Posts Tagged → beauty

progress is won through discipline

konstantin tronin

 

Lasting progress is won 

through quiet self-discipline.

 

This hexagram outlines the foundation of proper conduct within ourselves, with those with whom we may have conflicts, and within the larger society. It serves to remind us that no genuine gains can be made unless we are rooted firmly in the principles of the Sage.

An image often associated with this hexagram is that of treading on the tail of a tiger. The “tiger” may be some strong or malevolent force in your own personality, or it may be a particularly volatile individual or situation with which you have to deal. In either case the advice of the I Ching is the same: one avoids the bite of a tiger by treading carefully. To tread carefully means that we remain steadfastly innocent and conscientious in our thoughts and actions. 

It is inevitable that people will display varying levels of spiritual understanding. It is not our duty to condemn or correct others, but simply to go on developing ourselves. Do not imagine that you can hasten your progress through aggressive actions now. Power that is sought and wielded pridefully has a way of evaporating when you need it most, thus exacerbating your difficulties. The only lasting influence is that which arises naturally from a course of steady development.

In the end, it is our inner worth that determines the outer conditions of our lives. Those who resolve to persevere in humility, sincerity, and gentleness can tread anywhere – even on the tail of a tiger – and meet with success.

 

from The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 10, Lü / Treading

 

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stand shoulder to shoulder and go on

stop your search

 

If you make slogans

based on words and sprout interpretations

based on objects, then you fall into the bag of antique curios,

and you will never be able to find this true realm

of absolute awareness beyond

sentiments.

 

At this stage you are free

to go forward in the wild field without choosing,

picking up whatever comes to hand: the meaning of the ancestral

teachers is clear in all that grows there. What’s more, the thickets of green

bamboo and the masses of yellow flowers and the fences and walls

and tiles and pebbles are inanimate things

teaching the dharma. 

 

The water birds and the

groves of trees expound the truths of suffering,

emptiness, and selflessness. Based on the one true reality,

they extend objectless compassion, and from the great

jewel light of nirvana they reveal uncontrived,

surpassingly wondrous powers.

 

Changqing said,

“When you meet a companion

on the Path, stand shoulder to shoulder and

go on: then your lifetime of learning

will be completed.”

 

Yuanwu

zen letters

🪷

a golden dragon indeed

national treasury of japan

 

If once you can

go through the Cloud-pass,


Then South, North, East, West,


you can go freely in any direction.


Resting at night, travelling by day,


all subject or object forgotten.


Wherever you plant your foot, 


there is purity and coolness.


Go through the Cloud pass 
and

there is no more the old road.


The sky is blue and the sun bright,


the mountains are your home.


The wheel of the world turning and changing,


hard for men to attain truth!


But he who moves through it with folded hands,


is noble ~ a golden dragon indeed.
 

Daitō Kokushi

more daito

 

this morning I felt strong and jaunty

a buddha was born

 

This morning

I felt strong and jaunty in my

mail order Israeli commando trousers.

Up at Hard Luck Ranch I spoke to the ravens

in baritone, fed the cats with manly gestures.

Acacia thorns can’t penetrate these mighty pants,

then out by the corral the infant pup began

to weep, abandoned. In an instant

I became another of the

Earth’s billion sad

mothers.

 

Jim Harrison

all are worthy

 

learning how to be happy

your old home town

 

One has to spend

so many years in learning how

to be happy. I am just beginning to make

some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove

Young’s theory that “as soon as we have found the key of life

it opens the gates of death.” Every year strips us of at least one vain

expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its

stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are

our happiest. What a miserable augury for the

progress of the race and the destination

of the individual if the more matured

and enlightened state is the

less happy one!

 

Childhood is only

the beautiful and happy time

in contemplation and retrospect:

to the child it is full of deep sorrows,

the meaning of which is unknown. Witness

colic and whooping-cough and dread of ghosts,

to say nothing of hell and Satan, and an offended Deity

in the sky, who was angry when I wanted too much plumcake.

Then the sorrows of older persons, which children see but

cannot understand, are worse than all. All this to prove

that we are happier than when we were seven years

old, and that we shall be happier when we are

forty than we are now, which I call a

comfortable doctrine, and one

worth trying to

believe!

 

George Eliot