Tag: wellbeing

Opportunites to do things differently

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The best way out is always through. Robert Frost

When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You’re able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering negative seeds from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently.

Pema Chodron, Practicing peace in Time of War

The simple nature of practice

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

One way to bring the mind into the present – to ground ourselves in basic meditation – is to meditate on the body and the breath. We can do this whenever we get lost or carried away by thoughts or feelings: just remember, I’m still breathing, the body is still here. That will ground you. It will establish mindfulness in the present. Emotionally we can resist this simple practice. Maybe we’re looking for something else. It doesn’t seem important enough just to reflect on the breath, on our posture, or on the feeling of the body as it is; we tend to dismiss them. But I encourage you to have complete faith in this practice of “just the present moment,” just what’s happening with the breath and with the body.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Bearable Irritation of Being

Small pockets of air

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It’s a cultural requirement that everyone should at least put on a show of maximum stress. But the average day is not a solid wall of activity — it’s more like Swiss cheese. The key to finding a little bit of personal time is to look for the small pockets of air. Remember, we’re talking about only a few minutes at a time. Most people don’t have the luxury of big two-to-four hour blocks of time, but nearly everyone can find one-to-twenty minute blocks. When you identify them in your own life, schedule them. When you come to the appointed hour, drop everything and get settled for meditation. If you’re still having trouble letting go, meditate anyway. It is better to meditate while distracted than not to meditate at all. If you miss a session because you can’t drop what you are doing, no worries: just get yourself back on track at the next appointed time.

David Dillard-Wright, Meditation for Multitaskers

A sense of space

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The key thing here is, try not to watch the breath, but try feeling it go in and out, so you feel one with the breath. Just see if from the beginning you can minimize that sense of heavy-duty watching it, and just feel the breath going in and out. …. Then start to emphasize the outwardness and the space that the breath goes into, and emphasize that more and more. And then just see if you can let that sense of outwardness and space begin to pervade the whole practice more and more.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Basing ourselves on firmer ground

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

In the West many of us can live in physical comfort, yet because we are continually being presented with more refined commodities or changing standards by which to measure ourselves, there’s not much contentment. And there are social and group pressures. A person might very well feel that if they’re not wearing the ‘right’ clothes their job is at risk, so they have to bear this in mind. People can become depressed, even neurotic, if their bodies don’t match up to the current standards of beauty, or if their personality is not smart enough, cynical enough, seedy enough – whatever the fashion is. We want to avoid losing out on good opportunities, and we fear the loneliness of not having any friends. So there can be a nervous feeling of inadequacy and insecurity which deprives us of a sense of trust in our innate worth as a human being.

So because of just this, it’s important that we sense and define ourselves as ‘being’ apart from those currents, if only to get onto some firmer ground. And what really helps is to be able to calm and collect the mind, and to develop oneself in what gives greater benefit. How you attend creates the dwelling place of the mind. So if we can begin to experience clarity and empathy for ourselves and others, we find ourselves living in a more appreciative and balanced way that encourages goodness to develop.

Ajahn Sucitto, Kamma and the End of Kamma

Learning from the out-breath

Karl Duffy2 Comments

When we sit in meditation, we feel our breath as it goes out, and we have some sense of willingness just to be open to the present moment. Then our mind wanders off into all kinds of stories and fabrications and manufactured realities, and we say to ourselves, ‘It’s thinking.’ We say that with a lot of gentleness and a lot of precision. Every time we are willing to let go at the end of the out-breath, that’s fundamentally renunciation: learning how to let go of holding on and holding back.

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape