What makes the soul alive?
It makes itself alive when it strikes its depths
instead of reaching outward. The soul, after coming up
against the iron wall of this life of falsehood, turns
back within itself; it encounters itself, and
this is how it becomes living.
This
is what you
shall do: Love the earth
and sun and the animals, despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks, stand up for
the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor
to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have
patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat
to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young
and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open
air every season of every year of your life, reexamine all you
have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss
whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall
be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only
in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and
face and between the lashes of your eyes
and in every motion and
joint of your
body.
Today
while begging,
I got caught in a shower.
For some time, I found shelter
in an old shrine. Laugh if you like at
the one jar and one bowl I own!
Humble and cleansed —
my life a broken
house.
When we’re holding
the mental formations of despair
and suffering, we can look and see that
this has been born from that; suffering is born
because we are in touch with an image from
the past. The reality is that we are safe,
and we have the capacity to enjoy
the wonders of life in the
present moment.
When we recognize
that our suffering is based on images
instead of current reality, then living happily
in the present moment becomes
possible right away.
The sounds of
streams are Buddha’s speech. The
colored mountains are Buddha’s pure body.
Night brings eighty-four thousand poems
of Buddha. Listen, and someday
you may awaken.