Tag: quote

Taking Responsibility 2: Ending blame

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A similar reflection to the earlier one from Hollis, this time from a Buddhist perspective:

From a meditator’s point of view, as long as we’re looking for someone to blame, our mind is unable to settle. By putting ourselves into a mind space where we’re constantly projecting out into the world—trying to find someone or something who could be responsible for our unhappy state—we abandon the possibility of harmony. Blame is a form of aggression. Looking outward for an object to which we can attach our negativity and irritation hinders our ability to have peace. The meditation path encourages us to be bigger, more openminded, more mature. It’s suggesting that we take responsibility for our behavior. This means that one day we will simply have to stop blaming the world.

Blame is an obstacle on the path of openmindedness and understanding. By blaming others when the world doesn’t move the way we want, we’re creating narrow parameters into which everything must fit. We become dead-set on what will solve our problem; nothing else will do. Blame ties us to the past and reduces who we are. Our possibilities become confined to one small situation.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, End Blame

Where to look when things are not clear

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Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart…

Who looks outside, dreams.

Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

Really listening

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“How shall I experience my oneness with creation?”

“By listening,” said the Master.

“And how am I to listen?”

“Become an ear that gives heed to every single thing the universe is saying. The moment you hear something you yourself are saying, stop.”

Anthony de Mello

True connection

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, – even the phrase “each other” –
do not make any sense.

Rumi

Sunday Quote: On missing what we actually have

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We… anticipate what’s to come,

then ignore what’s actually here.

Stephen Rechtschaffen

Busy

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It has become the standard greeting everywhere: I am so busy.

We say this to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy, our ability to withstand stress a mark of real character.  The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and we imagine, to others.  To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know that the sun has set at all), to whiz through our obligations without time for a single, mindful breath, this has become the model of a successful life.

How have we allowed this to happen?  This was not our intention, this is not the world we dreamed when we were young and our whole life was full of possibility and promise.  How did we get so terribly lost in a world saturated with striving and grasping, yet somehow bereft of joy and delight?

Wayne Muller, Sabbath