the mystic develops a wider outlook

While some blame

another for causing him harm,

the wise one first takes

himself to task.

The worldly struggle is outward struggle. The struggle on the spiritual path is inward struggle. No sooner does one take the spiritual direction than the first enemy one meets is one’s own self. What does the self do? It is most mischievous. When one says one wants to fight it, it says, ‘I am yourself. Do you want to fight me?’ And when it brings failure, it is clever enough to put the blame on someone else.

Do all those who have failed in life accuse themselves? No, they always accuse another person. When they have gained something they say, ‘I have done it.’ When they have lost something they say, ‘This person got in my way’. With little and big things, it is all the same. The self does not admit faults; it always puts the blame on others. Its vanity, its pride, its smallness, and its egotistical tendency which is continually active, keep one blind.

By a study of life the Sufi learns and practices the nature of its harmony. He establishes harmony with the self, with others, with the universe and with the infinite. He identifies himself with another, he sees himself, so to speak, in every other being. He cares for neither blame nor praise, considering both as coming from himself.

If a person were to drop a heavy weight and in so doing hurt his own foot, he would not blame his hand for having dropped it, realizing himself in both the hand and the foot. In like manner the Sufi is tolerant when harmed by another, thinking that the harm has come from himself alone.

He overlooks the faults of others, considering that they know no better. He hides the faults of others, and suppresses any facts that would cause disharmony. His constant fight is with the Nafs (the self-centered ego), the root of all disharmony and the only enemy of man.

The mystic develops a wider outlook on life, and this wider outlook changes his actions. He develops a point of view that may be called a divine point of view. Then he rises to the state in which he feels that all that is done to him comes from God, and when he himself does right or wrong, he feels that he does right or wrong to God. To arrive at such a stage is true religion. There can be no better religion than this, the true religion of God on earth. This is the point of view that makes a person God-like and divine. He is resigned when badly treated, but for his own shortcomings, he will take himself to task, for all his actions are directed towards God.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Joan Radcliffe Walker, 11 Aug. 1925 ~ 26 Oct. 2024

Joan Radcliffe Walker completed her journey on earth in the early morning hours of 26 October 2024, passing in peaceful sleep in hospice care. She leaves her daughters Julie Sands Donaldson and Laurie Lysle Walker, her son Brian Browne Walker, three grandchildren, Dylan, Sofia, and Rebecca, and some very good friends.

Joan’s father departed this life when she was 16, so his influence dimmed with time, but the presence of her mother Cynthia Pace Radcliffe entertained and inspired her and remained, until Cincie died at 83, a constant companion and guiding star.

Bud Walker, her husband for 65 years, was the best man anyone could have been married to. Bud died in January 2017.

Not what she attained, but what she learned, motivated Joan’s steps throughout her life: from an emancipated childhood she learned freedom to explore, to mingle, and to fraternize.

From scarcity in her teens she learned to improvise and plan.

From industry in her 20’s, she learned to triumph over difficulties and excel.

From her observation of discrimination and inequities, she realized an ability to access her own powers to intercede for others successfully.

From maturation she learned where her true talents lay, and from living to 99 she learned patience and a peaceful acceptance of life.

In the sum of these lessons she found joy, humor, humility, and gratitude. Life contained hope and purpose to the end.

Rest in peace, Joan, you have lived an exceptional life.

🪷

Almost nine years ago, my mother and I sat down at the only dining room table that I’ve ever known in my parents’ home and wrote my father’s obituary together. Soon after, without my knowing about it, she wrote her own. Years later, she gave it to me, and I have carried it with me since. Almost every word of what lies above was written by its subject.

What I said about my father it italics at the end of his obituary was

It is

a signal honor when

the best man one has ever known,

the best friend one has ever had, and

one’s own father are one and the

same man. I love you,

Papa, always and

forever.

Change the gender, and what I have to say here is the same — not identical, because they weren’t, but of a feather, as they were. It’s not a sack race, of course. It’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me: I am the son of Bud and Joan Walker.

Goodbye,

my beloved mama.

We will never be apart

for so much as

an instant.

☯️

stop your search

deshan xuanjian

If you can refrain from producing a single thought, you’ll be forever freed from birth and death, and will not be bound up by birth and death. You go when you want to go and sit when you want to sit — what further concern is there?

Don’t go crazy; I suggest to you that it would be better to stop and not be obsessed with anything. The moment a thought flashes through your mind, you’re a minion of the devil, an immoral worldling.

Just do not stick to sound and form externally, and do not conceive of subject and object internally. In essential being there is neither ordinary nor holy — what more would you learn? Even if you learn a hundred thousand marvelous doctrines, you’re just a sore-sucking ghost; it’s all mere fascination.

I do not mean to slander him about this, but this is why Buddha spewed out so much spittle of expedient means, to teach you to be free. Don’t search outside. As long as you don’t acquiesce, you want to collect unusual sayings and store them in your chest, so you can talk cleverly, getting by on glibness, hoping to be acknowledged by people as a Chan master, wanting to obtain a position of prominence.

If you entertain such views, someday you’ll go to hell where your tongue will be pulled out.

My perception is not that way. Here I have no Buddha and no Dharma. Bodhidharma was a smelly old foreigner, the bodhisattvas of the tenth stage are dung haulers, the equally and subtly enlightened are immoral worldlings, bodhi and nirvana are donkey-tethering stakes, the twelve-part canonical teachings are ghost tablets, paper for wiping pus from sores, those who have attained the four fruitions, the three ranks of sages, and those from initial inspiration to the tenth stage are ghosts haunting ancient tombs, unable to save even themselves. Buddha was an old foreigner, a piece of crap.

Good people, don’t make the mistake of putting on a garment of sores.

Here I have no doctrine at all to give you to interpret. I don’t understand Chan myself, and I am no teacher. I don’t understand anything at all, I just consume and excrete. What else is there?

I urge you to be free from concerns, promptly stopping your search; don’t learn aberration and madness. Everybody carries around a corpse, traveling, licking up the slaver of the old baldies wherever you go. Imbibing their drivel, you immediately proclaim that you are going into samadhi, cultivating capacities, accumulating good deeds to nurture the embryos of sagehood in hopes of fulfilling the realization of Buddhahood.

This

radiant void

is unobstructed, free:

it is not something

you can attain by

embellishment.

You are people of the present time; don’t seek somewhere else. Even if Bodhidharma were to come here, he would just tell you to be without affectations; he would tell you not to be contrived. Dressing, eating, excreting, there is no more “birth and death” to be feared, and no nirvana to be attained, no enlightenment to be realized. You’re just an ordinary individual, without affectations.

Do you want to know? It’s just a void, with nothing to attain, pure and clear everywhere, radiant with light, thoroughly translucent inside and out. There is no affectation, no dependence, nothing to dwell on. What are you concerned with?

Deshan Xuanjian

treasury of the eye of true teaching