participation with life

steve mccurry

 

Courage

is the measure

of our heartfelt participation

with life, with another, with a community,

a work; a future. To be courageous is not necessarily

to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those

things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending

vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat

our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to

and into the necessities of relationships that often already

exist, with things we find we already care deeply

about: with a person, a future, a possibility

in society, or with an unknown that

begs us on and always has

begged us on.

 

David Whyte

 

deathbed zen, for the last day of your life

 
At all times just remain free and uninvolved. Never make any displays of clever tricks — be like a stolid simpleton in a village of three families. Then the gods will have no road on which to offer you flowers, and demons and outsiders will not be able to spy on you.

Be undefinable, and do not reveal any conspicuous signs of your special attainment. It should be as if you are there among myriad precious goods locked up securely and deeply hidden in a treasure house. With your face smeared with mud and ashes, join in the work of the common laborers, neither speaking out nor thinking.

Live your whole life so that no one can figure you out, while your spirit and mind are at peace. Isn’t this what it is to be imbued with the Way without any contrived or forced actions, a genuinely unconcerned person?

Among the enlightened adepts, being able to speak the Truth has nothing to do with the tongue, and being able to talk about the Dharma is not a matter of words.

Clearly we know that the words spoken by the ancients were not meant to be passively depended on. Anything the ancients said was intended only so that people would directly experience the fundamental reality. Thus the teachings of the sutras are like a finger pointing to the moon, and the sayings of the Zen masters are like a piece of tile used to knock on a door.

If you know this, then rest. If your practice is continuous and meticulous and your application broad and all-pervading, and you do not deviate from this over the years, then you will mature in your ability to handle the teachings, to gather up and to release, and you will be able to see through petty things and cut them off without leaving a trace.

Then you when you come to the juncture of death and birth, where all the lines intersect, you won’t get mixed up. You will be clear and immovable, and you will be set free as you leave this life behind. This is deathbed Zen, for the last day of your life.

Yuanwu

 

all the celestial angels and maidens


yuko shimizu 

 

what you should know to be a poet

 
 

all you

can know about animals

as persons. the names of trees and flowers

and weeds. the names of stars and the movements

of planets and the moon. your own six senses,

with  a watchful elegant mind. at least

one kind of traditional magic:

divination, astrology, the

book of changes,

the tarot;

 

dreams.

the illusory demons

and the illusory shining gods.

kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit;

fuck his horny barbed cock, fuck

the hag, and all the celestial

angels and maidens

perfum’d and

golden– 

 

& then

love the human:

wives husbands and friends

children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,

the weirdness of television and advertising.

work long, dry hours of dull work

swallowed and accepted and

lived with and finally

lovd. exhaustion, 

hunger,

rest.

 

the wild

freedom of the dance, extasy

silent solitary illumination, entasy

real danger. gambles and

the edge of

death.

 

Gary Snyder

 

tao gives rise to all forms


 

The Tao

gives rise to all forms,

yet it has no form of its own.

If you attempt to fix a picture of

it in your mind, you will lose

it. This is like pinning a

butterfly: the husk is

captured, but the

flying is

lost.

 

Why not be

content with simply

experiencing

it?

 

from Hua hu Ching, Chapter 6

 

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