Don’t
seek fame or
Just pass this life as is, according to
circumstances. When the breath is gone, who is in
charge? After the death of the body, there is only an empty
name. When your clothes are worn, repair them over and
over; when you have no food, work to provide. How
long can a phantom-like body last? Would you
increase your ignorance for the sake
of its idle concerns?
A sage is subtle,
intuitive, penetrating, profound.
His depths are mysterious and
unfathomable.
The best one can do is
describe his appearance: the sage
is alert as a person crossing a winter stream; as
circumspect as a person with neighbors on all four sides;
as respectful as a thoughtful guest; as yielding as
melting ice; as simple as uncarved wood;
as open as a valley; as chaotic
as a muddy torrent.
Why “chaotic
as a muddy torrent”?
Because clarity is learned by
being patient in the
heart of chaos.
Tolerating
disarray, remaining at rest,
gradually one learns to allow muddy water to
settle and proper responses to reveal themselves.
Those who aspire to tao don’t long for fulfillment.
They selflessly allow tao to use and deplete
them; they calmly allow tao to renew
and complete them.
These days, Obama spends
a lot of time talking with younger people.
With them, he is an elder refuting the notion that things
have never been worse. “I say, ‘No, you know what? Civil War—really bad.
Jim Crow—tough. You know, our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents
went through stuff that was profoundly tougher than what we’re going through,’ ”
the former President said. “And I say that not to pull rank on them but,
rather, to pull them out of any kind of hopelessness
about the situation.”
It certainly wasn’t
fish who discovered water or
birds the air. Men built houses in part
out of embarrassment by the stars and raised
their children on trivialities because they had butchered
the god within themselves. The politician standing on
the church steps thrives within the grandeur
of this stupidity, a burnt out lamp
who never imagined
the sun.
Brave-spirited wearers of the patched robe possess an outstanding, extraordinary aspect. With great determination they give up conventional society. They look upon worldly status and evanescent fame as dust in the wind, as clouds floating by, as echoes in a valley.
Since they already have great faculties and great capacity from the past, they know that this level exists, and they transcend birth and death and move beyond holy and ordinary. This is the indestructible true essence that all the enlightened ones of all times witness, the wondrous mind that alone the generations of enlightened teachers have communicated.
To tread this unique path, to be a fragrant elephant or a giant, golden-winged bird, it is necessary to charge past the millions of categories and types and fly above them, to cut off the flow and brush against the heavens. How could the enlightened willingly be petty creatures, confined within distinctions of high and low and victory and defeat, trying futilely to make comparative judgments of instantaneous experience, and being utterly turned around by gain and loss?
For this reason, in olden times the people of great enlightenment did not pay attention to trivial matters and did not aspire to the shallow and easily accessible. They aroused their determination to transcend the buddhas and patriarchs. They wanted to bear the heavy responsibility that no one can fully take up, to rescue all living beings, to remove suffering and bring peace, to smash the ignorance and blindness that obstructs the Way. They wanted to break the poisonous arrows of ignorant folly and extract the thorns of arbitrary views from the eye of reality. They wanted to make the scenery of the fundamental ground clear and reveal the original face before the empty aeon.
You should train your mind and value actual practice wholeheartedly, exerting all your power, not shrinking from the cold or the heat. Go to the spot where you meditate and kill your mental monkey and slay your intellectual horse. Make yourself like a dead tree, like a withered stump.
Suddenly you penetrate through — how could it be attained from anyone else? You discover the hidden treasure, you light the lamp in the dark room, you launch the boat across the center of the ford. You experience great liberation, and without producing a single thought, you immediately attain true awakening. Having passed through the gate into the inner truth, you ascend to the site of universal light. Then you sit in the impeccably pure supreme seat of the emptiness of all things.
In relationships,
desires lead to misfortune.
Behave with discipline
and balance.
Kuei Mei is concerned with the guidelines for the proper conduct of relationships, whether they be social, romantic, or work related. The image here is of thunder roiling the surface of a lake, and it suggests that relationships can be disturbing to our peace of mind unless they are established and governed under proper principles.
The nature of relationships is that they lead us into the desire state: we begin to desire another, desire recognition, desire retribution, desire a particular outcome in a given situation. All of these desires lead us away from the equanimity that we aim to maintain as students of the I Ching. This hexagram often comes as a sign that you are in danger of sacrificing your composure in an effort to affect a relationship.
When someone does not treat you as you would like, you are faced with a choice as to what to do. While it may be tempting to abandon the relationship in anger or act aggressively to produce a result, neither of these is consistent with proper principles.
You are counseled instead to return to inner independence, acceptance, modestly, and gentleness. The greatest influence is always had through inner discipline and balance; less subtle measures may produce more immediate results, but they are seldom lasting.
This hexagram also teaches us that rushing into a relationship, rushing to resolve a relationship, or rushing to escape a relationship are all akin to rushing on ice: each invites a panful fall. Seek to establish relationships slowly and on proper principles, to allow them to evolve naturally, and to resolve disputes with patience and reserve.
If your primary relationship — that with the Sage — is open and ongoing and devoted, then all other relationships will fall into place.
The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Hexagram 54, Kuei Mei / The Marrying Maiden
Wei wu Wei Ching 54 ☯️ returning to innocence
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