Tag: Stress Reduction

Not looking for right or wrong

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open moment

Instead of making others right or wrong, or bottling up right and wrong in ourselves, there’s a middle way, a very powerful middle way. This middle way involves not hanging on to our version so tightly.  It involves keeping  our hearts and minds open long enough to entertain the idea that when we make things wrong,  we do it out of a desire to obtain some kind of ground or security. Equally, when we make things right,  we are still trying to  obtain some kind of ground or security. Could our minds and our hearts be big enough just to hang out in that space  where we’re not entirely certain about who’s right and who’s wrong? Could we have no agenda when we walk into a room with another person, not know what to say, not make that person wrong or right?  Could we see,  hear,  feel other people as they really are? It is powerful to practice this way, because we’ll find ourselves continually rushing around to try to feel secure again – to make ourselves or them either right or wrong.   

  Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart – Heart Advice for Difficult Times
 

Two aspects

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Meditation is like a mirror or coin with two sides.

Facing out is letting go

and facing in is compassion.

 Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje

photo of old Irish Three penny coin.

Where our time goes

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound,

productive by turning all life’s leisure into work,

and real by turning all our being into doing,

we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.

Thomas Merton, The Silent Life

Happiness is not dependent

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rain21

Avoidance of discomfort is one of the most powerful drives in us, yet much of its power derives from the belief – the false belief – that we can’t be happy if we’re uncomfortable. One of the great benefits of practice is learning that this belief is not, in fact, an unalterable truth.

Ezra Bayda, Zen Heart

…but noticing blessings

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Beannachtai na Féile Padraig oraibh go léir! 

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day (literally “The Blessings of St Patrick’s Day be with you all”)

The word “blessing” is related in English to the word “blood.” Blessing is like the spiritual bloodstream that flows through the universe. When we bless something we are returning what we have received to its source. We know we receive life and breath from a source which is beyond us. We haven’t bought it or earned it. We are just put here and life comes to us from some mysterious source, and we can give it back. That is like the blood coming from the heart and going back to the heart. That blood keeps on flowing and if we tune in to the bloodstream of blessing the world comes alive. The same thing happens if we cut off the bloodstream or drain the sap from a tree; life withers.

The gifts or blessings of life are always there but if we are not aware of them, they don’t do much for us. That is where gratefulness comes in. Gratefulness makes us aware of the gift and makes us happy. As long as we take things for granted they don’t make us happy. Gratefulness is the key to happiness.

David Steindl-Rast.

Not leaning….

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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By pausing and accepting our experience, we free ourselves to respond to our circumstances in ways that bring genuine peace and happiness. In a pause, we simply discontinue whatever we are doing. We become wholly present, attentive and, often, physically still.  Try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing “no thing,” and simply notice what you experience.

Taking our hands off the controls and pausing lets us clearly see the wants and fears that drive us. We become conscious of how the feeling that something is missing or wrong keeps us leaning into the future. We can continue our futile attempt to manage our experience, or we can meet our vulnerability with the wisdom of what I call “radical acceptance.”

Tara Brach

photo greymalkn