Tag: wellbeing

Trusting in the solitude within

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Silence is one of the major thresholds in the world. . . . Meister Eckhart said that there is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence. Silence is a great friend of the soul; it unveils the riches of solitude. It is very difficult to reach that quality of inner silence. You must make a space for it so that it may begin to work for you. In a certain sense, you do not need the whole armory and vocabulary of therapies, psychologies, or spiritual programs. If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you. These are some wonderful lines from the French poet Rene Char: “Intensity is silent, its image is not. I love everything that dazzles me and then accentuates the darkness within me.” Here is an image of silence as the force that discloses hidden depth.

John O Donohue, Anam Chara

A very good practice

Karl Duffy2 Comments

The present moment is where life can be found, and if you don’t arrive there you miss your appointment with life. You don’t have to run anymore. Breathing in, we say, “I have arrived.” Breathing out, we say, “I am home.” This is a very strong practice, a very deep practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh,  The Present Moment

Noticing the Dualistic mind today

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In the face of the economic hardship the world is now suffering, it is possible for us to spin out and become very dualistic. When we are not sure what’s going on, we react with fear and start labeling things black or white, good or bad, doomed to fail or destined to succeed. The process of labeling something because we are not sure what it is further increases the illusion of duality. Dualistic mind creates an aggressive scenario because we project a “self” and “other,” and this process becomes a cycle: the heavier the dualism, the heavier the fear.

What virtues can we develop to overcome the fear that freezes life into a dualistic illusion? Gentleness is key in overcoming the aggression that results from the process of fixating. We’re living in a time when even within our own mind, it is difficult to find peace. We label many faults in ourselves; we become harsh with ourselves. When we’re unable to find peace with ourselves, it becomes difficult to find peace with each other. So we must begin to practice peace by being gentle with ourselves. When we are gentle with ourselves, we are naturally gentle with others.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, It’s Not Us and Them


Splitting, blaming, doesn’t help

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If we think of suffering as something unnatural, something that we shouldn’t be experiencing, then it’s not much of a leap to begin to look for someone to blame for our suffering. If I’m unhappy, then I must be the victim of someone or something – an idea that’s all too common in the West. The victimizer may be the government, the educational system, abusive parents, a ‘dysfunctional family,’ the other gender or our uncaring mate. Or, we may turn the blame inward: there’s something wrong with me, I’m the victim of disease, of defective genes perhaps. But the risk of continuing to focus on assigning blame, and maintaining a victim stance, is the perpetuation of our suffering – with persistent feelings of anger, frustration, and resentment.

Dalai Lama

They never stay

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The bad weather this past week has meant that the blossoms on the cherry tree in the garden have all been blown away. Cherry blossoms have long been a symbol for transience and the the ephemeral nature of life, so I suppose they are even more so this year:

Nothing in the world
is usual today.
This is the first morning.

Come quickly –  as soon as
these blossoms open, they fall.
This world exists as a sheen of dew on flowers.

Izumi Shikibu,  10th Century Japanese poetess.

We usually take ourselves to be the sum of these thoughts, ideas, emotions and body sensations, but there is nothing solid to them. How can we claim to be our thoughts or opinions or emotions or body when they never stay the same?

Jack Kornfield

Human beings, not human doings

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I have merged, like the bird, with the bright air,

And my thought flies to the place by the bo-tree.

Being, not doing, is my first joy.

Theodore Roethke.  American poet