Tag: relationships

Celebrating life and birthdays

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Celebrated a birthday today, and the passing of another year. When I lived in Rome I quickly lost any shyness around these occasions as they were considered moments of joy to be shared with all and an excuse for a cake and a celebration! So that is how I marked it, with gratitude for life and all the moments that it contains. And receiving messages and kindnesses from people, some of whom I was amazed even knew the day that it was,  also reminded me of the goodness of people and the joy there is in receiving.

I have learnt a lot this past year. In my work, and in my own life,  I have seen colleagues move far away,  I have been with people struggling with illness and death, walked with individuals as they tried to reconcile the demands of personal growth with their commitments and I have personally realized a lot about the nature of true friendship and support. At times, these experiences have made me really wonder whether there is any point in continuing to give, in remaining open; the temptation has been to shut down, to insulate the heart. I have asked whether it is worth the risk to continue to reach out to others. And yet, all these ups and downs have made me recognize more and more that life  is an extended practice of becoming the best I can be.  I see that it is a bit like meditation practice – I do not have to be perfect- all I have to do is just turn up. I just need to be there even if I think I do not have the right words and be close to what others and what life offers.

Even as an adult, with the years passing, I have had many moments when I felt lost. Life is such a long journey, and I have seen often this past year that we all have difficulty knowing who we really are or where we really need to go, or even where we come from. There is no GPS for this life,  no pre-determined  maps, no magical tarot cards which give us the final, clear answers to its mysteries.  We can only do our best. Sometimes, and for some people, that is not enough. But what we are working on is not perfection, but a slow and steady path which leads us to a greater acceptance of where our life is. It is about increasingly befriending who we are, moment by moment, year by year.

What does it take to use the life we already have in order to make us wiser rather than more stuck? What is the source of wisdom at a personal, individual level? The answer to these questions seems to have to do with bringing everything that we encounter to the path. Everything naturally had a ground, path, and fruition. This is like saying that everything has a beginning, middle, and end. But it is also said that the path itself is both the ground and the fruition. The path is the goal.

This path has one very distinct characteristic: it is not prefabricated. It doesn’t already exist. The path that we’re talking about is the moment-by-moment evolution of our experience, the moment-by-moment evolution of the world of phenomena, the moment-by-moment evolution of our thoughts and emotions. The path is uncharted. It comes into existence moment-by-moment and at the same time drops away behind us.

When we realize that the path is the goal, there’s a sense of workability. Everything that occurs in our confused mind we can regard as the path. Everything is workable.

Pema Chodron

Do not look for answers

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Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Rilke

The essential rule for life and happiness

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In the different wisdom traditions we find attempts to reduce down to their simplest all of the instructions about living a full life: What is the essence of practice? What leads to true contentment?  We can see that is this tale from the Jewish  tradition, which resembles the simple direct presentation of wisdom found in the Christian Desert Fathers and in the Zen tradition. We are told that a man approached Rabbi Hillel and promised to convert to Judaism if the Rabbi managed to recite the whole of the Jewish teaching, while standing on one leg. Rabbi Hillel stood on one leg and said simply: That which is hateful to you, do not do that to your neighbour. That is the essence of the Law. Everything else is just a Commentary. Go and Study it.

A rule of life

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Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight:

always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.

J.M. Barrie

What are you going through?

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Mindfulness practice strengthens our capacity to be present for all that is happening in our lives. It also creates a space within so that we can be present to others. It is easy to be there when people are in good space, or when they make us feel good about ourselves. However, as the French Philosopher Simone Weil says in this beautiful quote,  friendship is truly shown when one is able to ask the other  “What are you going through?”. This requires courage and inner strength. To stick with another person when they are confused or frightened requires that we are able to put aside our own concerns for a moment and attend to them. Full attention is the most precious gift we can give another. It is not always easy because of our own needs and the believed story that goes on in our head when we encounter another person. Furthermore, when another person is afraid, it often raises fears in us and our first tendency is to withdraw. Paying attention means we are able to step back from our own stories and be there.

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not have it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough. In the first legend of the Grail it is said that the Grail belongs to the first comer who asks the guardian of the vessel, a king paralysed by the most painful wound, “What is wrong with you? What are you going through?” Only the person who is capable of attention can do this.

Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Fear as a constant companion

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One more post prompted by recent references to Adam and Eve. These ancient stories attempt to do justice to the fundamental truth of the human condition, using the language  of  those days. And we are told that after they ate of the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve hid themselves. This simple fact – the need to hide and protect themselves, the existence of judgmental thoughts and guilty emotions – alerted God to the fact that something had changed. When he asked them why they were hiding, Adam replied “I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself”

As I said, the writers were reflecting on what their own experience was. And it is similar to ours. We feel fear and that leads us to pull back and hide from others, because of the anticipation that we will get hurt. The openness and ease of the original days is not easy to find, even in the closest relationships. And most of us have been hurt along the way, from early childhood onwards. There is a relationship between how reliable things were in our childhood and how confused and difficult our relationships are as adults. So there can be an ongoing struggle between the part of us that loves and the part of us that fears, the part that wishes to be open and be seen and the part that want to protect itself and hide. And so all of us will struggle from time to time to keep believing in love, in allowing ourselves get close to others.

What we can learn from these ancient stories is that some undercurrent of fear has always been present in human history and will likely always be present in our lives. The difference between adulthood and childhood is that we do not have to allow it dominate. We can act in spite of our fears. Mindfulness is based on this same understanding that there are fears  at the heart of life, and that  does not mean there is anything wrong with our life, or with us,  just because we feel them. We do not have to turn this fact into a judgment about ourselves or others. We can choose not to hide. We can work through our fears.