Tag: Present moment

Noticing small boredoms

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

https://i0.wp.com/www.ohiofur.net/marcon01/Waiting_for_Elevator.JPGAll of us experience small boredoms at work – routine, seemingly dull events that we often take for granted: remaining “on hold” on the phone, waiting at the copier or coffee line, pausing for a computer screen to open, being stopped in traffic. We may consider such moments irritating or unproductive, a waste of our time to be avoided if possible. However, properly handled, such small boredoms can ease the speed and restlessness of our jobs, helping us remain alert, available, and awake at work. What is so powerful about small boredoms in general is that we are actually trying to avoid our experience, to distract ourselves from the sharp immediacy of the moment.

Small boredoms – whether they are elevator rides, pauses in a speech, or sitting in a traffic jam – can feel vaguely unnerving. We are being poked by our world, provoked, invited to wake up. Acknowledging small boredoms encourages us to engage that slight discomfort by being alert and fully present with no mindless distractions. Rather than letting boredom, short or prolonged, put us to sleep, we reverse the equation, engaging boredom in all its simple, unadorned vividness, letting it wake us up. By relating to small boredoms with this kind of precision, we turn them into practice, stepping-stones we walk each day that form the basis for slowing our speed, letting go of our inner rehearsals, and being fully alert to our circumstances.

Michael Carroll

In-between repression and acting out

Karl Duffy2 Comments

The journey of awakening happens just at the place where we can’t get comfortable. Opening to discomfort is the basis of transmuting our so-called “negative” feelings. We somehow want to get rid of our uncomfortable feelings either by justifying them or by squelching them, but it turns out that this is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. By trying to get rid of “negativity,” by trying to eradicate it, by putting it into a column labelled “bad,” we are throwing away our wisdom as well, because everything in us is creative energy — particularly our strong emotions. They are filled with life-force.

There is nothing wrong with negativity per se; the problem is that we never see it, we never honor it, we never look into its heart. We don’t taste our negativity, smell it, get to know it. Instead, we are always trying to get rid of it by punching someone in the face, by slandering someone, by punishing ourselves, or by repressing our feelings. In between repression and acting out, however, there is something wise and profound and timeless.

Pema Chodron, To Know Yourself is to Forget Yourself

Just seeing whatever is, today

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The goal of meditation is to see things as they are; it is a state of awakened attention. And this is a very simple thing. It isn’t complicated or difficult or something that takes years to achieve. It is so easy, in fact, that you don’t even notice it. When you think in terms of having to practise meditation, you are conceiving it as something you have to attain …….. you have to control your emotions, you have to develop virtues in order to attain some kind of ideal state of mind. You might have images of a lot of yogis sitting in remote places on mountain tops and in caves. ….. and it all sounds very remote and very far from what you can expect from your life as a human being. The point is to look at meditation as awakenedness and awareness throughout daily life in whatever way we live and in whatever conditions. There is in that the sense of allowing things to be in this present moment, allowing whatever way the body is or the emotional and mental states right now to be the way they are. Just be the observer of whatever is. Right now the mood is ‘this’, ‘I feel this’. Just be aware whether you are confused, indifferent, happy, sad, uncertain or whatever. Be that which allows things to be what they are.

Ajahn Sumedho

Everyday life is muddy

Karl Duffy5 Comments

The essence of the practice life involves cultivating awareness. This process has two basic aspects. The first is clarifying the mental process. The second is experiencing — entering into awareness of the physical reality of the present moment. When we’re standing in the muddy water of everyday life, practice is often not simple and clear. But part of our challenge is to bring a certain precision and impeccability to our efforts. That’s why it’s important to keep returning to these two basic aspects of practice: first, seeing through the mental process, with all its noise; and second, entering the non-conceptual silence of reality as-it-is. As practitioners we learn to honestly and relentlessly observe the mental or conceptual process — thoughts, emotional reactions, strategies and fears — and then bring ourselves back again and again to the physical reality of the present moment.

Ezra Bayda, How to Live a Genuine Life  

Being and doing

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The weather these past days – heat followed by rain and then more heat – has meant that there is a surge of growth in the fields and along the hedgerows. As always,  I am surprised by its spontaneity and joyful abandon. We can see an unforced wild blossoming all around. In this poem we are asked to reflect on this natural growth and see if our restless planning and hectic schedule leaves any space for going out into the fields of possibility.

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground bulbs
for flour, how the settler’s hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you — what of your rushed and
useful life? Imagine setting it all down—
papers, plans, appointments, everything,
leaving only a note: “Gone to the fields
to be lovely. Be back when I’m through
with blooming.”
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course, your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

Lynn Ungar, What we Share

Staying within the moment

Karl Duffy1 Comment

A key skill for sustaining mindfulness in daily life is being able to distinguish between our experience and our interpretation of our experience. Experience is simply whatever is happening in the moment — a sound, a taste, a body sensation, an emotion, an interaction, etc. Interpretation is the mind’s reaction to our experience. One way to understand this difference is that when we are directly experiencing a moment of life, we are “within” it; when we are interpreting it, we are “outside” it. 

Once you begin to recognize that interpretation is only your view of an experience, it becomes possible for you to begin to release your compulsion to interpret every moment. Ideally, your goal is to create a new habit or “default setting” for responding mindfully rather than reacting unskillfully to all types of experiences….You can begin to break your habit of automatically interpreting every experience by practicing being mindful of your experience within the experience. So when an unpleasant moment arises, be interested in the direct experience of what happens. You might say to yourself,  “I’m just going to be interested in this,” and then watch what happens. Just be in the moment and let the experience form.

Philipp Moffitt, Maintaining Mindfulness in Daily Life