Be at rest wherever you are.
Zen is not
some kind of excitement,
but concentration on our usual
everyday routine.
When
machinations cease,
then the moon is there and the
breeze comes; so one needn’t experience
the world as an ocean of misery. When
the mind is aloof, there are no dust
and tracks from the rat race;
so why get addicted to
mountains?
A truly
good person doesn’t
dwell on her goodness.
Thus she can be good.
A person of false goodness
never forgets her goodness.
Thus her goodness is
always false.
A truly
good person does nothing,
yet nothing remains undone.
A person of false goodness is forever
doing, yet everything remains
forever undone.
Those who
are interested in service
act without motive. Those who are
interested in righteousness act with
motives of all sorts. Those who are
interested in propriety act, and
receiving no response, they
roll up their sleeves
and use force.
When
Tao is lost,
goodness appears.
When goodness is lost,
philanthropy appears.
When philanthropy is lost,
justice appears.
When justice is lost,
only etiquette
is left.
Etiquette
is the faintest husk
of real loyalty and faith,
and it is the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only
a blossom of Tao; to become
preoccupied with it
is folly.
Thus the
sage sets her sights
on the substance and not the
surface, on the fruit and not the
flower. Leaving the one,
she gains the
other.
from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,
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among the myriad things is the hairy goosefish
All the myriad things are neither opposed to nor contrary to your true self. Directly pass through to freedom and they make one whole. It has been this way from time without beginning…
If you can cut off outward clinging to objects and inwardly forget your false ideas of self, things themselves are the true self, and the true self itself is things: things and true self are one suchness, operating through to infinity.