused mind-states, without waging crusades against any aspect of your experience. You let all your tendencies arise, without trying to screen anything out, manipulate experience in any way, or measure up to any ideal standard. Allowing yourself the space to be as you are — letting whatever arises arise, without fixation on it, and coming back to simple presence — this is perhaps the most loving and compassionate way you can treat yourself. It helps you make friends with the whole range of your experience.
           
As you simplify in this way, you start to feel your very presence as wholesome in and of itself. You don’t have to prove that you are good. You discover a self-existing sanity that lies deeper than all thought or feeling. You appreciate the beauty of just being awake, responsive, and open to life. Appreciating this basic, underlying sense of goodness is the birth of maitri — unconditional friendliness toward yourself.

John Welwood, The Practice Of Love