brighten your virtue

school of rock and light and air

 

You progress like the rising sun.

The brighter your virtue,

the higher you rise.

 

This hexagram announces a time of significant and easy progress. Your influence and understanding grow by leaps and bounds as long as you maintain your alliance with the Sage, for it is from that alliance that the current progress springs. The only limit to growth now is your devotion to higher things: if this is true and complete and steady, there will be great gains now.

The image of the hexagram is that of the sun rising over the earth. To our view, the further it moves away from darkness, the higher the sun rises. The same is true of us: the extent to which we progress is determined by how far we distance ourselves from inferior influences.

It is important, when success comes, not to fall into the traps of the ego: taking credit for gains, resting on laurels, indulging in desires, or plotting towards ambitions. The superior person instead uses times of progress to brighten his virtue, recognizing that it was his commitment to proper principles that brought success in the first place.

Continue to purify your thought, attitudes, and conduct now. The greatest power in this beneficial time accrues to those who serve the Higher Power in every moment.
 

The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 35, Chin / Progress

 

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a clear and open state of freedom

hexagram 23 po ☯️ splitting apart

 

Cogitation,

making judgements,

following patterns, firing arrows,

engaging in endless ideation and emotional

behavior — all these are to be abandoned

and transcended on the

Way.

 

Be still.

Do non doing.

A clear and open

state of freedom

will appear.

 

Wei wu Wei Ching, Chapter 23

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washing dirt in mud

diamonds

 

By even speaking a phrase to you,

I have already doused you with dirty water.

It would be even worse for me to put a twinkle in my eye

and raise my eyebrow to you, or rap on the meditation seat

or hold up a whisk, or demand, “What is this?”

As for shouting and hitting, it’s obvious

that this is just a pile of bones

on level ground.

 

There are also the type

who don’t know good from bad and

ask questions about Buddha and Dharma and Zen

and the Tao. They ask to be helped, they beg to be received,

they seek knowledge and sayings and theories relating to

the Buddhist teaching and to transcending the world

and to accommodating the world. This is washing

dirt in mud and washing mud in dirt —

when will they ever manage

to clear it away?

 

Forget the words and 

embody the meaning.

 

Yuanwu

zen letters

 

be the valley for the world

the king of the valleys

 

To know

the masculine and yet

cleave to the feminine is to be the

womb for the world. Being the womb for

the world, never departing from the

eternal power of tao, you

become like an infant

once again:

 immortal. 

 

To know

the bright and yet

hold to the dull is to be

an example for the world. 

Being the example for the world, 

not deviating from the everlasting

power of tao, you return to

the infinite once again: 

limitless. 

 

To know

honor and yet keep

to humility is to be the valley

for the world. Being the valley for

the world, rich with the primal power

of tao, you return once again to simplicity, 

like uncarved wood. Allow tao to carve

you into a vessel for tao. Then you

can serve the world without

mutilating

it. 

 

The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu

Chapter 28

 

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