No use fretting over gold, beauty, or fame;
Nurturing these, how can we calm our
Fluttering heart?
Non-attachment brings deep truth,
And a truthful nature brings immortality.
Empty your heart.
Sit quietly on a mat.
In meditation we become one with All;
Tao billows like the vapors in a mountain valley,
And its supernatural power wafts into our soul.
within us there is another beauty
One cries out for a just resolution.
This can only come if we quietly observe
proper principles. Avoid placing demands
on the universe, and success
will come.
second line
from The I Ching, or Book of Changes
💜
A healthy family, a healthy country,
a healthy world – all grow
outward from a single
superior person.
The hexagram Chia Jen concerns the proper foundation of human communities. The I Ching teaches that all clans must have a superior person at their center if they are to prosper and succeed. Therefore, in order to improve our family, company, nation, or world community, we must begin by improving ourselves.
If you will observe healthy families you will always see present in them three qualities: love, faithfulness, and correctness. When we truly love others, we are naturally kind, gentle, and patient with them. When we are faithful to others, we place proper principles and conduct above temporary influences like anger, desire, or greed. And when we practice correctness, we spiritually nourish ourselves and all those around us. When all three qualities are cultivated, a healthy clan springs naturally into being.
The difference between paying lip service to these ideals and practicing them is profound. If you advocate high ideals and actions to others but do not embody them yourself, your influence will disintegrate for lack of a proper foundation. Therefore, in order to inspire superior qualities in others, you must first instill them in yourself.
Concentrate not upon influencing others or external events but upon strengthening your inner devotion to proper principles. When modesty, acceptance, equanimity, and gentleness become deeply ingrained in your character, they will flow steadily out from from you.
Soon you will find yourself enmeshed in a web of healthy relationships, and in this there is great good fortune.
The I Ching, or Book of Changes
Hexagram 37, Chia Jen, The Family (The Clan)
Further guidance from the
Wei Wu Wei Ching:
Don’t try
to escape from
the movements of the world.
Remain in the midst of everything,
focused into the empty space
at the center of
your self.
Pouring your
whole being there without pause,
alert, quietly smiling, you detach from
clamor and chaos and become
independent and free.
From here you can
teach yourself
everything.
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My heart has
become capable of every form:
It is a pasture for gazelles and a cloister
for Christian monks, a temple for idols and
the pilgrim’s Ka’ba, and the tables of
the torah and the book of
the Qur’an.
I follow
the religion of love:
whatever way love’s camels take,
that is my religion and
my faith.
Try
to praise
the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads
of exiles.
You
must praise
the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts
and ships; one of them had a long trip
ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners
sing joyfully.
You
should praise
the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when
we were together in a white room and
the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to
the concert where music flared. You
gathered acorns in the park in
autumn and leaves eddied
over the earth’s
scars.
Praise
the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays
and vanishes and
returns.