Wear just
enough clothes to keep warm.
Eat only enough to stop the hunger-pang.
And as for your mind, let it work to recognize
who you are, and the Absolute, and that
this body will become food for
the forest crows.
to the future
It would be
understandable, this week,
if you looked around and decided that
the world as we know it is wholly irredeemable.
It would be understandable if you were tempted to give up hope.
If the present feels too awful to bear, it can be helpful to look to the past
or the future instead. There’s wisdom to be found in history; there’s
hope to be found in the futures that don’t exist, but might
someday. This isn’t a means of escapism, but
a way to find the strength to
keep going.
everything is a tai chi
If you go
searching for the Great Creator,
you will come back empty-handed.
The source of the universe is ultimately
unknowable, a great invisible river
flowing forever through a vast
and fertile valley. Silent and
uncreated, it creates
all things.
All things
are brought forth from the
subtle realm into the manifest world
by the mystical intercourse of yin and yang.
The dynamic river yang pushes forward,
the still valley yin is receptive, and
through their integration things
come into existence. This is
known as the Great
Tai Chi.
Tai chi
is the integral truth
of the universe. Everything is
a tai chi: your body, the cosmic body,
form, appearance, wisdom, energy, the unions
of people, the dispersal of time and places.
Each brings itself into existence through
the integration of yin and yang,
maintains itself, and disperses
itself without the direction
of any creator.
Your creation,
your self-transformation, the
accumulation of energy and wisdom,
the decline and cessation of your body:
all these take place by themselves
within the subtle operation
of the universe.
Therefore
agitated effort is
not necessary. Just be
aware of the Great
Tai Chi.
ebooks & apps of the Tao the Ching, I Ching,
Hua hu Ching, and Art of War for
You
can now buy
Hua hu Ching as part of a
five-app bundle of Taoist classics
for iPhone or iPad for less than
the cost of one hardcover
book.
become intimate with the speed of darkness
I have studied and become intimate
with the speed of darkness. It’s so fast
it’s always here. When the light withdraws
the dark comes from no place. It always lives
with us. Your heart and brain are black.
They never see the true light except in violence
or autopsy. Of course the brain can cast
its own blinding light that we wait for in a poem,
at least blinding to us. In our trances the loves
of long ago enter the room unescorted, silent
perhaps from the black bottom of the ocean
where we all die in perfect darkness, a sense
of whirling that recedes back to the time
the ocean swallowed the smallest stars
then heated us into our early life.
Darkness is always there,
it only stands revealed.
advisory
