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

 

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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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

 

 

It is the one

without obsession who is noble.

Just do not act in a contrived manner; simply be normal.

When you go searching elsewhere outside yourself, your whole approach

is already mistaken. You just try to seek buddhahood, but

buddhahood is just a name, an expression.

Do you know the one who is doing

the searching?

 

Lin-Chi

 

Our task

as humans is to find

the few principles that will calm the

infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend

what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable

again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness

a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by

the misery of the century. Naturally, it is

a superhuman task. But superhuman

is the term for tasks [we] take

a long time to accomplish,

that’s all.

 

Let us

know our aims then,

holding fast to the mind, even if

force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable

face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to

despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim

that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily,

and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have

been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic

times. But too many people confuse tragedy with

despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said,

“ought to be a great kick at misery.”

This is a healthy and immediately

applicable thought. There are

many things today

deserving such

a kick.

 

If we are

to save the mind we must

ignore its gloomy virtues and celebrate

its strength and wonder. Our world is poisoned

by its misery, and seems to wallow in it. It has utterly

surrendered to that evil which Nietzsche called

the spirit of heaviness. Let us not add to this.

It is futile to weep over the mind,

it is enough to labor

for it. 

 

But where

are the conquering virtues

of the mind? The same Nietzsche listed

them as mortal enemies to heaviness of the spirit.

For him, they are strength of character, taste, the “world,”

classical happiness, severe pride, the cold frugality of

the wise. More than ever, these virtues are

necessary today, and each of us can

choose the one that suits

him best.

 

Before the

vastness of the undertaking,

let no one forget strength of character.

I don’t mean the theatrical kind on political

platforms, complete with frowns and threatening

gestures. But the kind that through the virtue of its purity

and its sap, stands up to all the winds that blow in

from the sea. Such is the strength of character

that in the winter of the world

will prepare the

fruit.

 

Albert Camus