Tag: wellbeing

We live a lot of the time in the future

Karl Duffy1 Comment

A nice reminder here from Joseph Goldstein as to how the mind continually falls  into the trap of raising expectations about future events, even though it sees that not all events in the past lived up to their hype. Wisdom lies in a balanced understanding of the true nature of things. Practice consists of staying in the now and letting things unfold without an agenda, staying open to how they actually are when they arrive in the present.

When we look back at our experience, we can see so clearly its ephemeral, dreamlike nature. Yet when we look ahead, when we look to the future, somehow (and this is the great enchantment) we get dazzled by all the possibilities that are there waiting for us as if the next event in our lives, the next situation, the next project, the next relationship, the next meal, even on meditation the next breath … we live our lives in anticipation of the next hit of experience as if the one that’s coming will finally do it for us. What’s so strange is that nothing up ’til now has brought that sense of real completion or fulfillment. So why are we so seduced into thinking that the next one will? This is a very strange phenomena.

Joseph Goldstein

Some neuroscience links to practice

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

I was reading recently neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s work on the development of our sense of self. I find his emphasis on the body harmonizes very well with our practice, especially with how we work with difficult emotions. We frequently carry into the present unworked material from the past,  which can be tied up with fearful emotions and inhibit our freedom. Our emphasis is on holding the emotions as they manifest in body sensations in awareness without feeling the need to fix them or judge them or push them away. This is because the body has a wisdom which is broader than the thinking, fixing part of the mind, and we can make use of the way our past manifests in the body, as it is the “pivot around which the conscious mind turns” and allow us get in touch with our primordial experience.

You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware.

Eckhart Tolle

The body is a foundation of the conscious mind … the special kind of mental images of the body produced in body-mapping structures, constitute the protoself, which foreshadows the self to be … the body is best conceived as the rock on which the protoself is built, while the protoself is the pivot around which the conscious mind turns….I hypothesize that the first and most elementary product of the protoself is primordial feelings, which occur spontaneously and continuously whenever one is awake.  They provide a direct experience of one’s own living body, wordless, unadorned, and connected to nothing but sheer existence ……..all feelings of emotion are complex musical variations on primordial feelings.

Antonio Damasio, Self comes to mind.

Inner work is the key to happiness

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The way to solve the problem isn’t through trying to make everything right and pleasant on the external dimension,

but to develop the right understanding, the right attitude towards ourselves.

Ajahn Sumedho

Inner and outer life on the first day of Spring

Karl Duffy1 Comment

This morning two birds
fell down the side of the maple tree

like a tuft of fire, a wheel of fire
a love knot out of control as they plunged through the air
pressed against each other
and I thought

how I meant to live a quiet life
how I meant to live a life of mildness and meditation
tapping the careful words against each other

and I thought—
as though I were suddenly spinning, like a bar of silver
as though I had shaken my arms and lo! they were wings—

of the Buddha
when he rose from his green garden
when he rose in his powerful ivory body

when he turned to the long dusty road without end
when he covered his hair with ribbons and the petals of flowers
when he opened his hands to the world.

Mary Oliver, Spring

Our overactive minds

Karl Duffy2 Comments

Most times that I fret and chafe about an upcoming engagement, someone cancels; most times I dread a coming moment,  the moment never comes. It’s not the world that I need to change, but the mayhem that my overactive mind makes of the world. It’s more than capable of seeing a blue car stationary, and constructing out of it a six-act melodrama

Pico Iyer, The Folly of the Weather Forecast

Seeing that things arise and pass away

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Let not a person revive the past
Or on the future build his hopes
For the past has been left behind
and the future has not been reached.
Instead with insight let him see
Each presently arisen state,
Let him know that and be sure of it,
Invincibly and unshakeably.

 
Today the effort must be made;
Tomorrow Death may come, who knows?
No bargain with Mortality
Can keep him and his hordes away

 
But one who dwells thus ardently,
Relentlessly, by day and night –
It is he, the Peaceful Sage has said,
Who has had a single excellent night.

The Buddha