the first thing is, don’t seek

think deeply on this

 
If you want to attain Intimacy, the first thing is, don’t seek it. If you attain through seeking, you have already fallen into interpretive understanding.

This is especially true because this great treasury extends through all times, clearly evident, empty and bright. Since time without beginning it has been your own basic root: you depend on its power entirely in all your actions.

You will only pass through to freedom when you cease and desist to the point that not even a single thought is born. Then you penetrate through without falling into sense and matter and without dwelling in conceptualizations and mental images.

When you absolutely transcend these, then the whole world does not hide it. Everywhere everything becomes its Great Function, and every single thing flows forth from your own breast. The ancients called this bringing out the family treasure. Once this is attained, it is attained forever. How could it ever be used up?

Just be wary that your investigation does not rest on a firm footing, and that you will not be able to penetrate through to realization. You must bravely cut off all entanglements, so there is not the slightest dependence or reliance. Relinquish your body and give up your life and directly accept the suchness that faces you; there is no other.

Then if if the thousand sages came forth it wouldn’t change you at all. Leaving it to the flow at all times, eating food and wearing clothes, you nurture the embryo of sagehood to maturity, not keeping to intellectual understanding. Isn’t this an especially excellent teaching and a most essential shortcut?

 

Yuanwu

zen letters

🪷

 

the highest good is like water

kadir nelson

 

The highest

good is like water,

which benefits all things and

contends with none. It flows in low

places that others disdain, and

thus it is close to

the tao.

 

In living,

choose your ground well.

In thought, stay deep in the heart.

In relationships, be generous.

In speaking, hold to the truth.

In leadership, be organized.

In work, do your best.

In action, be

timely.

 

If you compete with no one,

no one can compete with you.
 

The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 8

 

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possession in great measure

amel bashir taha

 

In the early days

your peace of mind will be challenged.

By maintaining humility, detachment, and alertness

to the approach of evil, you ensure that your

greatest possession endures.

 

first changing line

from The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 14, Ta Yu / Possession in Great Measure

 

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Wei wu Wei Ching, Hua hu Ching, and

Art of War for iPad/Phone, Kindle,

Nook, or Android

 

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can now buy

the I Ching as part of a

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for iPhone or iPad for less than

the cost of one hardcover

book.

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the benefit of engagement in politics

only love can do that

 

Forget the self and you’ll help others.

Deshan Xuanjian

 

The spiritual benefit of engagement in politics comes from going into rather than away from the imperfection. And if you are diving right into the heart of delusion, naturally this means into the heart of your own delusion. There’s always a chance that such a plunge might increase self-knowledge more than it increases self-righteousness.

The point here is that you have to forget all that spiritual stuff about what a good person you are or intend to be someday, something that is anyway unlikely to be attained. The spirituality in politics might not be visible to others or even to yourself. Down there in the heart of delusion you look like a demon too, just like the rest of us. You’ll have to adapt your fashion sense to having horns and fangs.

This is the force of Bismarck’s famous comment about the art of the possible: in order to bring about any sort of transformation you have to work with what is actually the case, rather than what you might have wished for or pretended — in the world, in others, in yourself.

When I accepted how the world is, I noticed that empathy is part of how it is. It’s not easy to explain; it doesn’t have a reason. Empathy seems to be a basis for spiritual work — for the bodhisattva way. Empathy also doesn’t seem to be entirely personal. We didn’t work for change because we liked each other or the people who might benefit; there was empathy even when people were behaving in ways that I might find painful.

 

John Tarrant

bring me the rhinoceros