Tag: Present moment

What happens today is not a deviation from life

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The Buddhist teachings are fabulous at simply working with what’s happening as your path of awakening, rather than treating your life experiences as some kind of deviation from what is supposed to be happening. The more difficulties you have, in fact, the greater opportunity there is to let them transform you. The difficult things provoke all your irritations and bring your habitual patterns to the surface. And that becomes the moment of truth. You have the choice to launch into the lousy habitual patterns you already have, or to stay with the rawness and discomfort of the situation and let it transform you, on the spot.

Pema Chodron

Taking time to rest today

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Resting is a very important practice; we have to learn the art of resting. Resting is the first part of meditation. You should allow your body and your mind to rest. Our mind as well as our body needs to rest. The problem is that not many of us know how to allow our body and mind to rest. We are always struggling; struggling has become a kind of habit.

When an animal in the jungle is wounded, it knows how to find a quiet place, lie down and do nothing. The animal knows that is the only way to get healed-to lay down and just rest, not thinking of anything, including hunting and eating.  What it needs is to rest, to do nothing, and that is why its health is restored.  In our consciousness there are wounds also, lots of pains. Our consciousness also needs to rest in order to restore itself. Our consciousness is just like our body. Our body knows how to heal itself if we allow it the chance to do so.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Trust in the difficult

Karl Duffy1 Comment

People have already had to rethink so many concepts of motion; and they will also gradually come to realize that what we call fate does not come into us from the outside, but emerges from us. The future stands still, but we move in infinite space. How could it not be difficult for us? […]

And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Rainer Maria Rilke

…..where peace comes dropping slow

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Yeats’ father would read to him from Walden when he was a child. Later, when living in London he wrote this poem, wishing he could retire to the quietness of nature on an island he knew as a boy. Most of us do not have the luxury of a real island to go to, but we create our refuge within ourselves and take shelter there when the storms of the day get too strong. We allow the mind and the body to settle, even if only for a brief moment, and allow peace to drop slowly in.

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

WB Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

The island within…..

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Two posts today on creating a quiet space within –  an island – to which we can retreat when things get frazzled or too hectic. This is our “hermitage”, where we can feel at home. To do this we can simple take a moment’s break from time to time, or use the breath as a way of centering or grounding when the events of the day speed up. Or simply  by creating gaps, taking time before answering the phone, or pausing before taking the elevator.

You should go home to your hermitage; it is inside you. Close the doors, light the fire, and make it cozy again. That is what I call ‘taking refuge in the island of self.’ If you don’t go home to yourself, you continue to lose yourself. You destroy yourself and you destroy people around you, even if you have goodwill and want to do something to help. That is why the practice of going home to the island of self is so important. No one can take your true home away.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Peace Begins Here

Do not force things

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

When there is sunshine,  it just shines across the land and it doesn’t try to  force the land to absorb its rays. The sun just shines. We too practice in a very non-violent, very loving way with our breathing. When you are sitting with a bent back you just recognise your back is bent and quite naturally your body adjusts itself to become a little straighter. There is no forcing. If you are agitated but you are mindful of this feeling of agitation you simply recognise,  ‘I have irritation.’ You should not say, ‘Irritation is very bad, I have to get rid of my irritation.’ No, you just be aware of your irritation. If there is irritation you simply recognise you have irritation.  You do not judge, you do not force, and you do not condemn them. You only look at your irritation with compassion. I go back to my body with non-violence, with care, with compassion.

When the sunshine falls on the vegetation, the vegetation itself becomes green. When your mindfulness is shining upon what is happening in you,  then you do not need to force but you know right away and you smile with compassion to your irritation and then your irritation will disappear. You know that everything changes including your irritation. If you are aware then your irritation becomes weaker, but if you are not aware then the irritation can grow very fast turning into anger and stress, and other negative feelings. If you are aware, it will weaken naturally, because it is impermanent.

Thich Nhat Hahn