Don’t

think you can attain

total awareness and whole enlightenment

without proper discipline and practice. This is egomania.

Appropriate rituals channel your emotions and life

energy toward the light. Without the discipline

to practice them, you will tumble

constantly backward into

darkness.

 

Here is

the great secret:

Just as high awareness

of the subtle truth is gained through

virtuous conduct and sustaining disciplines,

so also is it maintained through these

things. Highly evolved beings

know and respect the

truth of this.

 

from The Hua hu Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 29

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I am

always the student.

I love to be in that position,

bowing, listening, at the feet of all

that I see. This doesn’t require an open mind:

it is the open mind. It never has to take responsibility

for knowing or for not knowing. It receives everything without

defense, without judgment, since judgment would cost it everything

it is. The moment you think you’re someone or you think you have

something to teach, the inner world freezes and becomes

the realm of illusion. That’s what it costs when you

identify yourself as the person who knows.

It’s a concoction of mind. You shrink

down into the teacher:

limited, separate,

stuck.

 

Byron Katie

nine bows

 

v

Favor

and disgrace are

equally problematic. Hope

and fear are phantoms

of the body.

 

What

does it mean that

“favor and disgrace are

equally problematic”? Favor

lifts you up; disgrace knocks you down.

Either one depends on the opinions

of others and causes you to

depart from your

center.

 

What

does it mean that

“hope and fear are phantoms

of the body”? When you regard your

body as your self, hope and fear have real

power over you. If you abandon the

notion of body as self, hope

and fear cannot

touch you.

 

Know

the universe as

your self, and you can live

absolutely anywhere in comfort.

Love the world as your self,

and you’ll be able

to care for it

properly.

 

from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 13

 

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Hua hu Ching, and Art of War for

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or Android

 

You

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Tao te Ching as part of a

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book.

 

 

In

the spring,

at the end of the day,

you should smell

like dirt.

 

Margaret Atwood

 

 

In this

world of ours,

what good does it do for

you to have the praise of others?

For blossoms, the winds of

spring; for the moon,

floating clouds.

 

Shotetsu