Tag: Present moment

Not needing to journey

Karl Duffy1 Comment

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started… and know the place for the first time. 

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Salvation, if we can talk about it at all, is the end of ambition, which is when you become completely one with your experience. Knowledge becomes one with wisdom…. You realize that you never needed to make the journey at all, because the journey and the goal are there already. It’s not so much that you are achieving liberation, but it is more that you realize that liberation is right there and that you needn’t have sought for it.

Chögyam Trungpa, Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos

Our capacity for happiness

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Whether success or failure: the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight.

The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

May Sarton.

Noticing, naming …gratefulness and happiness

Karl Duffy1 Comment

It may sound corny, but the research clearly demonstrates that you would be happier if you cultivated an “attitude of gratitude.” Gratitude helps us thwart hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is illustrated by our remarkable capacity rapidly to adjust to any new circumstance or event. This is extremely adaptive when the new event is unpleasant, but not when a new event is positive. So, when you gain something good in your life – a romantic partner, a genial officemate, recovery from illness, a brand-new car – there is an immediate boost in happiness and contentment. Unfortunately, because of hedonic adaptation, that boost is usually short-lived. As I’ve argued, adaptation to all things positive is essentially the enemy of happiness, and one of the keys to becoming happier lies in combating its effects, which gratitude does quite nicely. By preventing people from taking the good things in their lives for granted – from adapting to their positive life circumstances – the practice of gratitude can directly counteract the effects of hedonic adaptation.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

Seeing clearly and seeing through

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Meditation is a special kind of dance in which we commit our-selves wholeheartedly to the practice of deconstructing the materialistic view of reality. The challenge is simultaneously to hold on and to let go; it is to see clearly what we are doing and at the same time see through it.

Ajahn Amaro

Appreciate uncertainty

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Fear and anxiety are the dominant psychological states of the human mind. Behind the fear lies a constant longing to be certain. We are afraid of the unknown. The mind’s craving for confirmation is rooted in our fear of uncertainty. Fearlessness is generated when you can appreciate uncertainty, when you have faith in the impossibility of these interconnected components remaining static and permanent. You will find yourself, in the true sense, preparing for the worst while allowing for the best. You will become dignified and majestic.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, What Makes you not a Buddhist

Contentment with oneself…

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When  you  sit, let things settle and allow all  your  discordant self  with  its ungenuineness and unnaturalness to  dissolve,  out of  that  rises  your real being. You  experience  an  aspect  of yourself which is more genuine and more authentic-the “real” you.  As  you  go deeper, you begin to discover and connect  with  your fundamental goodness. The  whole point of meditation is to get used to the that  aspect which you have forgotten. In Tibetan “meditation” means  “getting used to”. Getting used to what? To your true nature.  This  is  why,  you are told to “rest in the nature of mind”. You  just quietly  sit  and let all thoughts and concepts dissolve.  It  is like  when the clouds dissolve or the mist evaporates, to  reveal the clear sky and the sun shining down. When everything dissolves like  this, you begin to experience your true nature, to  “live”. Then you know it, and at that moment, you feel really good. It is unlike  any  other  feeling of well being  that  you  might  have experienced.  This is a real and genuine goodness, in  which  you feel  a  deep sense of peace, contentment  and  confidence  about yourself.

Sogyal Rinpoche,  Essential Teachings on Meditation