love and truth

 

We sense that

there is some sort of spirit

that loves birds and animals and the ants —

perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you

in your mother’s womb. Is it logical you would be walking

around entirely orphaned now? The truth is you turned away

yourself, and decided to go into the dark alone. Now you

are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what

you once knew, and that’s why everything

you do has some weird

failure in it.

 

Kabir

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.”

 

Yuanwu

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,

Chapter 10

 

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the door to peace and happiness


 
People who study the Way begin by having the faith to turn toward it. They are fed up with the vexations and filth of the world and are always afraid they will not be able to find a road of entry into the Way.

Once you have been directed by a teacher or else discovered on your own the originally inherently complete real mind, then no matter what situations or circumstances you encounter, you know for yourself where it’s really at.

But then if you hold fast to that real mind, the problem is you cannot get out, and it becomes a nest. You set up “illumination” and “function” in acts and states, snort and clap and glare and raise your eyebrows, deliberately putting on a scene.

When you meet a genuine expert of the school again, he removes all this knowledge and understanding for you, so you can merge directly with realization of the original uncontrived, unpreoccupied, unminding state. After this you will feel shame and repentance and know to cease and desist. You will proceed to vanish utterly, so that not even the sages can find you arising anywhere, much less anyone else.

That is why Yantou said, “Those people who actually realize it just keep serene and free at all times, without cravings, without dependence.” Isn’t this the door to peace and happiness?”

Yuanwu