The things of the world
and the buddhadharma are fused
into one whole. Everywhere in everything
you have a way out — you do not fall
into objects and states or get
turned around by
anything.
At a bustling
crossroads in the marketplace,
amid the endless waves of life — this
is exactly the right place
to exert effort.
Without any
intentional, fancy way
of adjusting yourself, to express
yourself as you are is the most
important thing.
Whip
and tether, self
and bull, every thing
is no thing. The clear blue
sky is unmarked by a message.
Could a snowflake persist
in a flaming fire? This
is the place of
masters.
This
is an absolute necessity
for anybody today. You must have a room,
or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know
what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know
who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody,
you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where
you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and
what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation.
At first you may find that nothing happens there.
But if you have a sacred place and use it,
something eventually will
happen.
You must keep this
mind balanced and equanimous,
without deluded ideas of self and others,
without arbitrary loves and hates, without grasping
or rejecting, without notions of gain and loss.
Go on gradually nurturing this for
a long time, perhaps twenty
or thirty years.
Whether you encounter
favorable or adverse conditions,
do not retreat or regress — then when you
come to the juncture between life and death,
you will naturally be set free and be not afraid.
As the saying goes, “Truth requires sudden
awakening, but the phenomenal
level calls for gradual
cultivation.”