The essential requirement

in studying zen is concentrated focus.

You don’t engage in any forced actions: you just keep

to the fundamental. Right where you stand, you must pass

through to freedom. You must see the original face and walk through

the scenery of the fundamental ground. You do not change your

ordinary actions, yet outside and inside are One Suchness.

You act according to the natural flow and do not set

up anything as particularly special —

you are no different from

an ordinary person.

This is called

being a wayfarer who is free

and at peace, beyond learning, free

from contrived actions. Being in this stage,

you do not reveal any traces of mind — there

is no road for the gods to offer you flowers,

and no way for demons and outsiders

to spy on you. This at last is

simple unadorned

reality.

Yuanwu

This

is what you

shall do: Love the earth

and sun and the animals, despise riches,

give alms to every one that asks, stand up for

the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor

to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have

patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat

to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,

go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young

and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open

air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you

have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss

whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall

be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only

in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and

face and between the lashes of your eyes

and in every motion and

joint of your

body.

Walt Whitman

The things that

change are not our real life.

Within us there is another body,

another beauty. It belongs to that ray of light

which never changes. We must discover how to mingle

with it and become one with that unchanging thing.

We must realize and understand this treasure

of truth. That is why we have

come to the world.

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

eric schertler

Dream broken,

can’t get back to sleep,

so I sit in my hut in the clear

early dawn. On another mountain the

bell has tolled; on a lone tree the first singing

birds. All of my limbs are tuned and limber, and all

of my states are deeply profound. Before I’ve finished

writing a letter, morning light shoots through the forest

branches. Trusting my nature, there’s nothing outside

I seek. Once quiet, ten thousand entanglements

end; why work for people in the dust,

a hundred years of useless

unrest?

Wen-siang

mike kiev

Remain steady

and allow the world

to shape itself.

Receiving

this hexagram is an

encouragement to endure, to move

ahead by abiding in what is true and correct.

It is not a time to let the ego swell with successes

nor to despair at misfortunes. It is

simply a time to hold to the

path of essential

truth.

It is

likely that a

change has occurred,

or is about to. It is your responsibility

to hold your course and go on without regarding

this change. Constancy in correct thought and action

is the order of the day. Rather than letting your

head be turned, simply hold steady

on your spiritual path while

the world reforms

around

you.

Do not

indulge in judgment,

impatience, or ambitious thinking

now. By concerning yourself only with what

is essential and true and good, only with what 

 is in front of you and your correct

relationship to it, you meet

with good fortune

now.

from The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 32, Heng / Duration

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