Tag: Stress Reduction

Working with our “stuff” today

Karl Duffy1 Comment
airport-queues
Can we see our ‘stuff’ just for what it is, rather than making it into a big ‘me’ and ‘my problem’ – the things I’ve got to work out, resolve, fix, get beyond, get rid of; thinking about what I’m lacking or what I’ve got obstructing me.  All this stuff!  It’s really just the play of the mind… has causes and conditions for its existence. It’s the stuff of the world. And, it’s the stuff that we learn from, actually.  If we don’t acknowledge suffering, if we aren’t aware of suffering,then where do we find the energy to understand it and go beyond it? In other words, whatever we’ve got to work with, it’s the stuff of awakening – if we can find the right relationship to it.
Ajahn Jitindriya, The Stuff of Awakening

An autumn poem

Karl Duffy1 Comment

autumn_leaves

The last few days have turned much cooler in Ireland, and this year’s late arrival of autumn progresses with a little more intensity, with leaves turning colour and beginning to fall.  This year the natural world is slow to move towards its conclusion, preferring to hold on to the period of growth and warmth. And yet a different type of growth awaits, with new lessons to be learned.

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.  

Command the last fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.  

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

Uncertain and not knowing

Karl Duffy4 Comments

Black River

The core of all navigation is probably uncertainty: tolerating not knowing makes it possible to find your way. Not knowing means embracing what is not known rather than fighting with yourself over it. Since the mind always strives to know, not knowing is disorienting in a useful way. Uncertainty and not knowing teach you not to believe the stories your mind feeds you day in and day out. If you allow your own course to be mysterious, then even the hard things can become easy. This is the beginning of awakening.

John Tarrant, Surprises on the Way

Accepting, letting go, insight

Karl Duffy1 Comment

File:AutumnLeaf2.JPG

In the deepest forms of insight we see that things change so quickly that we can’t hold onto anything,

and eventually the mind lets go of clinging.

Letting go brings equanimity. The greater the letting go, the deeper the equanimity.

In practice we work to expand the range of life experiences in which we are free.

U Pandita

photo brookie

A simple way to find balance each day

Karl Duffy2 Comments

DSC_0464

A change in the weather in Ireland this morning –  gone noticeably cooler – but it still remains bright and clear. A perfect  day for a Autumnal walk, to appreciate the changing colours.  Tuning into the change in nature’s rhythms is good for our internal sense of balance, as we see that things arise and pass away, and that life cannot be composed only of periods of growth and achievement. However, walking has significant physical health benefits also, as studies show that being out in natural light increases serotonin levels in the brain, as even on a cloudy day the light outside is normally greater than what can be achieved indoors. Thus,  a break away from the desk or the computer helps us to let go of some of the stresses that each day brings and see things in perspective:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

Everything that happens today

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File:Library near Parkway (2988226785).jpg

True meditation is making everything — coughing, swallowing, waving, movement and stillness, speaking and acting, good and evil, fame and shame, loss and gain, right and wrong — into one single koan.

 Hakuin, Zen teacher, 1685 – 1768.

photo russavia