You
are the pure
awareness that illumines
consciousness and its infinite
content. Realize this and live
accordingly.
picking up whatever comes to hand
If you make slogans
based on words and sprout interpretations
based on objects, then you fall into the bag of antique curios,
and you will never be able to find this true realm
of absolute awareness beyond
sentiments.
At this stage you are free
to go forward in the wild field without choosing,
picking up whatever comes to hand: the meaning of the ancestral
teachers is clear in all that grows there. What’s more, the thickets of green
bamboo and the masses of yellow flowers and the fences and walls
and tiles and pebbles are inanimate things
teaching the dharma.
The water birds and the
groves of trees expound the truths of suffering,
emptiness, and selflessness. Based on the one true reality,
they extend objectless compassion, and from the great
jewel light of nirvana they reveal uncontrived,
surpassingly wondrous powers.
Changqing said,
“When you meet a companion
on the Path, stand shoulder to shoulder and
go on: then your lifetime of learning
will be completed.”
tao te ching ☯️ chapter 10
Can you
marry your spirit and
body to the oneness and
never depart
from it?
Can you ride your breath
until your entire being is as supple
as the body of an infant?
Can you cleanse
your inner vision until
you see heaven in
very direction?
Can you love
people and govern them
without conniving and
manipulating?
Can you bear
heaven’s children in all
that you do and are?
Can you give the wisdom of
your heart precedence
over the learning of
your head?
Giving birth,
nourishing life,
shaping things
without possessing them,
serving without expectation of
reward, leading without dominating:
These are the profound virtues
of nature, and of nature’s
best things.
from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,
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don’t search outside yourself
It is the one
without obsession who is noble.
Just do not act in a contrived manner; simply be normal.
When you go searching elsewhere outside yourself, your whole approach
is already mistaken. You just try to seek buddhahood, but
buddhahood is just a name, an expression.
Do you know the one who is doing
the searching?
strength of character
Our task
as humans is to find
the few principles that will calm the
infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend
what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable
again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness
a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by
the misery of the century. Naturally, it is
a superhuman task. But superhuman
is the term for tasks [we] take
a long time to accomplish,
that’s all.
Let us
know our aims then,
holding fast to the mind, even if
force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable
face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to
despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim
that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily,
and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have
been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic
times. But too many people confuse tragedy with
despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said,
“ought to be a great kick at misery.”
This is a healthy and immediately
applicable thought. There are
many things today
deserving such
a kick.
If we are
to save the mind we must
ignore its gloomy virtues and celebrate
its strength and wonder. Our world is poisoned
by its misery, and seems to wallow in it. It has utterly
surrendered to that evil which Nietzsche called
the spirit of heaviness. Let us not add to this.
It is futile to weep over the mind,
it is enough to labor
for it.
But where
are the conquering virtues
of the mind? The same Nietzsche listed
them as mortal enemies to heaviness of the spirit.
For him, they are strength of character, taste, the “world,”
classical happiness, severe pride, the cold frugality of
the wise. More than ever, these virtues are
necessary today, and each of us can
choose the one that suits
him best.
Before the
vastness of the undertaking,
let no one forget strength of character.
I don’t mean the theatrical kind on political
platforms, complete with frowns and threatening
gestures. But the kind that through the virtue of its purity
and its sap, stands up to all the winds that blow in
from the sea. Such is the strength of character
that in the winter of the world
will prepare the
fruit.