We can

aspire to be kind

right in the moment,

to relax and open our heart and

mind to what is in front of us right in

the moment. Now is the time. If there’s

any possibility for enlightenment,

it’s right now, not at

some future

time.

 

Pema Chödrön

 

 

Filling

to fullness is not

as good as stopping

at the right

moment.

 

Oversharpening

a blade causes its edge to be lost.

Line your home with treasures and you

won’t be able to defend it. Amass possessions,

establish positions, display your pride:

Soon enough disaster drives

you to your

knees.

 

This is the

way of heaven:

do your work, then

quietly step

back.

 

from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 9

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Voluntarily chosen limits
empower your growth.

The practice of economies is a valuable notion everywhere in life. In your financial dealings, a reasonable thrift practiced today assures you of opportunity tomorrow. In your emotional life, the practice of balance and equanimity allows steady spiritual progress. The hexagram Chieh comes as an encouragement to set practical limits throughout your life.

Life lived without guidelines is confusing and troubling. In order to make genuine progress in any direction, we must first give some definition to our path. However, limits that are overstrenuous are not helpful; having too many rules causes rebellion in the one on whom they are imposed, whether one’s self or another. Therefore there must be limits even on one’s limits.

To yourself, the setting of limits means defining your purpose and responsibilities so that you have a clear idea of where your energies are to be aimed. Your limits should be determined by yourself, not another or the culture in which you live. Avoid harshness and impatience with yourself; true progress is made in gradual steps. Allow yourself pleasure, but avoid careless self-indulgence.

With others, place limits both on your own actions and the indulgences you offer them. To encourage another’s inferior qualities is to invite misfortune. Allow your interactions with others to take place within the limits of gentleness, tolerance, and innocence. If you will define and observe reasonable limits in all things, you will be assured of steady progress.

from The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 60, Chieh / Limitation

 

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Good

and bad,  self

and others, life and death:

Why affirm these concepts? Why

deny them? To do either is to exercise

the mind, and the integral being knows

that the manipulations of the mind

are dreams, delusions, and

shadows.

 

Hold

one idea, and 

another competes with it. 

Soon the two will be in conflict

with a third, and in time your

life is all chatter and

contradiction.

 

Seek

instead to keep

your mind undivided.

Dissolve all ideas

into the

Tao. 

 

from Hua hu Ching, Chapter 41

 

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You should spend twenty or thirty years doing dispassionate and tranquil meditation work, sweeping away any conditioned knowledge and interpretive understanding as soon as it arrives, and not letting the traces of the sweeping itself remain either. Let go on That Side, abandon your whole body, and go on rigorously correcting yourself until you attain great joyous life. The only fear is that in knowing about this strategy, the very act of knowing will lead to disaster. Only when you proceed like this will it be real and genuine practice.

…But tell me, where were the ancestral teachers of Zen operating? It’s evident that the unique transmission outside of doctrine was not a hurried undertaking. They looked to the void and traced its outline: each and every one penetrated through from the heights to the depths and covered heaven and earth. They were like lions roaming at ease, sovereign and free. When they were empty and open, they really were empty and open, and when they were close and continuous, they really were close and continuous.

Although it is just this one thing that we all stand on, ultimately you yourself must mobilize and focus your energy. Only then will you really receive the use of it.

Yuanwu