Posts Tagged → beauty

know the universe as yourself

the explanet zoo

 

Favor

and disgrace are

equally problematic. Hope

and fear are phantoms

of the body.

 

What

does it mean that

“favor and disgrace are

equally problematic”? Favor

lifts you up; disgrace knocks you down.

Either one depends on the opinions

of others and causes you to

depart from your

center.

 

What

does it mean that

“hope and fear are phantoms

of the body”? When you regard your

body as your self, hope and fear have real

power over you. If you abandon the

notion of body as self, hope

and fear cannot

touch you.

 

Know

the universe as

your self, and you can live

absolutely anywhere in comfort.

Love the world as your self,

and you’ll be able

to care for it

properly.

 

Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu

Chapter 13

 

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years of hunger beneath gojo bridge

A master’s

handiwork cannot

be measured but still priests wag

their tongues explaining the “Way” and

babbling about “Zen.” This old monk has

never cared for false piety and my

nose wrinkles at the dark smell

of incense before the

Buddha.

 

Crazy Cloud

speaks of Daito’s unsurpassed

brilliance but the clatter of royal carriages

about the temple gates drowns him out and no

one listens to tales of the Patriarch’s long

years of hunger and homelessness

beneath Gojo Bridge.

 

Ikkyu

wikkyu

 

In order to deepen his Zen understanding, Daito Kokushi (also known as Shuho Myocho, 1281-1338), the founder of Daitoku-ji, passed a number of years hiding out among the beggars clustered about Kyoto’s Gojo Bridge.

remember all is cyclical

 

The fragrance

of blossoms soon passes;

the ripeness of fruit is gone in a

twinkling. Our time in this world is so

short, better to avoid regret: miss

no opportunity to savor

the ineffable.

 

Like a golden

beacon signaling on a moonless

night, tao guides our passage through this

transitory realm. In moments of darkness and pain

remember all is cyclical. Sit quietly behind

your wooden door: spring will

come again.

 

Loy Ching-Yuen

the book of the heart

 

accept three precepts

the paws of the buddha smelled like popcorn

 

Even if

you know how to recite

the texts, you still have to discern reality

from artificiality. Why? Sound and form dim the mind,

falsehoods fool the ears; personality and ego become second

nature, the disease of self-affirmation is deep-seated.

When the mind is separated from the

Way,  the principle is hard to

comprehend.

 

If you wish

to return to the supreme

Way, have deep faith and first accept

three precepts. If you practice in accord with

these three precepts consistently from

beginning to end, then you will

attain the true Way. The

three precepts

are:

 

simplifying involvements 

not craving anything 

quieting the mind

 

…A scripture says,

“If people can empty their minds

and not contrive anything, it is not that

they want the Way, but the Way

spontaneously reverts

to them.”

 

Treatise on Sitting Forgetting