Tag: Present moment

The Power of One Small Moment

Karl Duffy1 Comment

On those Mondays, when the day or the week ahead feels challenging, I like the Japanese phrase “Ikki no mei” (喜の明) — roughly translated as “one small reason to keep going.” It helps me focus on a single, simple moment or action: a cup of coffee, or offering a smile or kind greeting to a colleague — these “micro-meanings” become small anchors that guide me through the day.

Donne-nous aujourd’hui notre pain de ce jour

[French translation of the Our Father: Give us this day our bread for this day]

Knowing this, a wise person lives
the present moment, unshaken, unmoved.

Bhaddekaratta Sutta (MN 131)

Sunday Quote: are you actually here?

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It doesn’t get any simpler than this. Most of our stress arises when we live in abstraction – caught in memory, anticipation, worry, or self-story.

If you can taste the water you are drinking,

you are alright.

from the great Shunryu Suzuki roshi

A bigger body

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Today, give yourself permission to be supported by something larger than personal strength. Suffering decreases when phenomena are allowed to move through rather than be contained.

Your body is holding all of this.

Give it to a bigger body.

Give it to the sky.

Jaiya John, author, poet, speaker

Past and future

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Be alert. Are some of the thoughts that go through your mind the internalized voice of your father or mother, saying perhaps something like, “You are not good enough. You will never amount to anything,” or some other judgment or mental position? If there is awareness within you, you will be able to recognize that voice in your head for what it is: an old thought, conditioned by the past. If there is awareness within you, you no longer need to believe in every thought you think. It’s an old thought, no more. Awareness means Presence, and only Presence can dissolve the unconscious past in you.

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

the answer is never the answer

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The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anyone really find the answer — they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. 

Ken Kesey

essentially clueless

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We tend to think life should be the way we want it to be, the way we planned. But often, things don’t turn out that way.

In fact, they rarely do. And there’s wisdom in not expecting life to turn out the way we think or feel it ought to.

There’s wisdom in understanding that we are essentially clueless

Björn Natthiko Lindeblad, I May Be Wrong: And Other Wisdoms From Life as a Forest Monk