There
isn’t any need
to seek outside yourself.
Look inside, allow ideas and
methods and ways of perceiving to
dissolve, and you will see that
your original face and that
of all the buddhas are
one and the
same.
be still
During
my thirty years
in the south, the only times
I mixed mundane concerns into
my mental activity were
during the morning
and noon
meals.
“In the practice of the Way, nothing is forced.”
In the
practice of the Way,
nothing is forced. Remaining
at home in quiet concentration,
you merge the outside
and inside into
one.
At peace
with everything,
unlearned, unworried,
untouched by phenomena,
you enter into reality
as an ordinary
person.
nelson mandela: “the purest form of spirit”
In
Chinese,
Wu De means martial virtue.
“De” is the “de” in the Tao de Ching,
and it ultimately represents
spiritual, transcendent
power.
Nelson
Mandela epitomized
the term in every way.
Martial Virtue: strength, courage,
integrity, beauty, restraint,
forgiveness,
peace.
The
purest
form of spirit.
And the most
powerful.
rest in peace, smiling lion: nelson mandela, 18 july 1918 ~ 5 december 2013
On the day I die, when I’m being carried
toward the grave, don’t weep. Don’t say,
He’s gone! He’s gone. Death has nothing
to do with going away. The sun sets and
the moon sets, but they’re not gone.
Death is a coming together. The tomb
looks like a prison, but it’s really
release into union. The human seed goes
down in the ground like a bucket into
the well where Joseph is. It grows and
comes up full of some unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes here and immediately
opens with a shout of joy there.
“If where you stand is reality, then your actions have power.”
If
where you
stand is reality,
then your actions have power.
Needless to say, leading brave heroes,
commanding fierce warriors, routing powerful
bandits, comforting the farmers, pacifying the nation,
and assisting the work of restoring social
harmony and cultural florescence
all depend on this one
revelation.
“If you haven’t attained the Way, don’t admonish others”: Wei wu Wei Ching, Chapter 38, Opposition
If
you haven’t
attained the Way,
don’t admonish others.
Don’t waste time blaming
yourself, either. Just
attain the
Way.
a self dark and secret
All summer
the mockingbird
in his pearl-gray coat
and his white-windowed wings
flies
from the hedge to the top of the pine
and begins to sing, but it’s neither
lilting nor lovely,
for he is the thief of other sounds–
whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges
plus all the songs
of other birds in his neighborhood;
mimicking and elaborating,
he sings with humor and bravado,
so I have to wait a long time
for the softer voice of his own life
to come through. He begins
by giving up all his usual flutter
and settling down on the pine’s forelock
then looking around
as though to make sure he’s alone;
then he slaps each wing against his breast,
where his heart is,
and copying nothing, begins
easing into it
as though it was not half so easy
as rollicking,
as though his subject now
was his true self,
which of course was as dark and secret
as anyone else’s,
and it was too hard–
perhaps you understand–
to speak or to sing it
to anything or anyone
but the sky.
“You must abandon your worldly mentality and sit quietly with mind silent.”
I
often see
those who are trying
to study Buddhism just use their
worldly intelligence to sift among the verbal
teachings of the buddhas and ancestral teachers,
trying to pick out especially wondrous sayings
to use as conversation pieces to display
their ability and understanding.
This is not the correct
view of the
matter.
You
must abandon
your worldly mentality and sit quietly
with mind silent. Forget entangling causes and
investigate with your whole being. When you are thoroughly
clear, then whatever you bring forth from your own
inexhaustible treasury of priceless jewels
is sure to be genuine
and real.
So first
you must awaken
to the Fundamental and clearly see
the true essence where mind equals buddha.
Detach from all false entanglements and become free and clean.
After that, respectfully practice all forms of good, and arouse great compassion to
bring benefits to all sentient beings. In all that you do, be even and balanced and attuned
to the inherent equality of all things — be selfless and have no attachments. When
wondrous wisdom manifests itself and you penetrate through to
the basic essence, all your deeds will be wonder-working.
Thus it is said, “Just manage to accept
the truth — you won’t be
deceived!”
Make
enlightenment
your standard, and don’t
feel bad if it is slow
in coming. Take
care!
“Make your mind like the clear blue sky at dawn.”
Make
your mind like
the clear blue sky at dawn,
unmarked by any message from man
or heaven. Continually stoking the fire
of emptiness with the breath, you
instantly incinerate whatever
appears.
I will have sweet patience.
I will
have sweet patience.
Bright flames inside make a soft glow
without. Enlightenment knows how laughter
hides inside grief. Only if you
love can you feel
absence.
“To realize the Way you must die and stay dead and go on living.”
To
realize
the Way you must
die and stay dead and go
on living. With one mighty blow,
sever the attachments of mind
and self and dwell in
emptiness.
Pouring
emptiness into emptiness
like waves coming to shore,
you become quiet,
luminous,
still.
Where
before there were ten
thousand entanglements, now
there is undifferentiated
Oneness, clarity,
peace.
“Just make the transmission continue and you will be a joyously alive person on the road of eternal life.”
Once
your practice
has power, you are able
to bear the heavy responsibility of
teaching the Dharma and achieve far-reaching
effects — you achieve great mastery. Then compressing three
aeons into a single moment or stretching out seven days
into a whole age is just minor action — to say nothing
of taking the galaxy and hurling it beyond space,
or putting the polar mountain into
a mustard seed. This is your
everyday food and
drink.
In the past
there were many examples
of enlightened lay people who combined
worldly achievement with profound mystic realization.
It wasn’t so hard — all they did was directly comprehend this
one Great Cause. Once they had this Tao as their foundation, they
were able to disregard other people’s conventional judgments and mobilize
their own courage and boldness. When interacting with people, they focused the eye of
enlightenment and set in motion their quick potential and sharp wisdom to turn
all the myriad forms of being around, back into their own grasp. They rolled
out and they rolled up, they released and they captured. Thus they
were no different from all the people of great attainment
down through the ages whose practice
was pure and ripe and who held
within them the virtues and
power of the
Tao.
Just
make the
transmission
continue without
a break from source
to source, and then you
will be a joyously
alive person on
the road of
eternal
life.
“The Way is a path for one”: Wei wu Wei Ching, Chapter 51, The Arousing (Shock)
If
you wish
to enjoy the fruits
of enlightenment, abandon
regard for the conventional and
the communal. The Way is a path
for one. Then it narrows
until there’s not even
space for
you.
spooky lemur
“We do what we do simply to wake up.”
If we
look like buddhists
and talk like buddhists and sit
on a cushion like all the other buddhists,
then we think we are automatically followers of the
Buddha’s teachings. But all of these concepts are cutting us off
from the utter simplicity of the buddha’s example and message. We do
what we do simply to wake up, simply to be free. Any form we use
is only a support for accomplishing that purpose. We could
be perfect in the performance of a thousand rituals,
and they could all be empty of meaning
and benefit if we don’t
connect with our
heart.
By seeing all the way through things we are able to perceive the perfection of existence.
By
seeing all the
way through things
we are able to perceive the
perfection of existence. The foreground
of mind is noisy chatter, but by simply watching
that with discipline and perseverance,
we see it quiet.In its place arises a
vast, silent, illuminated
emptiness.
So
also with life.
The foreground is rife
with suffering and difficulty,
but by doing not-doing and
quietly observing, we
become aware of
its purity.
“Don’t bat around your little clean ball of inner mystical experience.”
So,
then, when you
yourself have crossed over,
you must not abandon the
carrying out of your
bodhisattva
vows.
You
must be mindful
of saving all beings, and
steadfastly endure the attendant
hardship and toil, in order to serve as
a boat on the ocean of all-knowledge. Only
then will you have some accord with the
Path. Don’t be a brittle pillar or a
feeble lamp. Don’t bat around
your little clean ball
of inner mystical
experience.
…
Nowadays
there are many
bright Zen monks in
various localities who want
to pass through directly. Some seek
too much and want to understand easily.
As soon as they know a little bit about the aim
of the Path and how to proceed, they immediately want
to show themselves as adepts. Yet they have already
missed it and gone wrong. Some don’t come
forth even when they are pushed to
do so, but they too are
not yet completely
enlightened.
You are
a master of Buddhist
teaching methods only when you can
recognize junctures of times and patterns
of causal conditions and manage
not to miss real teaching
opportunities.
∞ 30 ∞
The
present moment
is the source of everything.
As long as you have resentments
about the past or ideas about
the future, you cannot
genuinely be in the
present.
You owe it
to your future self,
and to the rest of us, to be
completely absorbed here and
now. Make all notions of past
and future a cool pile
of ashes in the
corner.
