now you are known as a great hero


 

Renounce riches and jewels.

Look lightly on body and life.

Reject them as spit and phlegm, and do not hesitate!

Hold precepts purely,

Be blemishless!

In four comportments be clear as ice and pure as jade.

When scolded, don’t be angry;

When beaten, do not hate.

Bear what is hard to bear. Forget about mockery. Overlook sarcasm.

Oblivious to winter and summer,

Be ceaselessly relentless.

From start to finish, hold Amitabha Buddha’s name in mind.

Do not lapse into torpor;

Refrain from getting scattered.

Be like the pine and the cypress, never withering, evergreen.

Doubt not the Buddha.

Doubt not the Dharma.

Inherent awareness lets us know clearly what we see and hear.

Bore through the paper,

Pierce the cowhide.

Make your mind perfectly bright and free from error.

Return to the origin;

Reach liberation.

Go back to the source, retrieve your inherent innocence.

Nothing’s not nothing;

Emptiness isn’t empty:

The divine potential’s revealed; its wonder hard to imagine.

When you arrive,

You haven’t toiled in vain.

The impacts of your causal ground are finished.

Now you are known

As a Great Hero,

All ten titles fit perfectly. You are a teacher of many generations.

Ah! The same leaking shell can now manifest

As a complete body pervading ten directions!

With good and evil distinguished clearly, no more mistakes occur. 

So why rely on the false alone and fail to practice the true?

Hsu Yun

this world is a place of preparation

 

This world is

a place of preparation where

one is given many lessons and passes

many tests. Choose less over more in it.

Be satisfied with what you have, even

if it is less than what others

have. In fact, prefer to

have less.

 

This world is

not bad — on the contrary,

it is the field of the hereafter.

What you plant here, you will reap

there. This world is the way to

eternal bliss and so is good —

worthy to be cherished

and to be praised.

 

Ibn ‘Arabi

i choose these old buddhas


 

We are

in the habit of saying

that it was not in our power

to choose the parents who were

allotted to us, that they were given

to us by chance. But we can choose whose

children we would like to be. There are households

of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish

to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name

but their property too. Nor will this property

need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly:

the more it is shared out,

the greater it will

become. 

 

Seneca