Tag: wellbeing

The wind blows through

Karl Duffy2 Comments

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Maybe it is because it is windy here in Ireland, that I  post  a reflection on the wind to help us deal with moments we are afraid,  feeling deficient, or burdened with the need to “become”, to be better, as Sharon Salzberg described this morning :

It is essential to understand that an emotion is merely something that arises, remains and then goes away. A storm comes, it stays a while, and then it moves away. At the critical moment remember you are much more than your emotions. This is a simple thing that everyone knows, but you may need to be reminded of it: you are more than your emotions.

Thich Nhat Hahn, Healing Pain and Dressing Wounds

Not leaning

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In our usual mind state, we are continually activating the process that in Buddhist terminology is known as “bhava,” which literally means “becoming.” In this space of becoming, we are subtly leaning forward into the future, trying to have security based on feeling that we can hold on, we can try to keep things from changing. We are continually out of balance in this state – in meditation we might notice that we even try to feel the next breath while the present one is still happening. When we speak about letting go, or unplugging, or renouncing, we are talking about dropping the burden of becoming and just returning our awareness to the natural center of our being, returning to a state of natural peace.

Sharon Salzberg, How Doing Nothing Can Help You Truly Live, Huffington Post

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Unreal Expectations

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Renunciation is not the same as giving up pleasure or denying ourselves happiness. It means giving up our unreal expectations about ordinary pleasures. These expectations themselves are what turn pleasure into pain… Simply stated, renunciation is the feeling of being so completely fed up with our recurring problems that we are finally ready to turn away from our attachments to this and that and begin searching for another way to make our life meaningful… To develop renunciation means to realize how our ordinary reliance on pleasure is preventing us from tasting a higher, more complete happiness

Lama Yeshe

Sunday quote: where to place our attention

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The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James

Projecting our commentary and our moods….

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commentator

We are each living in our own soap opera. We do not see things as they really are. We see only our own interpretations. This is because our minds are always so busy. When we try to look into the mind itself, we cannot see anything below our surface consciousness. But when the mind calms down it becomes clear. This mental clarity enables us to see things as they really are, instead of projecting our cometary onto everything.

Ani Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake

Patience means letting things develop in their own time

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leaves autumn

The gusts of wind have blown any remaining  leaves off  the trees. They lie in large piles on the ground, bright yellow and orange. The end of another cycle.

The leaves have almost completely covered
the backyard, and there are leaves to fall.
The wind whistles through its thin teeth
and no one seems to mind. For weeks we
have watched from windows, seen colors
changing, but not talked about it. One night,
when we went to gather another load
of wood, we heard the dead leaves crunch
beneath our feet. Now a light snow has begun
to touch the trees and the woodpile, first
fingerprinting them, then blurring, blending
everything in. Someday, I may get around
to saying what I’ve been thinking for months.

William Virgil Davis , Leaves,